One Arabian Night

Ernst Lubitsch made a handful of historical epics in a row in the late 1910s and early 1920s, and Sumurun is the second of the four. It is more fully a melodrama than Madame DuBarry was without the benefit of real history to help inform its dramatic and tonal swings. It also boasts a rather large cast of characters, to the point that I would call this an ensemble piece, but it manages that load much more deftly than in the previous film. Dotted with moments of farcical fun but weighed down by an unfocused narrative that often gets played way too seriously, Sumurun might not be some kind of disaster, but it is Ernst Lubitsch's least successful film up to this point in his career (save The Eyes of the Mummy, which I keep trying to forget).

The film begins with Yannaia (Pola Negri), a dancer in a traveling band on its way to a city ruled by two sheiks. Along with her is the jealous Yeggar (Lubitsch), a hunchback who wants the pretty young dancer all for himself and grows violent whenever another man, especially attractive men, try to get close to her. Met by the wealthiest slave trader in the country, Achmed (Paul Biensfeldt) who instantly has plans on trying to sell her to the sheik to add to his harem, they make it to the city to put on their show. On the inside, within the walls of the harem, is the titular Sumurun (Jenny Hasselquist), the favorite among the Older Sheik's (Paul Wegener) women. She yearns for the decidedly less powerful cloth merchant Nur-Al Din (Harry Liedtke) whom she throws individual flowers to from her window. Alongside the action is the Young Sheik (Carl Clewing). I guess the two sheiks are father and son, but the film never addresses it.

The story is essentially a laborious effort to get everyone into the harem so that we can get our final bits of action where confrontations, murder, and true love all happen. However, in order to get there, you have to get a penniless dancer to catch the eye of the Old Sheik, Nur-Al Din to find a way to sneak into the palace, and for Yeggar to fake his own death in order to, I guess, make Yannaia feel pangs of guilt but accidentally get his unconscious body sent on a roundabout path, starting with the unsuspecting theft of his body by Nur-Al Din's two assistants (Paul Graetz and Max Kronert) and ending with him being deposited, in a trunk at the harem's front door. How all of this happens is a mixture between straight up melodramatic motions, like the Young Sheik discovering Yannaia on the street and falling for her or Sumurun taking her entourage of other women to the clothing shop so she can spend some time with Nur-Al Din.

I will say this: the acting in Lubitsch's films up to this point have been surprisingly naturalistic, but it's here, in Sumurun, that naturalism is cast out the window and replaced by the big motions of waving arms all over the place for the smallest of emotional cues. I might have expected that from Lubitsch's own performance considering how he played Sally Meyer in his previous feature films starring that character, but it ends up infecting everyone, making more serious moments feel like misapplied scenes from a comedy. Some of these moments are meant to be comedic, but they end up reading like mugging for a laugh more than anything.

The movie ends up at its funniest in what is probably it's most disposable section: Act V (there are explicit acts in most of these early Lubitsch films). It's here where Yeggar is unconscious and being moved around from a sack in the tent to the top shelf of the clothing shop to inside a trunk and finally delivered to the front of the harem. It's also here where Nur-Al Din transfers from one trunk to another to hide his way in (without ever noticing Yeggar's supposedly dead body in one of them). It's also where Haidee (Aud Egede-Nissen), Sumurun's best friend and loyal compatriot, distracts the eunuchs with a physical display and messing with a fountain. As soon as all of this ended, I realized that it could have mostly been cut without hurting the actual flow of the narrative, but you know what? It was amusing, which was a step up from the largely self-serious melodramatics that had been the norm of the film. It must be where Lubitsch was able to insert farce the most, which probably delighted him.

Another curiosity is really that so much of the film is centered around Yannaia. From what I understand, Pola Negri was a major German star at the time, far outpacing Hasselquist who plays the titular character. In fact, it's Negri on the posters and her name that's the most prominent, though she's billed tenth in the actual film credits (it's honestly not the most unusual thing in the world for the time period). She dominates at least half of the film, completely distracting from the eponymous resident of the harem and her troubles. The two major storylines do, of course, end up intertwining at the end, but the long sections earlier in the film create a feeling of watching two separate films at once.

So, Sumurun is not a bad movie, but I wouldn't come close to calling it good. It's something of a brute force effort by Lubitsch to squeeze as much entertainment from a stone as possible. It also made me think back to the early silent efforts by Fritz Lang and how I found those to be largely inert exercises in melodrama as well. It seems like both directors were meeting with solid, possibly even great, financial success with them, though, and it makes me wonder if early German cinema was simply suffused with conventions that simply didn't endure or age well.

During the silent film history, there were famous and important pairs who worked together in varying degrees in their film careers: Herr Stiller and Dame Garbo, Herr Pabst and Dame Brooks, Herr Griffith and Dame Gish or Herr Ego and Dame Swanson. One of these remarkable silent open marriages was Herr Ernst Lubitsch and Dame Pola Negri, who worked together in many important silent productions, especially during the German period of the Teutonic director.

