This somewhat ponderous slice of history is but one of the seven films that magic director Ernst Lubitsch turned out in 1919, a statistic that makes the mind boggle. Made some three years before he emigrated to the U.S. and only marginally suggesting his subsequent delicate "Lubitsch touch", it's the opulent story of the eponymous heroine played by Pola Negri, the flirtatious mistress of the besotted King Louis XV, played by Emil Jannings. While making her out to be no better than she should be, she is allowed tender feelings towards her first lover whom she has saved from execution and organised his rising army career. But while she was never popular with the snobs at court nor with the rabble crowd, he too turns against her come the Revolution and only tries to save her in turn too late in the day.
Lubitsch does rather conflate history since it was well over eighteen years between the King's death when Dubarry was banished from court and her date with the guillotine, but the film would have us believe that the Revolution was more or less the next day or so, and certainly Louis XVI and his Marie Antoinette do not figure in this version. Nor of course does Miss Negri age a jot over the period. It's all put across in the histrionic style of the period, but the lavish sets, well-handled crowd scenes, and beautifully-tinted new print make this a worthwhile watch, even if it is very mediocre Lubitsch.
1 comment:
'Magic'? Not on the showing of this pedestrian hokum. The crowd scenes near
the end were about the best thing in it though the kittenish behaviour of Negri
in her early scenes was effective. I suppose one should be grateful that it has
lasted but it is on a par, for example, with John Ford's 'Gideon's Day'
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