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Ramon Novarro plays another exotic lover in Jacques Feyder's Son of India. Through an arresting series of events, he becomes a ragged pauper, then a rich prince in Bombay. American tourist Madge Evans soon enters the picture and the movie becomes a tragic tale of love fighting against racial boundaries and prejudices. (Would the love story be transpiring if Novarro wasn't rich? I doubt it.)
Son of India features some impressive sets and action scenes; how often do you get to see Novarro buried alive in the same film as a rampaging elephant? The entire film held my interest, even when the romance became increasingly saccharine. Unlike many of her films, Madge Evans gets a more demanding role in this one.
Son of India is packed with the usual MGM character actors, including Marjorie Rambeau as a snobbish aunt, Conrad Nagel as Madge's sister, and C. Aubrey Smith and John Miljan in smaller roles. Ann Dvorak's even on the screen for a minute or two as a seductive dancer.
The movie ends far too quickly (not helped, when watching on Turner Classic Movies, by their loud and abrasive promo following). I'm surprised they didn't cut Novarro off in mid-sentence!
This was Feyder's last American film. Later in the '30s, in France, his movies laid the groundwork for the Poetic Realism film movement. His artistry was vivid, though, even in his American films.
Son of India isn't available on DVD.
Mare Hokum is more like it. While often visually impressive, with scenes shot in Italy, France and Spain, Mare Nostrum's an odd and not really satisfying WWI spy drama.
Antonio Moreno, who at one short time was a competitor to Rudolph Valentino, plays a sea-obsessed freighter captain, Ulysses Ferragut, who falls for a German spy played by Alice Terry (the wife of the film's director Rex Ingram).
Ulysses has a wife at home who's so unimportant to the plot, she only appears in three scenes -she's cold and unloving in the first one and apparently going mad in the last one!
One of the reasons Ulysses falls for the German spy, Freya, is that she reminds him of a portrait he keeps of Amphitrite, a goddess of the sea. Okay... I didn't buy the Freya character; in the first half of the movie she's vamping it up, seducing Ulysses and conniving around. Then she suddenly (and stupidly) reveals to her co-spy that she loves the guy! We don't see anything on the screen to indicate the abrupt turnaround.
When Ulysses' son (the smartest and most loyal character in the story) is killed by a German submarine which Ulysses helped situate, Ulysses joins the war effort. Ulysses and Freya both end up dying for their war crimes, both memorably. Ulysses floats to the bottom of the sea to the arms of his beloved Amphitrite, while Freya, in a well directed scene, is shot in a firing squad.
Mare Nostrum's a very mixed bag. Some of the most important scenes of the film are blemished by the use of obvious ship models. Other scenes benefit from on location footage.The film has good actors, a good budget and good direction, but a screenplay that sinks.
Mare Nostrum was for many years considered a lost film. Turner Classic Movies has broadcast a beautiful print of it, with a fine piano score accompaniment. The film is not currently available on DVD.
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