L'idole de Paris

Actually there is only one wicked lady as Beryl Baxter's Therese is virtuous throughout, despite what is sometimes claimed.

How do you rate a film like The Idol Of Paris which received a welcome big-screen outing at the BFI Southbank yesterday, its first showing in decades? Much of the story is absurd and some of the situations and dialogue pure Ernie Wise, but is hugely entertaining despite or partially because of that.

This attempt by Leslie Arliss, Maurice Ostrer and co to replicate their former triumphs at Gainsborough is chiefly remembered for its whip fight or strictly speaking duel between Therese and Cora Pearl, a highlight which is certainly executed with aplomb. One would have thought the moral outrage affected by the press at this would have guaranteed the film's success, but it was not to be.

It seems unjust that Beryl Baxter's career was stopped in its tracks, as she does everything that is required of her and makes an effective heroine. Christine Norden was surely never better than as the glamorous bitchy Cora while Miles Malleson is atypically forceful as Offenbach. Mischa Spoliansky, whose music enlivened so many British films of the time, contributes a memorable score, primarily his 'Dedication'.

Producer Maurice Ostrer took a bath with this nonsense while the critics who laid into this enjoyable hokum deprived it of an audience that might have savoured it's folly. It's hard to decide whether this is pastiche or straight-faced parody, but the requisite note of lunacy is established right from the start when the very first person you see is Miles Malleson as Offenbach; and the catfight with whips alone justified the price of admission.

"Idol of Paris" is a forgotten film based on a long out of print historical fiction entitled "Paiva, Queen of Love" by one Alfred Schirokauer, a semi-credulous Austrian biographer/novelist of real and imagined people.

The film itself as directed by Leslie Arliss, a distant cousin of George Arliss, takes place in the time of French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, slouching in the frame of actor Kenneth Kent. It details the escapades of a female street urchin named Theresa adequately played by Beryl Baxter as she sleeps her way to the top of the Parisian courtesans pile.

As she flits around the stately palaces of the mid-19th century, she decides that even she is too grand for Napoleon, especially with the handsome hunks like Hertz, Michael Rennie, lurking in the shadows. Hertz is also more than ready to lift her underskirts in wild abandon.

If this is your idea of scintillating entertainment, you'll have a difficult time locating a copy of it. It was available awhile back, but now seems to have vanished. As far as this reviewer is concerned, there's a reason it has been forgotten. Better look for fast action in perfumed pantaloons elsewhere. Or give Arliss far better 1945 film "The Wicked Lady" an eyeballing.