Antinea, the Queen of Atlantis, rules her secret kingdom hidden beneath the Sahara Desert. One day two lost explorers stumble into her kingdom, and soon realize that they haven't really been saved-- Antinea has a habit of taking men as lovers, then when she's done with them, she kills them and keeps them mummified.
Queen of Atlantis, Die Herrin von Atlantis, Атлантида, Atlantida
France
France
Though most of the male costars were swapped out depending upon the language in which the film was shot, Brigitte Helm's command of German, French, and English meant that she starred in all three versions of L'Atlantide, thus ensuring that the hypnotic allure of Antinea, the queen of Atlantis, was totally convincing across the trio of films.
Away from Helm and her personal magnetism, the film (I watched the 90-minute French version) often falls flat, and is bizarrely difficult to follow. Given the fact that the great majority of the lines spoken by Capitaine St. Avil — he who, when the film begins, confesses that he has been to Atlantis, and launches us into a flashback — are just yelling…
Sublime... and barking mad... surrealist pulp, H Rider Haggard's lost-civilization fantasies recast as an Orphic journey through the underworld, or as an initiation rite where human activities and material processes are metaphors for things that exist beyond the limitations of our three-dimensional perceptual machineries. Delirious, oneiric as fuck, with an inexhaustible wealth of unreasoning imagery.
80/100
Put a spell on me. A wild, pulpy, dreamy and beautiful piece of work. This is what we call cinema.
((French Cut))
Ambitious, oneiric, occasionally sexy, often just insane and a ready source of the sort of unadultered, unironic, pulpiness that has long been dispatched from the world but was still there in shadowy tenth generation xerox form during my formative years of Claremont and Moore.
It makes great use of it's saharan location shooting but it, for better or worse, also makes use of the people it found there. Playing on their otherness with a mixture of directness and artistic vision that could only really happen at that point in history, a collision of pre-war european colonial confidence and silent film trained imagery that probably shouldn't be celebrated or mourned but should at least be recognised.
The scenes of the lead…
Maybe the most incomprehensible film by a great filmmaker I can recall seeing. A French soldier in Algeria recounts an unexplained expedition to discover the lost city of Atlantis, which is ostensibly buried under the Sahara. He finds it and comes under the spell of its queen Antinea (Brigitte Helm), who holds his friend captive. There's a guy in formal wear who attends the queen, and she apparently kills the friend and the main guy escapes and makes his way to his base, tells his story, then returns toward Atlantis never to be seen again. This sounds like a narrative of sorts, but it was pieced together after seeing the film. It verged on unintelligibility in the watching. G.W. Pabst…
It's a brilliant dream. Atlantis in the most unexpected place, not under water but under sand. Everyone there seems drunk, high or a slave to the strange queen. Some of the richest implied and sometimes shown sexuality in a film this old. Breasts squeezed and then a man collapsing. This was filmed in 3 languages all with Brigitte Helm as the lady of atlantis. She might not be in the film for long but she is its soul and the best performance. I'm reminded with the story and images of later surrealist works both filmed and in a way a book I read recently - Goose of Hermogenes. It made me think of the ending of the excellent and dreamy bizarre mystery that is the 1960s tv version of Belphegor. I highly recommend that by the way. Also Meshes of the Afternoon. The way the buildings are shot and the way most of the characters rarely stay still.
in which the fantastical colonialist-utopian imagination of platonic pulp history ends up refracted as a mirror to our own popular conceptions of 'exoticism' and oriental mystery. as above, so below.
*FRENCH VERSION*
Brief Synopsis: Two French officers (Pierre Blanchar, Jean Angelo), lost in the Sahara desert, are kidnapped and taken to the lost city of Atlantis, whereupon they meet its Queen (Brigitte Helm).
Verdict: The second adaptation of Pierre Benoit's fantasy novel - after a 1921 Silent version directed by Jacques Feyder - was a German production filmed simultaneously in German, French and English by G.W. Pabst. Common to all three in the role of Antinea was Helm, whose dual role in Fritz Lang's Metropolis at the age of 18 had catapulted her to international stardom. The dichotomous good/bad element of her nature as revealed by Lang was seized upon by other directors with relish, none more so than Pabst…
(2nd G.W. Pabst film, watched the french language cut/version of this movie and I really want to find the German language cut of this!)
Those looking for a standard pulpy action adventure movie in this will likely be disappointed or bored by this, BUT if you are looking for an absolute peak dream logic german expressionist nightmare of a movie starring 1927's "metropolis" star Brigitte Helm as the queen of a lost city in the desert, you will probably enjoy this one quite a bit!
This really feels like an art film crashed into an pulpy Indiana Jones fantasy adventure movie and came out as a totally out there hybrid of the two!
I loved every second of this gem!
This is a film which would make my top twelve. Not many have seen it (the original version hovers under 500 votes on IMDB), a fair amount of those who have seen it don’t care for it, and the film only exists in badly damaged prints. I find most value in films which take you to another world entirely, and this early lost world film casts a sublime spell over the viewer. The print I saw was short of about ten minutes or so, but even the missing plot elements only add to the half remembered fever dream quality. The film is able to avoid the creakiness of many early silents by having constant music and minimal dialog. Director G.W.…
