Review of The Mistress of Atlantis (1932) by Ben D — 20 Nov 2012

L'Atlantide, Pierre Benoit's 1919, was first famously shot by Jacques Feyder in 1921 - that almost three hour epic showed the grandeur and scale of Benoit's imaginative science-fiction novel. The story is simple - two soldiers discover the lost city of Atlantis under the Saharan sands, and fight for the love of the Queen of Atlantis, driven to madness, and one escapes: only to desire a return to the city and the Queen but not finding the way. Feyder's version, shot in the Sahara, is a tense, dreamy evocation of Benoit's world.

In 1932, G.W. Pabst, the legendary director of Pandora's Box (one of the last great silent movies) mounted his own version of this classic novel. Like Feyder he travelled to the Sahara to film, and his film has a dreamy, hallucinatory quality. It also has the blessing of having a towering, seductive performance from Brigitte Helm as the Queen (she was the robot in Metropolis too). Unlike Feyder's version, Pabst has under an hour and a half to tell his story and so much is cut, elided, or traduced in the telling. Normally such actions would make a movie feel rushed - but it does something else here - it makes the film more dreamlike. We're never quite sure what is really going on, and some sequences seem too incredible - does she really have a pet leopard? Are they playing chess or are they fucking? Pabst's film is full of these visual delusions, images that transfix your gaze and discombobulate your mind. For its short running time, L'Atlantide (The Mistress of Atlantis in its American release) is nothing less than thrilling, though flawed, beautiful yet mysterious. It is a film you will not forget easily.