Sodom und Gomorrha

It's a very strange, interesting and, at times, genial film. I've seen it in the 125-minutes-long restored version, which seems to be the one circulating nowadays (I don't know who restored it...). It could be viewed as a lenghty and partially boring epic movie, which it is, in a certain sense, but it's redeemed by a couple of very subtle tricks. The opening 45 minutes (about one-third of the film), along with a few final minutes, are set in contemporary times. That is, contemporary a hundred years ago (the film is from 1922). The remaining part is a dream, and dreams within a dream. The oniric atmosphere, which the audience hardly notices - being announced by a very ephemeral titlecard - is broken only at the end. And it's only in the last seconds of the movie that the full meaning of the plot is clarified. If you have a couple of hours left, go for it!

By the by, the film is not "biblical", as I read in some reviews: the history of Lot takes about ¼ of the movie. It can be indicized as a dramatic film, that's all.

Austria, part of the Axis powers defeated in World War One, was experiencing the economic trauma all the other European countries aligned with Germany were suffering. High unemployment and stagflation were making materials cheap to come by in Austria. Film producer Alexander Kolowrat-Krakowsky saw an opportunity to make a long-held dream a reality to create an epic motion picture with literally a cast of thousands. His October 1922 film, "Sodom and Gomorrah,' directed by Michael Curtiz (his Austrian name at the time was Mihaly Kertész), became Austria's largest and most expensive movie ever produced.

Kolowrat's film is a modern story with dreamy episodes of historic flashbacks, including the ancient Biblical story of the destruction of Sodom described in Genesis. These historical sequences are included within the framework of the movie to teach the film's main character, Mary, played by Curtiz's wife, actress Lucy Doraine, the lessons pertaining to her wayward, confused romantic life. The morality tale of a daughter who is persuaded by her poverty-ridden family to marry an older rich banker was a common theme in silent films. These plots invariably entail young women in love with a financially-strapped handsome young men, but are grudgingly steered towards unhappy marriages to older, pudgy rich millionaires who have a yen for young females. Although she agrees, Mary's lascivious personality sends her on a seductive frenzy aimed at her future fiancé's son and even at his guiding priest.

"Sodom and Gomorrah's" primary expense went into the construction-and destruction-of the reproduction of the Biblical city and temples of Sodom. Thousands of laborers working on the cheap, mainly because there were so few jobs to be found in Austria, spent close to three years constructing enormous sets in a muddy stretch of empty land. An estimated 10,000 to 14,000 extras, all clothed in ancient attire, were filmed worshipping their gods and scattering helter skelter when God decided to teach them a lesson. Thousands of skilled craftsmen, from sculptors to decorators, carpenters, painters, all collaborated to what one witness described the entire production scene as "prop madness." The original budget was blown up five times its estimate.

The final print, which premiered in Berlin, Germany, was three hours long. Because of censorship cuts and theater owners demanding brevity, the more common version seen today is a mere 98 minutes. But the movie proved to be an international success For Curtiz, a native Austrian-Hungarian helming films since 1912, "Sodom and Gomorrah" shed more light on his rising star. His expertise in filmmaking had made him by 1918 as one of Hungary's top directors with 45 films under his belt. Facing a nationalization of the Hungarian film industry after the Great War, he returned to Austria to secure more freedom of choice in his movie selection. He jumped at the chance to make "Sodom and Gomorrah," which added to Curtiz' already impressive resume.

A good Austrian contribution to biblical melodramas, directed by Michael Curtiz, who would repeat the strategy six years later in the bad "Noah's Arc", after relocating to the United States. This film, though less well known than the American production, is more attractive than the story of friends who unite and separate during the war, topped with images of the flood. There's more passion in this story of Mary Conway, a young woman living the "vida loca" during the "jazz age" in London, who plays with the affections of four men. Even the link to the biblical book of Lot is established from the beginning, when we are introduced to the sculptor who has used Mary as a model for sculpting "Sodom", a marble representation of Lot's wife when turned into a statue of salt. An adopted daughter of a woman who uses her to pay the expenses of both, Mary rejects the love of sculptor Harry Lighton, flirts with old tycoon Jackson Harber, seduces her son Eduard who is studying in Cambridge and tries to do the same with his tutor, a fiery Catholic priest. Almost all the action takes place in old Harber's sumptuous mansion during an orgiastic celebration, when student and tutor unexpectedly arrive. In the large rooms, in various pavilions, crowds drink, dance and make love. But when events take a dramatic turn, the script introduces the biblical story, thousands of extras and enormous sets, in the middle of which the conflict focuses on the confrontation between Lot's wife (the same Mary) and the Angel sent by God (the same priest). Of course , true to the precepts of melodrama, Sodom falls and the film finds when it is adjusted to the values of bourgeois society .

