Der Garten Eden

Garden of Eden, The (1928)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Lewis Milestone directed this film shortly after winning his Best Director Oscar (the first in history). A country girl (Corinne Griffith) goes to Budapest to become an Opera star but she soon ends up working in a sleazy nightclub where the women are exploited. This is a pretty good, if routine, early drama that features a very good performance by Griffith but the thing has one familiar act after another, which is the reason it's not a total success. The film is pretty heavy on the sexual side of things as there are a couple scenes where Griffith has to strip down. We don't see any actual nudity but the film was pretty controversial back in the day for what it does show including a strip down at the end of the film as well as her wearing a see through gown towards the start of the film. The supporting players also offer fine performances but the film tends to drag towards the end.

This would have been one of my recommendations if it had nothing else but Corinne Griffith starring in it.

She is, as usual, marvelous. And beautiful. And charming. As usual.

But in addition, it is magnificently directed by Lewis Mileston. He has created a visual masterpiece of the silent cinema.

I remember some of my film school classmates (too many years ago) being so impressed by "The Scarlet Letter," and exclaiming how modern it looked.

Too many people think movies went from "The Great Train Robbery" to Chaplin shorts to "The Jazz Singer." They just don't know how films evolved.

Later silent films often used a very mobile camera that made them more "movies" than many early talkies.

"The Garden of Eden" is a prize example of how to enhance a story with visuals. Milestone used pictures to make this motion picture tell the tale, although there were lots of intertitles. (Another example is "Lady Windermere's Fan," based on a story by the very verbal Oscar Wilde but still made enjoyable to watch by director Ernst Lubitsch's photographic technique.) "The Garden of Eden" is fun, well acted, beautifully directed, and more than worth the hour-and-a-half it takes to watch.

The Garden of Eden is a charming but obscure silent comedy from 1928 and was an important film for both its talented director Lewis Milestone, a two-time Academy Award Best Director winner, and its beguiling star Corinne Griffith, a once-popular and now nearly-forgotten star of silent cinema.

It's adapted to the screen by Avery Hopwood and Hans Kraly from the play by Rudolph Bernauer and Rudolf Österreicher. It features marvelous art-direction courtesy of William Cameron Menzies, who later became a director of films. It also stars Charles Ray as the sophisticate who falls in love with Griffith who he thinks has a title. Ray's specialty was playing country bumpkins, and this Cinderella tale offered him a chance to go against type and perhaps revive his sagging career. However, comeback attempts were hampered by the advent of the sound picture.

Griffith as always shines and gives a capable and graceful performance. Her beauty has not been missed by Mr. Milestone in his direction of the scenes. Louise Dresser and Lowell Sherman do well by their parts and Edward Martindel is sympathetic as a love-sick uncle. Ray escapes his normal hick role even if the naive innocent aura still hangs over him.

Structurally the film is divided into three sub-movies which could almost be played independently. The first portion is Toni LeBrun's experience at the "Palais de Paris," a cabaret that she naively thinks is an opera hall. The next movie segment concerns the wooing of Toni by rival uncle and nephew. The last section of the film is also set in the Hotel Eden, however, the plot of this section deals with Toni's wedding.

On occasion, there are some visually dazzling shots, such as Toni and Richard seated at a grand piano, perfectly reflected in the raised lid, while the room slowly rotates around them. But overall The Garden of Eden is fun and moves briskly enough. The pacing is aided by a slight under cranking that provides a slightly sped-up feeling that boosts the comic effect. However, it's not overdone to the point of ridiculousness. Sadly a Technicolor dream sequence of Toni as a great opera star, prefiguring her later assumed wealth, remains unfortunately lost.

A pretty amazing artifact of the pre-code area, Garden of Eden features Corrinne Griffith as an opera singer wanting to make it big. She leaves a note to her Mom and Dad Bakers ("I don't want to make pretzels any more!" and heads of to Budapest (!!) to a theater who she got a telegram from. Little does she know that the telegram is from a speakeasy joint with dancing girls, headed by a lesbian manager! After being fooled by wearing a see through dress and pawed by one of the fans, her and a sympathetic dressmaker hightail it out of there. The first half, quite amazingly, is VERY similar to 'Showgirls', so much that I am sure that Paul Verhoeven watched this film for ideas. We almost take a 180 degree turn as the action switches to Monte Carlo, to this Parlor Room comedy. The woman, in a hardly believable turn of events, uses her war pension every year to stay at one of the swankiest joints in Monte Carlo, and spends the next 50 in squalor in Budapest. This, I think, is a woman in serious need of an accountant. Anyways, her and the girl sign in as Mother and Daughter (somehow, in the 2 weeks they stay there, she legally adopts her), and the girl is wooed by 2 suitors. The rest is pretty much of the "hiding behind doors when he's not supposed to" Three's Company company variety. But the end wedding scene is a whooping hi-light, when the lead actress rips off her wedding dress and hightails it out of there as the wedding march plays!

Pretty amusing, nicely directed and beautifully photographed. Check this one out if you can!

While he made many earlier films, GARDEN OF EDEN is the earliest of director Lewis Milestone's works to survive. I have been waiting for a properly restored version of this movie ever since I saw an abridged version of it on VHS as part of Paul Killiam's SILENTS PLEASE series. Milestone, whose career spanned 40 years from the silent era to the original OCEAN'S ELEVEN and Brando's MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, was a top notch visual stylist whose best movies remain as interesting today as when they first appeared. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, THE FRONT PAGE, and RAIN are all part of a remarkable run of films that began with GARDEN OF EDEN.

The film was made as a star vehicle for Corrinne Griffith who was then at the height of her fame. She is perfect as the naive young romantic who believes that talent is all she needs to succeed as a singer only to find out that most people are interested in something else. Louise Dresser (Catherine The Great in Valentino's THE EAGLE) is Rosa the wardrobe mistress who may not be everything she seems, an unlikely fairy godmother to Griffith's modern day Cinderella.

Charles Ray, another popular star from the silent era, makes a charming Prince Charming while Lowell Sherman (the villian in WAY DOWN EAST) is his usual lecherous self. Within this basic story Milestone weaves a magic spell through the use of mood enhancing lighting, polished editing, and his trademark sophisticated camerawork. The sets are fantastic too.

GARDEN OF EDEN is not a great film but it is a highly entertaining one even more so in this splendid transfer to DVD from Flicker Alley. Robert Israel's accompaniment is first rate as usual and the DVD has a number of special features including two short subjects (one of them in Technicolor!). Yet another treat for the silent film enthusiast...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.