Director/Screenplay – Jacques Feyder, Based on the Novel L’Atlantide (1919) by Pierre Benoit, Photography (b&w) – V. Morin, Amédée Morrin & Georges Specht, Production Design – Manuel Orazi. Production Company – Thalman et Cie.
Cast
Georges Melchior (Lieutenant de Saint-Avid), Jean Angelo (Captaine Morhange), Stacia Napierkowska (Queen Antinea), Marie-Louise Iribe (Tanit-Zerga), Paul Franceschi (The Archivist), René Lorsay (Lieutenant Olivier Ferrieres), Abd-el-Kader Ben Ali (Cegheir ben Cheik), Mohamed Ben Noui (Bou-Djema), Genicia Messino (Captain Aymard)
Plot
A party find Lieutenant Saint-Avid, the sole survivor of an expedition that set out to the Ahaggar Mountains in the wastes of the Tanezrouft desert in the Sahara. Saint-Avid makes a slow recovery and later tells Lieutenant Ferrieres the story of what happened. He joined the expedition of Captain Morhange to venture into the Ahaggar. Becoming lost, they were found and taken in to the city ruled over by Queen Antinea. There they discovered that the city was lost Atlantis. They also discovered that Antinea kept a hall of the bodies of her lovers preserved in gold. Antinea was drawn to Morhange and found herself falling in love with him, wanting him as her next lover.
L’Atlantide (1919) was the second and most famous novel from French writer Pierre Benoit (1886-1962). Benoit had become a soldier and served in the French colonies in North Africa. In 1914, he was wounded in action in Belgium during World War I whereupon he turned to writing full-time. Benoit published 32 novels in all, most of which are works of adventure featuring exotic elements, while he also wrote the screenplays for several films. Benoit’s work fell out of favour in later years owing to the fact that he had been part of a Nazi collaborator organisation during World War II.
This was the first film version of L’Atlantide made by director Jacques Feyder (1885-1948). Feyder took the enormously ambitious step of insisting that the film be shot in Algeria, which meant a budget that ballooned to a then unprecedented two million francs. However, the film proved a substantial success when it opened and soon earned this money back. Feyder went on to a strong career and made a number of other films, including a brief sojourn to Hollywood where he directed three films including The Kiss (1929) with Greta Garbo.
What impresses about L’Atantide, unlike all the other versions that construct a fantasy version of the period and the lost world, is its sense of realism. Jacques Feyder was shooting in Algeria when the French colonial period and the French Foreign Legion was in its heyday – he is not making a period work. And when you see the street scenes of the towns and the natives and guides, they are the real deal. It gives the film stunning and expansive sense of intimacy instead of soundstage spectacle. The sets for the city are an impressive range of caves, libraries and palace designs, while the actual rooms of Antinea’s palace are designed in an open-air tent.
Captain Morhange (Jean Angelo) (l) bought before the throne tent of Queen Antinea (Stacia Napierkowska) (c)Queen Antinea (Stacia Napierkowska)
The film follows Pierre Benoit’s book the most faithfully of all the film versions. This does lead to some unbalances – like the flashback storytelling structure and that it takes nearly an hour to get to the lost city and it being 80 minutes before we get to meet Antinea. As in the book, the lost city is tied to Atlantis – this is perhaps the only version of any Atlantis story that goes so far as to namedrop Plato’s Critias (circa 360 B.C.), while the script offers an explanation as to how Atlantis could have been relocated into the middle of the desert.
The big disappointment of this version of L’Atlantide is when it comes to Antinea. The role is cast with Stacia Napierkowska, a French-Polish dancer with the Folies-Bergere who turned to acting. I don’t know if it is changing beauty standards between the 1920s and 2020s but she seems frumpy. Feyder gives us a few shots where she gives seductive looks and sultry expressions and far more where she is whispering in Georges Melchior’s ear, urging him to action, but the whole Femme Fatale aspect that Antinea is meant to embody proves a big letdown when it comes to her casting. Another silly touch is having her haunted by visions of crosses after the murder of Morhange, as though the film was lumbered by the need to add an element of Christian redemption to the story.
Other version of the Pierre Benoit book include:- G.W. Pabst’s celebrated German version L’Atlantide (1932) with Brigitte Helm of Metropolis (1927) fame, which was shot simultaneously in French, English and German; the Hollywood version Siren of Atlantis (1948) with Maria Montez; Edgar Ulmer’s B-budget The Lost Kingdom/Atlantis, City Beneath the Desert/Journey Beneath the Desert (1961) with Jean-Louis Trintignant; and a French tv version L’Atlantide (1972) with Ludmilla Tcherina; and L’Atlantide (1992) starring Tcheky Karyo.
