Produced in Germany by Projektions A.G. Union at the UFA (Union
Film Alliance) Tempelhof studio in Berlin
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Scenario by Hans Kraly and Emil Rameau
Six reels, running time of 55 minutes when it opened in Berlin
On October 3, 1918. It was released in New York by the Hamilton
Company (Paramount).
Starring Pola Negri, Emil Jannings, Harry Liedtke, and Max Lawrence.
A tale of revenge.
A young English painter Albert Wendland (Harry Liedtke) is on
a student trip to Egypt. While strolling through the desert outside
of Cairo, he comes upon a young woman drawing water at a well.
When the young woman notices him, she runs away, and Albert chases
after her, but she loses him among the sand dunes.
The next day Albert is on the terrace of the Palace Hotel, and
he hears a Prince Hohenfels asking a guide to take him to visit
the Burial Chamber of Queen Ma. The guide tells the prince, "All
previous visits to Queen Ma have ended in disaster." The
guide points out a visibly shaken man on the terrace who is being
attended by a nurse. He had been a recent visitor to the burial
chamber.
Albert overhears the conversation, and when the nurse leaves,
he approaches the terrified man and asks him to tell him about
his experience at the burial chamber. Before the terrified man
passes out he shouts, "THE EYES LIVE! THE EYES LIVE!"
The next morning at the market place in Cairo, Albert looks for
a guide to take him to the burial site of Queen Ma. None of the
guides will accept his offer until he shows a bundle of money
to a seedy looking character who agrees to take him.
As Albert approaches the burial tomb, he is noticed by a scruffy
looking man and a woman. The woman hurries into the tomb, and,
upon reaching the burial tomb, Albert is greeted by the scruffy
looking Radu, (Emil Jannings) the shrine's keeper, who leads him
into the tomb. Against a wall in the burial site is a sarcophagus.
When Albert stares at the sarcophagus, the eyes suddenly flutter.
"Albert rushes towards the sarcophagus, and Radu attempts
to stop him. Pushing him down, Albert looks around the sarcophagus
and discovers a door leading to a chamber. Cowering in the corner
is the young woman Albert had seen at the well just a few days
before, Mara (Pola Negri). She throws herself at his feet. She
tells him that Radu had abducted her a few years before and kept
her at the tomb. Albert says he will take her away with him.
As Albert rides away towards Cairo with Mara, Radu awakens and
starts trekking across the desert seeking vengeance. He passes
out and is found by another group of tourists, among whom is Prince
Hohenfels.
The next day as Albert and Mara are on the high seas. Radu awakens
in a hospital and swears to find Mara. He thanks the Prince for
saving his life, and Radu tells the prince he will serve him if
he takes him to Europe
In London Albert hires a tutor to teach Mara and a milliner to
dress her in the European manner. At the same time Radu is in
London with Prince Hohenfels. Radu has but one thought in his
mind and that is revenge. Albert decides to hold a party to introduce
Mara to his friends, and among the guests is a theatrical agent
who signs Mara to a contract. A few months later she is a great
success, and Prince Hohenfels attends one of her performances
with Radu!
Radu recognizes Mara, and, as he stares at her, she faints!
The Reviews
Variety had this to say, "Another of those labored
dime novel dramatic stories from the U.U.F.A. plant. The situations
are an affront to adult intelligence, but might make a thriller
for juvenile audiences . . . Pola Negri discloses unsuspected
skill in dancing, and her stage performance was interesting .
. . Emil Jannings is always absurd as the terrifying bogey man."
I found Variety's review rather quaint. The critic
compliments Pola Negri's dancing, and I can assume that he was
unfamiliar with her ballet and stage background. He also comments
on a scene where there is an elegant ballroom scene and compares
the costumes to those at a GREEN POINT chowder party. The Green
Point area of New York City was the home of many immigrants of
different ethnic backgrounds.
Harrison's Reports, June 25, 1922." Just like
any other Pola Negri picture excepting "Passion" --
it is poor. While it is not gruesome or offensive like some of
those that have been released in the past, nevertheless it is
indifferent; the action is illogical, and the characters hardly
do anything that would arouse interest or sympathy."
Pola Negri (1894-1987) born Pola Barbara Apollonia Chalupic in Poland, attended The Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg, then stage training at Warsaw Konservatorium and made her stage debut during the Tzarist regime in 1913. Max Reinhardt, one of the great German impresarios, had seen Pola dance at the Maly Theater in Warsaw in 1913, and he was struck by her temperament and brought her to Berlin to appear in his pantomime, "Sumurun," in 1917. Paul Davidson, a theater owner, had decided to enter the film producing end of the business, and he broached the subject of her appearing in films. He then approached Lubitsch to do a serious film with her. The Davidson Union Company became part of UFA in 1918 and UFA then acquired Ernst Lubitsch, Paul Wegener, Asta Nielson, Pola Negri, Harry Liedtke, Emil Jannings, Ossi Oswalda, and many other prominent film stars. Ufa cataloged its stars with descriptions such as "Ossi's legs, Pola's gleaming eyes, and Astra's slim figure," which were the "assets" available at UFA's founding. Pola's first film, "Vendetta," was not an artistic masterpiece, but it was a commercial success. The next film was "The Eyes Of The Mummy." She soon advanced to stardom in Ernst Lubitsch's films portraying vamps and virgins.
