Horst_In_Translation Review of L'Atlantide

L'Atlantide (1932)

Struggling with the transition to sound mostly

[4/10 · 24 February 2019]

"Die Herrin von Atlantis" or "L'Atlantide" or "Queen of Atlantis" is a German/French co-production from 1932, so this film will have its 90th anniversary soon. It is from the really early days of sound filmmaking, which you can hear by the quality and frequency too and this film runs for slightly under 1.5 hours. If I see it correctly, there are no less than six writers credited with the film, which is really a lot, one of them being Pierre Benoit who wrote the novel. The most known name is probably Vajda and if you know a bit about old films and have seen some chances are high, this is not the first time you come across him. But even more known is director Georg Wilhelm Pabst for sure, one of the defining filmmakers from his era and this one is not among his earliest or latest works, also not one of his most known either. Of course, it is still a black-and-white film. I must say I am not too familiar with French old (silent) film actors, so I cannot comment on these, but the inclusion of Brigitte Helm is interesting for sure and had my hopes a bit higher than they should have been probably. This is self-explanatory if you have seen Metropolis (which I strongly assume, if you consider watching this one here) and know about her character there. Then you just have to be inevitably curious about how she will fare in this one for playing the main villain apparently. Anyway, I think I was rather underwhelmed by everything relating to her character. I think the idea and her talent could have resulted in a whole lot more. As for the two men, they were okay at best too, more forgettable than I liked. The general idea of having the old empire of Atlantis revived somewhere below the desert felt pretty strange. Sure opposite can attract each other, but it just doesn't make sense to have the definition of plenty in terms of water right near the Sahara. Oh my. But that is just a general point I am struggling with a bit. Next would be Helm's character. Maybe it is her sadistic mind that she lures one of the two into killing the other, but yeah well, she has all these servants, some of them warriors, below her, so it feels pretty strange that she takes the risk to get so close to one of them and be alone with him. Nothing a queen of her clibre would do in my opinion and it also goes a bit against her rise to the throne I must say where she has been governing ruthlessly and with a clean mind all kinds of certainly existent dangers. On a completely unrelated side-note, Pabst's Wife Gertrude acts in this one as well. You sure don't see her too often in Pabst's films despite how long they were married. And finally a few ords on the sound. I think they were overdoing it here on way too many occasions unfortunately. But that was a common problem back then and with this I am referring mostly to the music that was overly dramatic in scenes when they apparently failed to use visuals only to make the moment work. The best example are those desert scenes near the end again. That is also why I would not say overall that the desert frame (beginning and end) worked too well. So overall, this movie gets a thumbs-down from me. Could have been much better given the premise and cast. Watch something else instead.