After FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE/’21 @ Metro, it was only to be expected that director Rex Ingram would get the next adaptation of a Vicente Blasco Ibáñez international bestseller. But BLOOD AND SAND/’22 went to Paramount, retaining HORSEMEN scenarist June Mathis & star Rudolph Valentino while Ingram waited five years for a Ibáñez follow-up. Newly fled from Hollywood for semi-independent production in Nice, France, releasing thru Metro-Goldwyn (note Louis B. Mayer left off the credits), it's another WWI story, a tragic Mata Hari spy whopper with older Latin Lover Antonio Moreno falling hard for Alice Terry’s Austrian temptress-spy, the two of them unknowingly killing his son when they help her gang’s U-boat reach its shooting destination at sea. ‘But they promised no civilians would be injured!’ It’s a clever bit of far-fetched fabulism (Moreno a ship captain, estranged from his wife in Barcelona and unaware his boy has been searching all over Europe for him), but the situation simply hasn’t the propulsive quality of Ingram’s previous Ibáñez rouser. No matter how picturesque/picaresque he digs into real European locations, it tends to hang fire. Or does until the stupendous last act (excluding some unhappy model ship work), especially a half-reel sequence covering Terry’s military execution (‘All these people here for me?!’). So brilliantly conceived & shot (thank you cinematography giant John F. Seitz brought to Europe to continue their collaboration), Kevin Brownlow featured it to justify the entire silent film tradition in his groundbreaking documentary on the silent era, HOLLYWOOD/’80.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Movie nerds will want to know that future British directing great, Michael Powell, had his first movie job on this. He adored Ingram and stuck around for three pics.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, more WWI female spies: M-G-M’s Garbo starrer, MATA HARI/’32, and an even more direct link thru a lesser von Sternberg/Dietrich film, DISHONORED/’32. Von Sternberg might well have studied Ingram’s execution sequence. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/mata-hari-1932.html
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