Cinema
Sodom and Gomorrah
Sodom und Gomorrha
Michael Curtiz · 1922
Synopsis
In London, pushed by her mother, Mary Conway, a young woman fond of luxury, rejects the sculptor who loves her and becomes engaged to Jackson Harber, a much older speculator who was her mother's lover. She also tries to seduce Harber's son, then his tutor, a priest. Two legendary sequences show her as a cruel queen of Syria, then as Lot's wife in Sodom, with the same actors reprising their roles from one era to the other.
Context
Count Kolowrat, head of Sascha-Film, produced it between 1920 and 1922, also aiming at the American market, and the budget was exceeded more than fivefold. The sets, too large for the Sievering studios, were built on the Laaer Berg, and figures from three thousand to fourteen thousand people employed are cited; the collapse of the temple caused injuries and deaths. The leading role went to Lucy Doraine, then the director's wife. Released in Vienna in two parts, on 13 and 20 October 1922, the film ran for nearly three hours; it has been reconstructed from fragments found in several archives, including those of the Soviet Union.
Who it is for
Three hours originally; the reconstituted copies run from an hour and a half to two and a half hours. The narrative moves without warning from the present to the legendary sequences, which is disorienting.
Prizes and reception
The largest and most expensive production in the history of Austrian cinema, long almost lost, screened in France at the Musée d'Orsay in 1997.
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