Many of her German films are available, and her range of emotions can be seen in "Carmen," "Passion," and "Sumurun." She was one of the first German actresses to be offered a Hollywood contract, and many of her silent and sound Hollywood films are still available.
Pola Negri enjoyed working with Lubitsch, and in her memoirs mentions an incident while filming the climatic scene of "The Eyes Of The Mummy." Emil Jannings was to stab Pola Negri as they stood at the top of a steep flight of stairs. Lubitsch wanted her to stagger backwards, and when Pola suggested that she fall down the stairs, Lubitsch was horrified. "And break your neck? No! I might need you for the retakes." Pola explained that dancers practice falls, but Lubitsch was adamant and would not risk her life or his career. When everything was in place Lubitsch yelled, "Camera!" With the mood music playing, Jannings pulled out his dagger and stabbed. Pola threw up her arms in horror and tumbled backwards. Her heel caught in the hem of her dress, and she lost control of the fall and tumbled down the entire flight of stairs. As Pola lay dazed on the floor, Lubitsch was swearing wildly at her and then took his anger out on Jannings for not having caught her. Jannings bleated, "How was I to know what she was going to do? Did I ask you to hire this crazy Pole?"
Emil Jannings, 1884-1950, was born Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz,
A.K.A. Theodore Emil Janenzin Rorschach, in Switzerland into a
middle-class home. He ran away from home at age 16 to become
a sailor and ended up working as an assistant cook on an ocean
liner.
He returned home disillusioned, but soon took up the theater.
At 18 he made his professional stage debut, going on to tour
with several companies in numerous provincial towns. In 1906 he
was invited to join Max Reinhardt's theater in Berlin, then considered
to be the finest stage troupe in the world.
Over the following decade, he established himself as a significant
stage actor. Jannings debuted on screen in 1914, but the first
five years of his film career were routine. In 1919 he began
appearing in a string of Germanic-slanted historical dramas, portraying
imposing historical figures such as Louis XV, Henry VIII, and
Peter the Great. Next he starred in a series of literary adaptations.
By the mid-'20s he had an international reputation, and many
considered him one of the world's greatest screen actor.
In 1927 Paramount signed him, and he moved to Hollywood, appearing
in a number of films designed to showcase his gift for tragedy.
Jannings won the very first Best Actor Academy Award for his
first two American films, "The Last Command" (1928)
and "The Way of All Flesh" (1927). Because of his thick
German accent, the advent of sound ended his American career.
He returned to Germany in 1929.
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Jannings, who was a man
of action and a natural leader, satisfied his ambitions by adapting
to the National Socialists' master race cliche and was enlisted
to participate in the state's propaganda machine, an enthusiastic
supporter of the Nazis.
Jannings' had risen to stardom in potentate roles, and in the
mid-twenties he had portrayed with great sensitivity the feelings
of society's failures. Now he had the opportunity to star in
roles of tyrannical authoritarian figures, fully conscious of
his own authority and the aura of the roles he enacted. He spent
the next decade-plus making films that supported Nazi ideology.
Propaganda Minister Goebbels awarded him in 1938 with a medal
and an appointment to head Tobis, the company that produced his
films, and he was honored as "Artist of the State" in
1941. At the end of the war Jannings was blacklisted by the Allied
authorities, and he never made another film. He died five years
later, lonely and bitter.
Many of his feature films are available including "The Last
Command," "Tartueff," "Faust," "Variety,"
"Waxworks," "The Last Laugh," "The Eyes
of the Mummy," "The Loves of Pharaoh," "Anne
Boleyn," "Fortune's Fool," and "Passion."
Carl Sandburg in the Chicago Daily News on September
15, 1927, summed up Emil Jannings. "They say that when Emil
Jannings is working on a screen role, his loving wife leaves him
for the time, remaining away until such time as the picture is
done, and Emil his own amiable self again. Night and day, the
story goes, he lives his role, brooding, thinking, holding his
mind to the limits of his dramatic character. He wears the kind
of clothes the character would wear, talks like him, eats like
him, thinks like him, goes to the studio in his costume ready
for work."
In the book "How I Broke Into The Movies" by Hal C.
