Siren of Atlantis

This film is a combination of a subtle adventure and love, mystery and revenge and abandonment in the unforgiving Sahara desert.The mystery queen Antinea, of the lost Atlantis, has a penchant for embalming her lovers and using them as ornamental statues in her gallery, until finally, she met a lover who could resist her charms. It is a real pity that this movie is not available on VHS or DVD.

This is Monteziana at its best; Maria M even acts here, and the monochrome cinematography is splendid. The story has been filmed several times. This curio was Montez' first film after leaving Universal Pictures, where she had made a series of wonderful colour adventures, including COBRA WOMAN, directed by Robert Siodmak and scripted by a very young Richard Brooks. The author Gore Vidal did attempt to ridicule Montez and her fans in his sequel to his own Myra Breckinridge, called MYRON, but this seemed part of the author's long-time resentment of the Hollywood system and the way in which, during the 1960s, Hollywood cinema suddenly was being taken seriously by many film enthusiasts. In any event, the Montez legacy lives on.

Pierre Benoit was then a famous writer :his outlandish novels seem out of time now but at the time his novels were transferred to the screen at such a speed it makes you feel giddy:Feyder ,PW Pabst ,George Ulmer and countless others made their "L 'atlantide ". And "Desert Legion"(1953) starring Arlene Dahl and Alan Ladd is a rip off in disguise. Today,few people still read Benoit in his native land. His name is slowly fading.

Pabst 's movie (1932)outshines all the other versions, by introducing a down-to -earth explanation

Such is not the same is this exotic tale ,where mystery is kept till the very end ; it might be a mirage ,caused by the overwhelming blistering sun .

Jean-Pierre Aumont ,the French romantic young lead of the French thirties co-star with real-life wife Maria Montez ,whose acting talent does not match her beauty ,to put it mildly ; Aumont himself ,sometimes considered a bland thespian in his native France,has here a tendency to overplay, his eyes supposedly haunted by this cruel magnificent queen ;with its lascivious dances ,its duels ,its pasteboard palace , the film is actually a forerunner of the Italian peplum which would thrive ten years later.

Entertaining on a rainy day ,if you do not ask too much.

Husband and wife team of Maria Montez and Jean Pierre Aumont star in this mix of adventure, horror and noir. Montez is stunning and along with her husband they make a beautiful couple. The plot is a bit convoluted and knowing that it was a troubled production, plot issues may stem from censorship or a surviving incomplete print.

The setting is a mountain range in the desert and the explanation for Atlantis ending up in the desert does make sense. The plot is very much like the novel She (I have plodded through the original novel...ponderous and victorian) and Montez is a natural for the part of the immortal queen. There are many interesting things in this movie one of which is Montez's giant seashell bed. Esquire magazine at the time did a color centerfold of Montez on her bed entitled Montez On The Halfshell.

This was an independent production, and a major studio or a producer such as Selznick or Howard Hughes might have done more with the property. By no means a perfect movie and not for everyone, it does have some very interesting aspects.

Stangely, I had never seen this film and, stranger still, I had high hopes for it as some kind of 'discovery'. Yes, I knew its long history, its several directors, and its difficult production... yet, the mythic story always has held interest. Well, I finally obtained an only 'fair' copy, and, sigh, the film is really almost as poor as had been reviewed at the time. The wonderful surprise, however, is that Montez looks at her most beautiful in this black-and-white film! Jean Pierre Aumont and Dennis O'Keefe TRY to show some logic amidst a script that makes absolutely no sense. A fantasy about Atlantis can be fun, but this plodding, ill-written wreck shows its deficiencies too eagerly-- the mysterious entrance to the 'lost continent' (which seems to be one building, hardly even a city block) is easily reached. Where is the atmosphere coming from in the midst of the Sahara? And the water? And the people who know how to dance hoochi-koochi? There is a poetic fantasy screaming to come out, but it would require a good writer, ONE director, and some color. I was truly disappointed to find that I now believe all of the negative(s) that have been this film's historical document.