Sodom und Gomorrha (1922)

Director:

Michael Curtiz

Writers:

Michael Curtiz (writer)
Ladislaus Vajda (writer)

Release Date:

26 March 1923 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot Keywords:

Sodom And Gomorrah | Biblical | Sodom | City In Title | Gomorrah

Cast

Richard Berczeller	...	Lot
Walter Slezak	...	Edward Harber, a Goldsmith from Galilea
Victor Varconi	...	Angel of the Lord, Unknown Wanderer
Kurt Ehrle	...	Harry Lighton, a sculptor / Lor
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Paul Askonas
Béla Balázs	...	Extra
Lucy Doraine	...	Mary Conway / Lot's Wife / Queen of Syria
Willi Forst	...	Extra
Franz Herterich
Georg Reimers	...	Jackson Harber
Leo Slezak
Hans Thimig
Julius von Szöreghy
Erika Wagner	...	Mrs. Agatha Conway

Also Known As:

Legende von Sünde und Strafe
Queen of Sin and the Spectacle of Sodom and Gomorrah

Runtime:

UK:150 min | Austria:98 min (reconstructed version 2006)

Country:

Germany | Austria

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Filming Locations:

Vienna, Austria

Company:

Sascha-Verleih

Trivia:

Walter Slezak's first film.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Az utolsó magyar némafilmszínész (1999)

The wages of sin is tedium

I saw this at the London Film Festival in 1995 or 1996. The print had been lovingly restored from sections scattered around the world, including some from archives in Moscow. Somebody near me said "I'm really looking forward to this", which was understandable, since the director, as Michael Curtiz, later made some jolly swashbucklers and Casablanca, and the LFF had previously come up with several almost unknown silent masterpieces, including Jacques Feyder's Visage d'enfants.

Well, the pianist was superb and the voice-over translator (no time to translate the German titles) produced some splendid characterization. But about ten minutes in, people realised that the film was incredibly bad, and they didn't even know when it would be over as it hadn't been projected complete before. Watching it felt like existentialist hell. Which was fair enough as it's meant to be a study of sin and remorse. A young man is tempted by sex, drugs and stuff, but he falls asleep and dreams of the biblical story of the destruction of the cities of the plain, which are a bit like Vienna and populated by his low-life pals. When he wakes up, he repents. I think the sin stuff is meant to be alluring and you're meant to think that the director has been clever framing it in a moral tale. Instead, you get the idea that sin is a lot less interesting than, maybe, a novel by Jane Austen.

It's really a very substandard knockoff of Intolerance, possibly of interest to design specialists.