Herman, Jannings said, "I didn't break into the movies. I
was dragged in, quite literally. The man that did it dragged me
off a streetcar and threatened me with every kind of legal and
corporal punishment if I didn't stay in the movies. The story
begins in Germany where I had been on that stage for many years,
had achieved a fair measure of success, and I looked on motion
pictures with contempt. I would not even look at a movie. We stage
folk considered them a wretched type of cheap entertainment. Too
mechanical! Too inartistic! Despite my dislike of this new form
of entertainment, I still had the old wolf at the door to contend
with. And the shop windows of Berlin were so fascinating. To
an actor who for many seasons had played the smaller cities where
opportunity to spend money was not so great, Berlin was a real
trial, for I liked fine things, and in Berlin there were always
before me, urging me to make more money so that I could acquire
finer things of my own. A juvenile actor who was doing bits
at my theater in Berlin one day and told me that if I would consent
to take a part in a movie, he knew a man who would engage me and
that it would be a means of making some extra money. I cringed
at the thought, yet I had many uses for the money, and so I consented.
The juvenile who told me was Ernst Lubitsch. He took me to a
director who was going to make a comedy called 'When Four Do The
Same.' I was offered $2 a day at the studio. 'Tomorrow you start,'
they told me, and I had no idea what I was to do or what the story
was about. After my long arduous study of my different roles and
characterization on the stage, this method of making pictures
seemed to me a disclosure of the depths of ignorance and tallied
with my previous estimate of the types of minds and men who made
movies. The director of my first picture asked me to jump from
a bridge into a boat. They wanted me because I was strong and
because they thought I could do athletic stunts. I was insulted.
My art had never received such a blow. I disappeared from the
studio, determined that even for the previous $2 a day I could
not do stunts. Then the temptation to earn the extra money overcame
me again. Robert Wiene, the director who made "The Cabinet
of Dr. Caligari," asked me to play a part and this time the
pay was $10. The director wanted me to look at the rushes of
the picture in the making. I consented, but after I had seen
a half reel I rushed out of the projection room before they could
stop me, bordered a streetcar and started for home, 'I won't play
in motion pictures again,' I said. 'I won't do it.' But I had
to learn that I could not be so independent. My money had been
tied up in the production, and the director came running after
me, caught up with my streetcar, dragged me off and threatened
me with arrest if I did not finish my part in the picture. I
was furious, but it was my good luck to go back. The picture turned
out to be a great success with the people in Germany, and the
critics praised me highly. Overnight, against my will, I had been
dragged into the movies.
Marlene Dietrich in "Movie Talk" by David Shipman is quoted as saying, "Oh, everyone is sick to death of that one ('The Blue Angel'). And I thought Jannings was just awful in it. Such a ham."
"In Moving Pictures" by Budd Schulberg, he mentions that when Hitler came into power and Jannings' professional status was in danger, he went to court and became a certified member of the master race by declaring that he had been born out of wedlock to an Aryan maid in the Jannings household which prompted his father B.P. Schulberg to declare, "I've known of a lot of bastards in this business, but this is the first time I ever heard of anyone going to court to make it official."
Harry Liedtke (1882-1945) began his screen career in 1917 and appeared in numerous silent films. Many are available including "I Kiss Your Hand Madame," "Loves of Pharoah," "Gypsy Blood," "One Arabian Night," "Passion" and "The Oyster Princess." His last screen appearance was in 1944. He was killed in the spring of 1945 when the automobile he was traveling in was destroyed by Russian gunfire.
Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947) was born in Berlin and was an actor,
writer, editor, director and a producer in a screen careen that
began in 1913 until his death. "The Eyes Of The Mummy"
was the first Lubitsch feature film shown in the United States,
although without his credit as the director. Many of his silent
films are available including "The Student Prince in Old
Heidelberg," "So This Is Paris," "Lady Windermere's
Fan," "The Marriage Circle," "Rosita,"
"Loves of Pharaoh," "Anna Boleyn," "One
Arabian Night," "Meyer from Berlin," "The
Doll," "Madame DuBarry," "The Oyster Princess,"
"The Eyes of the Mummy" and "Gypsy Blood."
Lubitsch had been producing many successful short comedy films,
and he persuaded his boss, Paul Davidson, that he wanted to realize
his artistic dreams in the form of great dramas. Davidson decided
to risk his money and engaged young Berlin actors such as Emil
Jannings and Harry Liedtke at a salary of 35 marks per day. For
the female star of his dramas he chose a young Polish woman who
had recently arrived in Berlin by the name of Pola Negri
Sources:
The Lubitsch Touch by H.G. Weinberg
The World Film Encyclopedia by C. Winchester
UFA by K. Kreimeier
Carl Sandburg At The Movies edited by Dale and Doug
Fetherling
copyright 2003 by John DeBartolo. All rights reserved.