Le jardin d'Allah

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!

Whatever was Selznick thinking when he wasted so much gorgeous Technicolor photography on so much tripe? For a producer renowned for elevated the level of adult entertainment in the 1930's, it's shocking to see him select a script designed to appeal to the 3-year-old romantic in all of us. Not even the powerhouse leads can save this sandblown mess: Boyer's customary sincerity and craft is subverted by the preponderance of pretty-boy glamour shots that rival even those of Dietrich, and by the script's demands that he engage in silent-film "face acting" which was wildly inappropriate in the mid-30's, albeit even for characters experiencing spiritual crises. (However, the manful and professional way in which he handles these indignities is quite admirable.) And, Marlene's contempt for the proceedings fairly radiates from her porcelain mask of a face (which is no mean feat!); all the diaphonous gowns in the world can't disguise her phoned-in performance. She reportedly hated the sweltering location filming, causing her to fix her hair with bottles of hairspray, improbably turning it into a rigid helmet in the desert winds! (In all fairness to her, though, this must have been a difficult film for her, for she was in the midst of grieving for John Gilbert, who was to have taken the Boyer role.) Bottom line: savor the glorious, original Technicolor shots, and chuckle at the tacky dramatics.

Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer give solid performances in this beautiful but empty film. The irony is that Dietrich plays a woman with a beautiful but empty life. Truly gorgeous cinematography and sets, and yes Dietrich's bottomless trunk of clothes are also fabulous. She look great; Boyer looks young and trim.

Story of a woman seeking meaning and an ex-priest seeking life seems pretty stale, but set against such unreal sets and skies it somehow works, given the two stars, the terrific score by Max Steiner, and a good supporting cast. The film runs like 76 minutes and seems badly edited, plus certain characters just appear or disappear.

Joseph Schildkraut is funny as the Arab guide, C. Aubrey Smith is the old priest, Lucile Watson the mother superior, Tilly Losch the dancer, John Carradine the diviner, and Basil Rathbone plays.... well I'm not sure. He just rides in from the desert and spoils everything! As others have noted, John Gilbert was slated to star with Dietrich. I can't help but think he would have been wonderful. The role of world-weary Boris would have suited the great Gilbert quite well. And after the success of Queen Christina (with Garbo), his career might have gotten back on track.

I can't think of any other 30s film Dietrich did in color. She looks great and wears some terrific clothes. My favorite is the Valentino as The Shiek-like outfit she wears by the pool.

Certainly worth a look for the lush sets and color and the two great stars.

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.

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.