Forbidden Paradise (2021 restoration by MoMA and The Film Foundation) (original score arranged by Gillian B. Anderson and conducted by Robert Israel).

Ernst Lubitsch: Forbidden Paradise (US 1924) avec Rod La Rocque (Capt. Alexei Czerny) and Pola Negri (Catherine, the Czarina).

Paradis défendu / Kielletty paratiisi / Det förbjudna paradiset.

États-Unis / 1924 / 78 min / DCP avec musique / VOSTF / Version restaurée

Ernst Lubitsch

D'après la pièce The Czarina de Lajos Biró et Melchior Lengyel.

Avec Pola Negri, Adolphe Menjou, Clark Gable, Rod La Rocque.

Film restauré par The Museum of Modern Art and The Film Foundation, financé par la fondation George Lucas Family. Orchestration musicale, d'après la partition originale, par Gillian B. Anderson et conduite par Robert Israel.

E-sous-titres français n.c.

Vu mercredi, le 9 avril 2025, La Cinémathèque française, Rétrospective Ernst Lubitsch, Salle Georges Franju, 51 Rue de Bercy, 75012 Paris, M° Bercy Lignes 14, 6

La Cinémathèque française: "Le film des retrouvailles de Pola Negri et Lubitsch à Hollywood est une audacieuse comédie sexuelle inspirée de la vie de la Grande Catherine, tsarine russe du XVIIIe siècle. Un ballet stylisé, rehaussé de fantaisies anachroniques et de détails savoureux."

AA: I am happy and grateful for having finally caught a MoMA restoration of Forbidden Paradise.

I had previously seen and programmed pre-restoration copies, including a Prague print of Forbidden Paradise at 1534 m /20 fps/ 67 min. The visual quality was inferior, and there were only Czech and no original intertitles.

An earlier, 2018 MoMA restoration of Forbidden Paradise, was screened in Pordenone (6461 ft / 1969 m /20 fps/ 73 min). I missed it but preserved the festival data to keep Dave Kehr's superb program note. 

The original duration was 2299 m /20 fps/ 100 min, but both the Czech and the New York copies seem to present the full narrative. Perhaps passages important for psychology, mood, nuance and the Lubitsch touch have been lost. It is impossible to give a fair judgment on the movie based on the surviving copies.

...

Ernst Lubitsch made Forbidden Paradise in the middle of his great run of silent sophisticated comedies inspired by Stiller's Erotikon and Chaplin's A Woman of Paris – after The Marriage Circle and Three Women, and followed by Kiss Me Again, Lady Windermere's Fan and So This Is Paris, all released in 1923–1926. In that extraordinary series, Lubitsch perfected his Mozartian approach. Beyond a brilliant surface of joy and elegance loomed depths of sorrow, solitude and death. All conveyed in a style of grace under pressure.

Forbidden Paradise belongs to other continuities: the Pola Negri vehicles and what might be called the History of the World series.

It was the eighth and last collaboration of Ernst Lubitsch with Pola Negri. During their Weimar years they had helped each other to world stardom in films like Carmen and Madame Dubarry.

Forbidden Paradise is also one of Lubitsch's irreverent, parodical interpretations of world history. He had already covered Ancient Egypt (Das Weib des Pharao), the English Reformation (Anne Boleyn) and the French Revolution (Madame Dubarry). Forbidden Paradise apparently refers to Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia. (The subject of The Patriot was Catherine's son, Tsar Paul I.)

Lubitsch's operettas of the early sound period were often set in Ruritania, and Forbidden Paradise already is a Ruritanian fantasy. There are motorcars, checkbooks and 1924 Parisian hairstyles in this story nominally set in the 18th century.

...

The magnificent story of Catherine the Great has been replaced with a provincial bedroom farce. Adolphe Menjou is great as the Chancellor, a link to the lineage of A Woman in Paris, The Marriage Circle and the 1920s Hollywood Bubbly genre. Those who love Luis Buñuel's essay about Adolphe Menjou moustache can enjoy the moustache gag in Forbidden Paradise. Rod La Rocque lacks charisma in the male lead. Pauline Starke is appealing as his true love. Forbidden Paradise is a Pola Negri vehicle. Her talent is showcased particularly in the final part of the movie in which she faces disappointment but transcends herself.

Catherine's country is in a constant turmoil of revolutions, but the Chancellor knows how to quench them by reaching for his checkbook and bribing rebel leaders with stratospherical sums of money. However, in the finale he states: "One more revolution, and we will be bankrupt".

Thank you MoMA and The Film Foundation for this lovingly curated restoration. The visual quality is superior to the Prague print. The sepia toning is appealing. The original score has beén successfully reconstructed and synchronized by Gillian B. Anderson and conducted by Robert Israel.