Reviews

The movie as a whole is wonderful and deserves to be better known. The story is captivating, the timing of the jokes is right, there is a good balance between romance and comedy, and the exterior shots of Paris in the 1920s are interesting.

One of my favorite scenes shows heavyweight Charles Puffy as Talandier in Marlene's apartment. The table is set for an elegant dinner for two, and he can't resist trying the caviar sandwiches. The way he looks around to make sure nobody observes him while he's wolfing down first one sandwich and then a second one is simply hilarious.

Harry Liedke as the lead is believable as the impoverished, but proud Russian count. Marlene Dietrich plays her usual role as vamp with humor and grace. The song "I Kiss Your Hand, Madame", dubbed by then famous singer Richard Tauber, was a big hit at the time. I only wish the sound quality on the copy was better; but then it seems as if we need to be grateful that any kind of copy could be tracked down at all.

The look of the film "The Fall of the Roman Empire" is impressive, with lavishly detailed sets, interesting costumes, and visually arresting battle scenes. Despite its beauty, however, the film is poorly paced, and nothing fits together very well. Anthony Mann could work with gorgeous sets, a dramatic plot, and great actors, yet the end result is a mediocre and ultimately disappointing product.

For example, while love scenes generally carry the plot, in this film they detract from it and arguably ruin the movie. Loren and Boyd's overly dramatic, repetitive, and drawn-out encounters are painful to watch. The battle scenes are confusing. In the second battle, for example, almost no distinction is made between the opposing forces of the eastern empire and the Persians. And why does the second battle between stone-age barbarians (notice the crude stone axes!) and Romans take place in a temple-like cave?

Alec Guinness plays Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic on the emperor's throne, with moving sincerity and a superior knowledge of his place in the film. Stephen Boyd's portrayal of Livius is bland like a potato without pepper. The script denies Sophia Loren as Lucilla a good role, but her acting is as decent as it can be when all she is allowed to say is, "Oh, Livius!" James Mason's portrait of Timonides may represent the best acting in the film. Christopher Plummer's eye-rolling portrayal of a psychotic Commodus is laughable. Finlay Currie, in contrast, is admirable in his small role as an old senator who makes the crucial speech in support of world peace.

Willamette University's 2006 College Colloquium "Ancient Greece and Rome in the Movies" (Heather Gallegos, Amanda Geck, Susan Johnson, Keith Hart, Brittany Kemper, Kimberly Latham, Raleigh Latham, Sam Menefee-Libey, Matt Penrod, James Perez, Andrew Ross, Megan Rozek, Amanda Sharp, Zack Stewart)

Just like the Roman comedy Amphitruo by Plautus, on which the movie is loosely based, Schünzl's musical film-version is a very funny doppelganger comedy.

The romance between Amphitryon (then famous heart-throb Willy Fritsch) and Alkmene (Käthe Gold) is portrayed in rather conventional ways, but the real stars are the minor characters, then well-known comedians Paul Kemp (playing both Mercury on roller skates and Amphityon's drunkard slave Sosia) and Fita Benkhoff as Sosia's wife Andria. Their antics make this movie still worth watching. Similarly, Fritsch in his other role as aged Jupiter, bald and with beer- belly, and his tyrannical wife, truly ancient Adele Sandrock, then the grand old dame of German cinema, are very funny. Both Sandrock and Benkhoff were nominated for the 1935 Oscars, the only foreign actors thus honored that year.

Maybe the best part of the movie, though, is the way director Reinhold Schünzl, a half-Jew who had to emigrate to the United States not much later, slyly parodies German militarism, and that under Nazi-censorship and with SS men as extras (playing Theban soldiers in the mass scenes). I guess Hitler and Goebbels, who both visited the shooting of the movie, were fooled by the National Socialist realism of parts of the set (especially when the Theban army triumphally returns from war), and I guess they also liked the traditional way gender roles are portrayed in the movie (in the end, Andria becomes an obedient wife full of newly gained respect for her husband, the new Sosia (a.k.a. Mercury), and is rewarded with a fashionable hat).

In brief, this is a really funny movie, and I only wish it had already been re- issued with English subtitles so that Schünzl could receive the fame and admiration he deserves.