L'Atlantide

Upon hearing theories that Atlantis wasn't buried in the sea but rather under the sands of the Sahara Desert, the French send two army officers by the names of "Captain Morhange" (Gustav Diessl) and "Lieutenant Saint-Avit" (John Stuart) to try to locate it. Unfortunately, once they get close to their destination the tribesmen they hired betray them and turn them over to the evil queen of Atlantis named "Antinea" (Brigitte Helm). Surprisingly, Queen Antinea falls madly in love with Captain Morhange while at the same time Lieutenant Saint-Avit becomes attracted to her. But because he is a loyal French officer, Captain Morhange is more concerned about the health and welfare of his subordinate and this results in severe consequences for both of them. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this is one of those old and rare films that is probably better appreciated from an historical perspective than from a more modern context. Yet even with certain allowances made it is still undermined by the rather bizarre plot and abrupt script. Of course, the fact that it was translated into three different languages (English, German and French) no doubt affected that to an extent. In any case, although it was not without its flaws I still found the movie to be somewhat entertaining and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

Atlantis in the Sahara? This English-language version of L'ATLANTIDE follows two French Foreign Legionnaires lost in the Algerian desert who stumble into the subterranean kingdom of Antinea, the enigmatic ruler of the title. Fantasy buffs may find this production is all elaborate build-up with little dramatic payoff, while the politically inclined may see this as a late spasm of colonial chic that exploits real people for their exoticism. However, for fans of director Pabst's erotic indirection [as in PANDORA'S BOX], this makes a heady lesson in how to build a sensuous, suggestive atmosphere.

Pabst sets his cameras gliding across the sands and into real locations in the Hoggar mountains. Towering, black-shrouded tribesmen appear, then sleek native women beckon with mysterious gestures of invitation. When they descend into the maze of tunnels that is Antinea's kingdom, they find a tipsy, excitable Quentin Crisp-y character, a longtime resident who holds some key to its history. As Antinea, the great German star Brigitte Helm has a mesmerizing presence as she lolls on a divan, with a menacing leopard at her side. Equally imposing is a monumental stone head of her visage that figures in several memorable compositions. When the protagonist [who is not a traditional hero] is first summoned to Antinea, what unfathomable depravity will take place? They play chess, of course. The story comes from a popular French novel, but it is Pabst's fluid style that makes this masterly kitsch.

This is beautiful and strange but comes to us from so far back it doesn't register for what it really is. The novel it was based on is apparently a piece of exoticist fluff, popular then - a time of archaeology and excavations in faraway places promising original truth.

We get fantastical story of Saharan intrigue and adventure at first sight. There are hooded Tuareg figures, a pet leopard, a binge- drinking impresario, lots of feverish wandering about in rooms, a prophecy of death, and a memory inside memory that flashes back to Paris and the Folies Bergeres. All this is worthy of Sternberg and Dietrich in their their own escapades into sensual , opiate dreaming.

But it's all what an unreliable narrator presents to us of his supposed discovery of the lost city of Atlantis, elusive sand-particles of a story.

Your first clue is that there is a woman in the early stages of the lost expedition who writes an account - a script - of the narrative. The film is from that French tradition of layered fiction most notably expressed later in Rivette and Ruiz, but predates them all with the exception of Epstein, that mage of fluid dreaming.

It is not immensely effective. Sternberg made similar things work because he was madly in love with Dietrich with the kind of love that bends reality. Pabst lacks his own muse this time, Louise Brooks, so there are no strong currents around his woman. His brilliance is that he doesn't film big and gaudy, it's a piece of erotic fantasy after all, in an exotic place. And it's a story being recalled, a piece of sunbaked imagination.

The magic is not in the sets and costumes the way Lang did for Metropolis, though some of them impress the overall feel is earthy and makeshift, like something the narrator and listener may have walked through in their patrols and have the images for.

No, Pabst sustains the fantasy in the uncanny drafts of desert wind between something resembling reality and feverish dream, with fragile (for the time) borders between memory and fiction, the mind captive in its own world of stories. The pursuit of myth is only the opportunity to travel out in search of fictions spun from such fabrics of the imaginative mind.

What Pabst does here finds its continuation in Celine and Julie Go Boating (not Indiana Jones).

Eventually it is all swallowed up by the sands and time, every answer we had hoped for. There was a woman desired, possibly a cabaret dancer and that's all we can glean - consider the subplot in Rivette's film about a vaudeville tour in the middle east. The rest is gauzy and half-glimpsed.

And the prospect that Pabst has modeled the Queen after Leni Riefenstahl is tantalizing; cold beauty, a dancer, surrounded with mystical pageantry, plus the actress looks like her.

As I watched this, I thought, what a nice print. The sound is good. The images are nice. It's certainly good at capturing the desert and the lost city in the title. Then I got to the key element. I just could not get involved in the story. Try as I might, I never had any empathy with any of the characters. They seem to be pulled around by non sequiters. It reminded me a little of the TV series "The Prisoner." There seem to be random forces at work that cannot be fathomed. Throw in the fact that there is something missing beside these aforementioned motivations, and it just doesn't work for me. There are lots of close-ups. This seems to be part of a legacy from the silent film, a transition piece if you will. Maybe, what it needs is those speech boxes, telling what the characters are thinking or presenting their reasoning. As a period piece it's interesting. Maybe someday a person will clean it up and restore a few things.

Note that the DVD copy from Alpha Video is a bit rough--scratchy and a bit blurry. So, you really must want to see this film if you bother buying this one! I was quite surprised by "The Lost Atlantis", as I expected quite a bit from it since it was directed by the famous G.W. Pabst--the same guy who directed Louise Brooks' famous films ("Diary of a Lost Girl" and "Pandora's Box") as well as the brilliant German dramas "Kameradschaft" and "Westfront 1918". Instead, I found the film to be quite dull and lacking momentum. In other words, it has an unusual but interesting idea but is so poorly paced that I found myself losing interest as the film progressed. My assumption is that this will happen to you, too, if you decide to watch.

The premise of this film is that Atlantis was not lost in sea but covered in the Sahara Desert. And, unknown to outsiders, this bizarre land still exists--and is ruled by a goofy lady named Antinea (Brigitte Helm). For the most part, folks just sit around in this land doing nothing while Antinea spends her time jerking men around because you assume she has nothing better to do. If she says to kill, they do--and it's all VERY slow and mysterious--with LOTS of staring from Antinea. In fact, she rarely talks (possibly due to her strong German accent) but lounges about and makes men dance because she is, supposedly, so exotic and enticing. Yeah,...whatever.

All in all, this is a pretty bad film. The plot is WAY too slow, the acting way too poor and you wonder how Pabst could have made such a film. I was hoping for a strange escapist sort of film (like "She", 1935) but instead it was just boredom from start to finish.

FYI--Helm was famous as the lady who was the evil robot woman from "Metropolis". However, in "Metropolis" her performance was much more human and emotive!