La indeseable

There is something both of Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad in this interesting drama of relationships in colonial Africa at the outbreak of World War I. Elissa Landi, who played Mercedes in "The Count of Monte Christo" against Robert Donat in the same year, makes an exquisite performance that could be her best. When her cavalier, a British officer of Dahomey, commits suicide, she knows nothing of the matter since she was in another room, but she anyway gets deported on suspicion of having driven him too suicide. She is deported to the German colony of Kamerun, where a young German officer (Alexander Kirkland) gets infatuated with her and marries her to save her from the authorities, the leading one being his father (Warner Oland), who also makes a most interesting performance in his change of character from an adamant official to a tragic father. Another German officer (Paul Lukas, as a young man in another outstanding performance) also gets infatuated with her, so there are complications, eventually leading to all kinds of tragedies and her final deportation, but she lands on her feet while no one else does.

Elissa Landi was an Italian from Venice and one of the great actresses of the 30s, unfortunately her career was interrupted by cancer, as she died at only 43. After this film Frank Lloyd Wright made the unsurpassed masterpiece of the First World War "Cavalcade" with Diana Wynyard.