Königsmark

I was surprised to see an English-language film directed by Maurice Tourneur after he left the US at the dawn of the Sound era. I was equally astonished to see a surprisingly fluent Pierre Fresnay in the lead, but there it is. Perhaps they wanted one and had to take the other. In any case, both hurried back to France after this.

Elissa Landi is ordered to marry Grand Duke Allan Jeayes, but she doesn't love him in any sense of the word; she refers to him as "the Walrus". When the Kaiser asks him to go to Africa for a mission, he dies there.... or does he? And what does a centuries-old tale of two doomed lovers have to do with it?

Based on the novel by Pierre Benoit, this story of intrigue and forbidden love is competently handled, but the fireworks are limited to literal ones about a third of the way through. Otherwise, the screen story becomes a mish-mash of late 19th-century tropes, like Benoit's other oft-screened novel, L'ATLANTIDE. Everyone behaves in a stodgily proper way all the time, except for Hay Petrie as a chemistry tutor. It's all right, but of the genre is much better served by movies like THE PRISONER OF ZENDA and THE SWAN.