O Jardim de Allah

Audiences back in 1936 must have been stunned at what they were watching: a full-fledged, beautiful full-length Technicolor film. I can't say for sure, but this might have been the first one (3-strip). At any rate, it still looks beautiful over 70 years later on DVD. In fact, just how good it looks is amazing.

Kudos for that have to go out to Director Richard Boleslowski, Director Of Photography Virgil Miller, Selznick International Pictures and, for the DVD - MGM Home Entertainment. All of them combined to give us one of the best-looking films of the classic-era age.

I thought the story was so-so: excellent in the first half, stagnant in the second. It gave a nice message in the end, even though a lot of people might not have been happy with it. I can't say more without spoiling things.

Marlene Dietrich never looked better, I don't believe, and certainly never played such a soft-hearted character ("Domini Enfilden"). Heart-throb Charles Boyer was the male star and Domini's object of affection, but some of the minor characters were the most interesting to me. People like Joseph Schildkraut as "Batouch;" John Carradine as "The Sand Diviner;" The most memorable, to me at least, was the dancer "Irena," played by Tilly Losch. Wow, there is a face and a dance you won't soon forget! I've never seen anything like it in the thousands of films I've viewed. Just seeing her do her thing was worth the price of the DVD. Looking at her IMDb resume, she was only in four movies, but they were all well-known films.

Basil Rathbone, the actor who really became famous for playing "Sherlock Holmes," also is in here as is C. Aubrey Smith, another famous British actor of his day. Schildkraut, by the way, will be recognized by classic film buffs as the man who played the arrogant sales clerk in the big hit, "The Shop Around The Corner," with Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan.

The beautiful direction, photography and color, and Tilly's dance, are the things I'll remember best about this movie which is a lot of good and not-so-good things all rolled into one. Had the last half hour been better - although I admire the ending - I would have rated it even higher. It's definitely one film collectors want to add to their collection.

After watching this film on Turner Classic Movies, the host, Robert Osborne, said that "it's best to ignore the story" and just enjoy the film! This is a great way to sum up this odd little film. In some ways, it's a terrific film--it's one of the prettiest color films of the 1930s and is a real artistic triumph. However, despite the masterful color filming, it's an incredibly dull and uninspiring film--thanks to a very tepid script.

In a bit of a departure, Marlene Dietrich plays a rather decent and chaste woman instead of her usual 1930s vamp. Oddly, however, the magnetic Charles Boyer is given the limpest and least interesting role in the film. He plays a monk who has left his order, but instead of a man searching for SOMETHING outside the monastery, he just looks rather constipated and confused--mostly staring into the camera or looking rather depressed. How Marlene fell for this dull yutz is beyond me! Because of this character, the film itself just seemed silly and trivial. BUT, combined with the great camera-work, it is still worth a look--just don't set your hopes too high!

If you did "The Garden of Allah" today, you'd have to play it for camp. As produced in 1936, it nearly is anyway.

Marlene Dietrich, Charles Boyer, Basil Rathbone, C. Aubrey Smith, and Joseph Schildkraut star in this David O. Selznick Technicolor production. The story concerns a religious woman, Domini, who is in mourning for her father and visits the convent where she lived as a child. The Mother Superior encourages her to go out and live, as she was her father's caretaker and didn't get out into the world.

She meets Boris Androvsky, and he seems even more unfamiliar with the world than she. What she doesn't know is that he was a Trappist monk and has left the order. The two fall in love and marry. However, someone eventually recognizes him, and his secret is revealed.

I have to say, I feel sorry for any ex-Trappist monk running into gorgeous Marlene Dietrich, especially under a desert sky. The atmosphere of this film is very moody, the color beautiful, and the photography sensational. Filmed in California and Arizona, it looks for all the world like an exotic desert setting.

Even with all this, and a young, handsome Charles Boyer, the film comes off as melodramatic and slight. Partly I blame the overly-dramatic music, but let's face it, the script isn't very good.

