Bella Donna (1934)

Director:

Robert Milton

Writers:

Vera Allinson (additional dialogue) (adaptation)
James B. Fagan (play)

Release Date:

1934 (Turkey)

Genre:

Drama

Plot Keywords:

Infidelity | Egypt | Society Melodrama | Paramour | Cuckold

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

Mary Ellis	...	Mary Chepstow Amine
John Stuart	...	Nigel Armine
Cedric Hardwicke	...	Dr. Meyer Isaacson
Conrad Veidt	...	Mahmoud Baroudi
Jeanne Stuart	...	Lady Zoe Harwich
Rodney Millington	...	Ibrahim Achmed
Eve South	...	The Dancing Girl
Michael Shepley	...	Dr, Baring-Hartley

Runtime:

91 min | Czechoslovakia:80 min (surviving source print)

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16

Company:

Twickenham Film Studios

Movie Connections:

Version of Temptation (1946)

Fine Veidt performance in slow-moving melodrama

Report from Cinesation 2006: BELLA DONNA (**) Third and last film version of a Nazimova stage vehicle about a woman who falls fatally under the spell of a silky Egyptian charmer. Basically another variation on The Sheik, or like The Mummy without mummies, slow-moving and somewhat cheap but with a certain opium-fever-dream feel that works in its own way.

The fleshy Mary Ellis (a light opera star who originated Rose Marie) doesn't have the ethereality the spellbound sinner needs, and the rest of the British cast puts the stiff in stiff upper lip, so it's up to Conrad Veidt to raise the temperature above tepid, and to suggest perversities and cruelties his sturdy British colleagues never dreamt of.