"Sumurun" (1920) was one of those early lavish UFA productions, based on a Herr Max Reinhard's 1910 stage pantomime, which gave prestige to Germany's greatest film company and provided the chance to decisively open the world film markets to the German productions, specially in Amerika, a distant and perilous country where afterwards, as many longhaired youngsters know, Herr Lubitsch will continue his successful career, becoming one of the most important directors in film history. In this same country Dame Pola will also make some films but with uneven results; for her, it was a short lapse in her career that she will afterwards resume in old Europe.

This German count mentioned that "Sumurun" was a lavish, opulent major budget film production as can be seen in the superb and astonishing décors and art direction due to the pair of hands, two for each one, of Herr Ernö Metzner und Kurt Richter. Such Teutonic magnificence and exuberance is just what the story demands; a tale involving a tangled love triangle set in an archetypical and fascinating East.

This German count also must mention that in addition to Dame Negri the film also features Herr Paul Wegener, Dame Aud Agede Nissen and Herr Lubitsch himself. Pola has a role that's perfect for her: sensual, adventuresome, defiant and full of untameable spirit. The film's parallel stories sometimes are confusing or digressive although it makes for a comprehensible mess since the various love conflicts in the film include unrequited passion, Eastern vengeance and unrestrained desires, all transpiring in an exotic landscape and making for a delicious extravagant film fantasy where the talent of the German director shines more that the Eastern sun.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count has an exotic appointment in East Germany.

The favorite slave girl of a tyrannical sheik (the memorable Paul Wegener) falls in love with a cloth merchant, which puts her life in terrible danger. Luckily, she is beloved of the rest of the harem, which conspires to bring the true lovers together, while distracting the prying eyes of the eunuchs who serve as palace guards. Meanwhile, a traveling dancer (Pola Negri) is eager to become part of the harem, much to the despair of the hunchback clown who is in love with her.

Ernst Lubitsch directed this lavish production, which is entertaining but cold. Everything about the film keeps us at arm's length - the forgettable lovers, the unaffecting pathos (compare Lubitsch as the clown to the sympathetic Lon Chaney in similar roles) and the strident comedy. The extravagant sets and costumes, and the bold and energetic way in which the film is shot and put together, make the film enjoyable nevertheless.

Jenny Hasselqvist in the title role barely makes an impression. The revelation for me was Pola Negri, whom I was seeing for the first time when I watched this movie. It's her film. Her mixture of naturalness and affected silent-era mannerisms, her blend of girlishness and vampish womanly sexiness, make it clear why she became a star.

SUMURUN proves that German films during the post-WWI era were as beautiful as American films. This film features tons of elaborate sets, lots and lots of costumed extras and a large scope. You can certainly see that this was a high-cost production. In that sense, the film really looks nice.

However, when it came to the story, I was curiously bored by the whole thing, as the film was, at times, stagy. I just didn't find the characters that interesting and unlike later films by director Ernst Lubitsch, this one lacked that "Lubitsch touch"--the artistry and brilliance in the interactions of the cast.

I also was left a bit cold by many of the performances. Lubitsch himself starred in the film in the male lead and he was practically lost under all the fake hair and costuming. It was not one of his best or sympathetic parts--and you can't see much of his comedic prowess. Ultra-famous Pola Negri plays a part that is pretty dull as well--she plays an alluring dancer. This is the type of role in which she excelled in the 1920s, but today you can't understand the sort of sex appeal she was supposed to have. She dances, gyrates and acts coy--but that's about all.

Overall, it's a nice film to look at but that's really about all.

All one can remember from the complex plot of this movie which is yet another "Arabian" fantasy is the presence of Pola Negri. She plays a dancer in a traveling troupe that is forced to get the attention of the local sheik to protect her fellow performers, and allow the troupe to work the streets of the city. She plays the role of the dancer-courtesan to the hilt and her wild and frenzied dance sequence alone is already worth the price of admission. The settings and costumes are clearly influenced by the aesthetics of Diaghelev's Ballet Russes that were still the hot ticket in Paris when this film was made. Particularly it reminded me of "Scheherazade" choreographed by Mikhail Fokine with Ida Rubenstein and Vaslav Nijinski in the title roles, which I have seen produced by the Marinski Ballet and has similar costumes,(Leon Bakst designed the original costumes and his designs have been preserved) particularly for the eunuch, as the ones in the film. The ballet caused a great sensation when it premiered in 1910 as it turned out to have one of Nijinsky's most memorable roles as the slave. In this film Pola Negri is exquisite in her sultry, sensuous persona and one understands her star status from watching her go for it in this film. She is the seductress-gypsy par excellence and it is only when we see her that the movie really comes alive.