Copyright 28 March 1929 by First National Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Warners' Theatre, 22 March 1929. U.S. release: 31 March 1929. 12 reels. 9,914 feet. 110 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: Despite her aristocratic husband, Lady Hamilton falls in love with Horatio Nelson.
NOTES: Academy Award for Best Directing to Frank Lloyd — defeating himself twice (for Weary River and Drag), as well as Lionel Barrymore (Madame X), Harry Beaumont (Broadway Melody), Irving Cummings (In Old Arizona), Ernst Lubitsch (The Patriot). Also nominated for Cinematography but lost to Clyde De Vinna's White Shadows in the South Seas.
COMMENT: Basically a silent film with a synchronized music score and sound effects and singing sequences in which Corinne Griffith appears to sing "The Banks of Loch Lomond" and "You Take the High Road And I'll Take the Low Road".
Other versions of the Nelson story were made in 1919, 1926, 1941, 1968 and 1973. Nelson was portrayed by Donald Calthrop, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Sir Laurence Olivier, Richard Johnson and Peter Finch, respectively. There's also a German film Lady Hamilton directed by Richard Oswald in 1922, starring Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt and Liane Haid.
Recently restored (though shorn of Corinne Griffith's singing sequences), The Divine Lady emerges as a rather plodding affair, thanks largely to the miscasting of lumbering Victor Varconi, who makes Nelson a boorish, inexpressive, deadly dull and totally unappealing figure.
When the director manages to get away from the uninspired Varconi, the film often comes to magical life. As we might expect, the Battle of Trafalgar is staged with considerable panache. It was no doubt for these action sequences and all the spectacle of sailing ships at sea that Lloyd carried off the Best Director "Oscar".
True, some of the more intimate scenes with Corinne Griffith also display a degree of directorial artistry that even the obtrusive presence of Mr. Varconi cannot wholly destroy, but the film engages more interest with a modern audience simply for its curiosity value than for its dramatic or visual lucidity.
Much as I admire Corinne Griffith, however, her performance actually rates a distant second to Vivien Leigh's portrait in Lady Hamilton (1941).
SYNOPSIS: Despite her aristocratic husband, Lady Hamilton falls in love with Horatio Nelson.
NOTES: Academy Award for Best Directing to Frank Lloyd — defeating himself twice (for Weary River and Drag), as well as Lionel Barrymore (Madame X), Harry Beaumont (Broadway Melody), Irving Cummings (In Old Arizona), Ernst Lubitsch (The Patriot). Also nominated for Cinematography but lost to Clyde De Vinna's White Shadows in the South Seas.
COMMENT: Basically a silent film with a synchronized music score and sound effects and singing sequences in which Corinne Griffith appears to sing "The Banks of Loch Lomond" and "You Take the High Road And I'll Take the Low Road".
Other versions of the Nelson story were made in 1919, 1926, 1941, 1968 and 1973. Nelson was portrayed by Donald Calthrop, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Sir Laurence Olivier, Richard Johnson and Peter Finch, respectively. There's also a German film Lady Hamilton directed by Richard Oswald in 1922, starring Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt and Liane Haid.
Recently restored (though shorn of Corinne Griffith's singing sequences), The Divine Lady emerges as a rather plodding affair, thanks largely to the miscasting of lumbering Victor Varconi, who makes Nelson a boorish, inexpressive, deadly dull and totally unappealing figure.
When the director manages to get away from the uninspired Varconi, the film often comes to magical life. As we might expect, the Battle of Trafalgar is staged with considerable panache. It was no doubt for these action sequences and all the spectacle of sailing ships at sea that Lloyd carried off the Best Director "Oscar".
True, some of the more intimate scenes with Corinne Griffith also display a degree of directorial artistry that even the obtrusive presence of Mr. Varconi cannot wholly destroy, but the film engages more interest with a modern audience simply for its curiosity value than for its dramatic or visual lucidity.
Much as I admire Corinne Griffith, however, her performance actually rates a distant second to Vivien Leigh's portrait in Lady Hamilton (1941).