Thursday, January 20, 2011

1932 - THE MISTRESS OF ATLANTIS, pointless adventure fantasy.


Two soldiers from the French Foreign Legion wander around the Sahara desert where they end up in the lost city of Atlantis which is ruled by the queen of Atlantis (played by Brigitte Helm, from Metropolis).


Believe it or not G.W. Pabst filmed this thing in three different versions, English, French and German.  The film has a somewhat choppy storyline to put it mildly. I don't think Pabst got a handle on what he was attempting in this film which seems to be  some sort of romantic fatalism.  Probably filming in multiple languages didn't help.


Pabst photographed some of the film on location in the desert and these are the best scenes.  Once the French soldiers arrive in Atlantis the film spends a lot of time on them aimlessly wandering around for reasons never really explained.


Apparently one of the soldiers falls in love with Brigitte Helm but  since she is barely in the film it's difficult to see how that happens.  She probably has about 10 minutes of screen time and about 5 lines of dialog.  If the film is called The Mistress of Atlantis,  you might want to put more of the mistress in the actual film.

81 confused minutes.

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