The Desert Song

I was seven years old when my mother took me to a theater in suburban Atlanta. The opening scene, lasting several minutes, was in Technicolor. It portrayed the Red Shadow with his brilliant scarlet robe flowing as he lead his band of "Riffs" on horseback through the rugged desert country. It was magnificent and unbelievable. In 1930, a movie in color was in the realm of science fiction. I've never forgotten the experience.

Today's idea of "cool" just did not apply in 1929. It's not at all like a modern movie. It has title screens and actors using overly broad gestures and overacting in a nearly comical manner. They also sing in an artificial stylized semi-operatic manner. It combines the style of a silent movie with a stage production of an operetta. It is obviously from another age, but it only takes a few minutes before you accept the strange style and simply relax and enjoy it. The available DVD was obviously made from a print that came from barely salvageable deteriorating celluloid. The video quality is terrible and the sound quality is merely bad. In spite of all these problems, the movie is worth watching over and over. The comic scenes are amusing. The bad editing and overdrawn acting is mildly amusing, too. The music is fabulous and you soon relax and begin to love wallowing in the corn. The plot? Think of it as "Zorro goes to Morocco" and it was probably at least some of the inspiration for Superman (hero with a secret identity who wears a red cape, etc.). The 1953 version is more easily available, but much of the music and plot was gutted to try to make it a bit more "cool" in 1950's terms. Unfortunately, the sacrifices removed much of what made the original production work musically and emotionally. I prefer the older version and just wish there was a better print available. If you have any interest in classic operetta, this is a "do not miss" film. If you have no feeling for such music, you would probably find this a complete waste of time (and earn my sympathy for your inability to appreciate it).

After five years and viewing the two later versions, I think that this primordial effort in filmed operetta is far too severely criticized.I agree with all the observations by other IMDb critics, but there are particularly expansive film production values: good tenor and bass voices among the soloists and choruses,such as those of Sid El Kar and Ali Ben Ali,including the choral settings of "One Alone", "Eastern and Western Love," and let's not overlook Clementina and her ladies in "Castanette", "On the streets of Spain","There is a key.".etc.,and much else.Much would be very non-PC today. The writers have not overlooked comedy in the shapes of Johnny Arthur and Louize Fazenda as Bennie and Susan.Bennie's reaction after a bad experience with a horse is priceless.(see the film, I'm not telling you) It's funnier still when he is dressed in an overlong night shirt, and when Ali Ben Ali, the much turbaned,whiskered,ear-ringed,feathered tribal chief and he argue about Bennie's future. He is much funnier than the newspapermen in the later versions,Lynn Overman, and a later forgotten actor; while Ali Ben Ali's wide-eyed ogling with Clementina is quite farcical. I liked John Boles' rendering of "Then you will know",but in the whole contrast with later musicals (and really this is operetta with some sung dialog) Boles is much more dashing than many later singing heroes unless you include the energetic prancing in "Seven Brides for seven brothers". Louize Fazenda and Arthur make a very comic couple and are full of wisecracks: "Why do men marry their secretaries?" Susan (Fazenda)"Well, if you're going to let a man dictate to you,you might as well marry him" On the whole, this is a large scale,very musical and unusual operetta,full of choruses,combining "the desert magic",horses,exterior scenery, men in uniform,very much ahead of its time. But this very essence of romance has its serious moments;the characters,so different from the pasteboard casts of other works, are almost three-dimensional:they have pasts,presents,futures and personal philosophies. Thus Margot,asked by her fiancé why she wears riding habit quips: "I don't suppose you noticed there was a moon out tonight" Gen.Birabeau" See,Margot wants to be carried off by a shiek,as in the story books.." Margot:" I know that Frencnmen are only shieks to the women they don't intend to marry." In the serious episodes, the "Red Shadow's", Pierre's, tentative nervousness during her solo of the "Desert Song" is well portrayed; Captain Fontaine,the fiancé, gets down to business in "I MUST go,Margot"; finally,the epitome of drama shows,when informed by a legionnaire of the "signal fires",Fontaine points up his revolver,fulminating,"A challenge! This will be his last!" In sum, a great orchestration of exotic choreography,comedy,romance,betrayal,crisis and resolution which significantly outperforms its successors decades later.

The first of three versions of The Desert Song is this early talkie from Warner Brothers which outside of some desert outdoor shots is essentially a filmed stage play. That is valuable unto itself because it is a filmed record of a hit Broadway operetta of the time.

One of Sigmund Romberg's best musical scores with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, II and Otto Harbach is attached to one of the silliest of plots. But very popular for the time because the news of the Riff rebellion in Morocco was reported in American media and because Rudolph Valentino had made the Moslem inhabited desert quite the romantic place with The Sheik. As I said in two previous reviews of the other filmed Desert Songs, it's a salute to French colonialism.

The Desert Song finds John Boles as a kind of desert Zorro. The French occupiers know him as Pierre in his Clark Kent clumsy identity. But when he dons the red mask and cape he becomes the Red Shadow, leader of the Riff revolt. Boles to use the English expression has truly 'gone native'.

The fiancé of Captain John Miljan of the Foreign Legion, Carlotta King, is in from Paris and yearning for some real romance. Which Boles in his Red Shadow guise gives her in abundance. As Pierre she can't see him for beans.

In the meantime we have Myrna Loy as the desert siren Azuri who's getting dumped by Miljan, doesn't like it, and is working an agenda all her own.

Providing comic relief are Johnny Arthur and Louise Fazenda. Arthur came across as a kind of Eddie Cantor like milquetoast character who is the society columnist for his American newspaper who somehow was sent to cover the Riff Rebellion and doesn't like it at all. Arthur and Fazenda worked very well together.

Carlotta King did her one and only film with The Desert Song. She left the screen and lived to the ripe old age of 102. There has to be some kind of story there. She was in fine voice with a Jeanette MacDonald like quality. Jeanette incidentally was making her screen debut over at Paramount around the same time in The Love Parade.

Forget the silly plot and concentrate on the wonderful songs of Romberg- Harbach-Hammerstein and you can enjoy The Desert Song.

Stiff early talkie in a bad print, but for students of both operetta and the transition to sound, it's invaluable. The 1926 stage success, with a stirring Romberg score set to lyrics by Hammerstein and Harbach, was filmed nearly intact, with choruses and reprises galore serving what now looks like the most ridiculous story an operetta ever served up. John Boles, overplaying the simp Pierre while under-emoting his secret alter ego, the Red Shadow, stands around and delivers the title song and "One Alone" a couple of times apiece, while his romantic counterpart, the stage soprano Carlotta King, sings well and manages some enthusiasm. This being as conventional as operetta gets, there's also a second comic couple, overacted by the extremely fey Johnny Arthur and Louise Fazenda, not having one of her better days. Myrna Loy, still playing "exotic" parts, is a hoot as Azuri, hootchie-kootching in dusky makeup and demanding, "Vere is Pierre?" A crowded chorus mostly stands around and sings, the staging's static, the orchestra's playing live somewhere offstage (under the circumstances, the recording's pretty impressive), some sequences are filmed silent and post-dubbed with music and sound effects, and the crude dramaturgy and far-fetched plotting cross over into camp by today's standards. But if you want to know what a 1926 stage operetta looked like, played like, and sounded like, this is as good a chance as you'll ever get.