I saw this at the London Film Festival in 1995 or 1996. The print had been lovingly restored from sections scattered around the world, including some from archives in Moscow. Somebody near me said "I'm really looking forward to this", which was understandable, since the director, as Michael Curtiz, later made some jolly swashbucklers and Casablanca, and the LFF had previously come up with several almost unknown silent masterpieces, including Jacques Feyder's Visage d'enfants.

Well, the pianist was superb and the voice-over translator (no time to translate the German titles) produced some splendid characterization. But about ten minutes in, people realised that the film was incredibly bad, and they didn't even know when it would be over as it hadn't been projected complete before. Watching it felt like existentialist hell. Which was fair enough as it's meant to be a study of sin and remorse. A young man is tempted by sex, drugs and stuff, but he falls asleep and dreams of the biblical story of the destruction of the cities of the plain, which are a bit like Vienna and populated by his low-life pals. When he wakes up, he repents. I think the sin stuff is meant to be alluring and you're meant to think that the director has been clever framing it in a moral tale. Instead, you get the idea that sin is a lot less interesting than, maybe, a novel by Jane Austen.

It's really a very substandard knockoff of Intolerance, possibly of interest to design specialists.

This film shows in form some influence of the United States, apparently at the instance of producer Sascha Kolowrat-Krakowsky who had visited the US and developed an enthusiasm for the films of Griffith. Kertész, himself, one suspects was more interested in the films of Cecil B. DeMille. In any case, what he does is take the idea of parallel stories from Intolerance, although there is also a clear influence of the equally an influence of the equally but differently complex use of multiple locales from Pastrone's Cabiria, which allows Kertész to introduce scenes of revolution, war and retribution that do not form any part of the biblical story. These "Syrian" scenes are important because they most closely reflect the 1919 experience in Kertész' native Hungary, where a Romanian army (backed by the West) had invaded to suppress the revolution.

He then combines this with the alluring idea of a "fantasy" dream-scenario featuring the same actors as in the "real-life" frame-story (a gimmick that DeMille did not originate but which he used particularly effectively in Male and Female in 1918). Interestingly the idea as adapted by Kertész (parallel stories) was then itself borrowed back by DeMille and Jeannie MacPherson for The Ten Commandments (1923) - originally intended as a kind of sketch film with each episode devoted to a commandment - but without the doubling that Kertész had borrowed from them and it was then reused (parallel stories and doubling) by Kertész himself (now Curtiz) shortly after his arrival in the US for Noah's Ark (1928).

In fairness Thanhouser had done something rather similar in their interesting and much under-rated version of A Man Without a Country in 1917 where a modern story is parallelled with the original Edward Everett Hale story.

Stylistically, on the other hand, as other reviewers have rightly pointed out, with its symbolism, its chiaroscuro and magnificent art nouveau décors, it is much closer to the stylised expressionistic vision to be found in other contemporary German films. This makes it a great deal more powerful as a film (if less grandiose) than either DeMille's The Ten Commandments or Curtiz' own later Noah's Ark.

As satire (both social and political), it is again closer to German models and has far more bite than the later films. Kertész had himself only recently arrived in Austria as a refugee from 'the White Terror" that had followed the defeat of the Communist Revolution there in 1919. Although it is not a certain indication of his own political views (he was more than a shade opportunistic by nature), he had made one short film before leaving Hungary (Jön az öcsém) which was quite explicit propaganda on behalf of the Communist regime. Here the association of the cities of the plain with the excesses of capitalism (as they appeared to many in the twenties) has the air of being genuinely felt.

The sense of a crisis of capitalism was at the heart of both Communist and Fascist movements in Europe. It is a mistake to judge this film entirely by the standards of DeMille and assume that the effect intended is purely one of titillation. The "existential hell" noted by another reviewer is no "mistake". The situation seen from Europe was a more serious one and he darker tone of many films reflected this.