Marlene Dietrich is very good and underplays her role; Boyer's role is really impossible. He's confused and miserable through most of it. He was an excellent actor and pulls it off, though. Rathbone doesn't have a big role, nor does Schildkraut, but they were two of the best character actors around.

"The Garden of Allah" is definitely worth seeing - it's wonderful to look at, and when you see the Cyndi Lauper video of "Time after Time," this is the film she was watching in the beginning of the song.

Domini (Marlene Dietrich) is a rich woman who has spent many years taking care of her ailing father. When he finally dies, she realizes that she has missed much in her own life, and sets out to North Africa to find herself. Boris (Charles Boyer) is a Trappist monk who has taken vows of poverty and silence, but he can no longer bear the burden of either, and so he heads to North Africa to find himself. The two spiritually conflicted people meet and fall in love, but their sad ending is foretold.

This was a wild mix of beauty and camp that will appeal to some viewers but leave others rolling their eyes in disbelief. I can't recall many films of this period that were as openly spiritual and as concerned with the burdens of the soul, and yet the two leads are among the most vain and superficial of movie stars, both with acting talent, but both better known for their looks than their depth. Dietrich especially looks more like a studio creation than a living human, with her almost comical artificial eyebrows and professional-grade makeup design.

The movie looks amazing, a word that perhaps gets overused in amateur criticism, but it is most deservedly used here. The color cinematography, coupled with masterly use of shadow and color, and terrific use of locations, create a film that is a joy to behold even if the story and performances may leave you cold. There's a sequence early in the film involving dancer Tilly Losch as a local Arab dancing girl that made me think I had mistakenly wandered into a Maria Montez camp classic (that's a good thing). Schildkraut as a shady Arab, Brandon as his companion, and Carradine as a creepy street person promising psychic readings, are all enjoyable. This earned a pair of Oscar nominations, for Best Assistant Director (Eric Stacey) and Best Music - Score (Max Steiner), and won a special honorary Oscar for the color cinematography (W. Howard Greene & Harold Rosson).

Much abuse has been heaped upon this film in users' comments here ("tripe," "hokum," etc.) and, yes, in later years even Marlene herself called it "twash," (along with most of the rest of her movies). But it's gweat twash and, in all fairness, much-loved weepies like "An Affair To Remember" have got nothing on this picture. The fabulousness (that's definitions 1 & 2 in Webster's) of the plot, the emphatic performances, the overblown dialogue and the sheer absurd audacity of full silver service and "dressing for dinner" in a tent in the middle of the Sahara; these are the very things for which you watch such a film. After all, if life was never like this anywhere, at any time, it sure should have been.

The user who suggested the "right mood" is necessary is absolutely correct, and it helps to remember the perspective of audiences of the time who, while the Depression dragged on, desired escapism that bore no resemblance to their real lives. We certainly have our escapist fare today and, believe me, "Spiderman," "The Matrix" and "The Fast and the Furious" are going to look at least as ridiculous - if not more so - after a half-century (if not before). So, please, let's not have any more carping about implausibility.

The aspects that have garnered the most criticism are some of the very elements that make it so much fun, but you must abandon your jaded cynicism and surrender yourself to the experience. I'd never recommend this film to everyone I know, but of those to whom I have done - people I knew could appreciate it - not one has gotten all the way through it without choking back a tear or two (if not outright bawling like a baby).

One thing everyone does seem to agree on is the ravishingly beautiful look of this picture, and they're oh-so-right about that. The DVD from Anchor Bay is particularly stunning - there are scenes that look like they were shot yesterday - so, if you decide to see the film, try to get your hands on a copy of that release.

Incidentally, this was not the first Technicolor picture in the three-strip process (as opposed to the two-strip, which goes back to 1922) shot on location, as one comment said. That honor most likely belongs to "Trail Of the Lonesome Pine," which was shot and released a few months earlier.