He's not recalled today like his two contemporaries Somerset Maugham or James Hilton. He is Robert Hitchens, and in his time (roughly from 1900 to 1947 or so) his books were frequently best sellers. Only one is recalled today - and it is not THE GARDEN OF ALLAH. His fictionalization of Oscar Wilde's career - THE GREEN CARNATION - is still republished occasionally. But SNAKEBITE, AFTER THE TRIAL, BELLA DONNA, and THE PARADINE CASE are rarely read (all four were made into films, and the last was a failed Hitchcock movie). He did have his own share of controversy. In 1923 the prosecution and Judge in the notorious British homicide trial of Edith Thompson and Frederick Byswater noted the imaginative Mrs. Thompson liked to discuss the books she read and mentioned Hitchens. Mr. Justice Shearman said Hitchens wrote filthy books. Coming from such a source that actually is a complement.
Hitchens liked the desert as a setting of his tales. BELLA DONNA was set in Egypt in part, dealing with an archaeologist. So his novels are pretty much time capsules to us, reminding us of earlier viewpoints about the globe and what to find there.
Today when we think of the world of North Africa and the Islamic countries I suspect we think of xenophobic anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Jewish peoples, or of suicide bombers, or of fanatics. Of course this is a gross simplification of the mass of these people. But similarly stereotypes ruled the view of Islamic lands in the 19th and early 20th Century. On the one hand was a look at the beauties of the desert and a sense of it's timelessness and it's mysticism. This was mingled with a view that Islam was a kind of poor cousin (for want of a better term) to Christianity, worshiping God but being somewhat more superstitious (although in fiction the superstition was usually correct in the ironies of the story). But on the other hand North Africa and the Middle East were seen as hot and sexy uninhibited areas. In novels like Andre Gide's THE IMMORALIST you went to North Africa to escape the hypocrisy of European society (similarly, Evelyn Waugh would send Sebastian to North Africa in BRIDESHEAD REVISITED to drink himself to death with his lover).
Keeping all this in mind helps understand the misfire called THE GARDEN OF ALLAH. David Selznick produced it to use the new Technicolor style of film - and to give the film it's due Richard Boleslawski's movie is a beautiful one to look at. Further, he brought in Marlene Dietrich (who had already done a "desert" romance with Joseph Von Sternberg in 1930 - MOROCCO), Charles Boyer, Basil Rathbone, Joseph Schildkraut, C. Audrey Smith, Alan Marshall, and John Carridine for his cast. With all their hard work, though, and the beauty of the film itself, it remains a failure.
The problem is the hokeyness of the story to us today. Hitchens sets up the lovers (Dietrich and Boyer - their only film together, by the way) on parallel courses. She was brought up in a Catholic school run by nuns in France, and her father (a rich man) has died leaving her his fortune. She has had a secluded life so far in the convent and caring for her father, and she yearns to see the world and find love. Boyer has been a Trappist monk, who earns the money for his monastery by being the sole possessor of the recipe for the manufacture of the monastery's liqueur. But at the start of the film he has fled the monastery and is traveling on the same train as she is. They both leave at a city thirty miles south of the monastery.
At a fight in a nightspot both are at, Boyer rescues Dietrich. Soon they are seen together pretty frequently, and fall in love. He tries to leave but can't. Instead he proposes marriage and she accepts. The local priest (Aubrey Smith) does not know why but can't trust Boyer. A premonition by a seer (Carridine) that is told to Dietrich and Rathbone makes the latter equally wary about the marriage. But Dietrich is all for it. They go on their honeymoon (accompanied by their servants including Schildkraut). The keep staying in the desert apparently content, until the accidental arrival of Marshall begins undoing the entire situation: Marshall (a French army officer) met Boyer at the monastery, and knows his story.
SPOILER AHEAD:
When the matter reaches a boil, Dietrich and Boyer reluctantly return things to normal...or as near normal as possible. They tearfully part as Boyer returns to the Trappist life, and Dietrich hopes that in a better world they will be united forever.
Somehow today we wouldn't swallow this too thoroughly. The monk might decide to drop his duty to the God he swore allegiance to because he does want to be a regular man. The woman who needs love would likewise urge him to do so, and the hell with the world. Instead we have this 1936 solution - and while the actors make the best of their talents bringing it to a boil it sits badly. Also, Marlene is a woman of vast sex appeal. While Selznick dressed her quite well here (and the color helped too), she does nothing sexy in the film. Dancer Tilly Losch is sexier. Joan Fontaine would have been better in the part (ten years later). For all the passions of the story, her performance is dull - and the movie hard to accept.
Hitchens liked the desert as a setting of his tales. BELLA DONNA was set in Egypt in part, dealing with an archaeologist. So his novels are pretty much time capsules to us, reminding us of earlier viewpoints about the globe and what to find there.
Today when we think of the world of North Africa and the Islamic countries I suspect we think of xenophobic anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Jewish peoples, or of suicide bombers, or of fanatics. Of course this is a gross simplification of the mass of these people. But similarly stereotypes ruled the view of Islamic lands in the 19th and early 20th Century. On the one hand was a look at the beauties of the desert and a sense of it's timelessness and it's mysticism. This was mingled with a view that Islam was a kind of poor cousin (for want of a better term) to Christianity, worshiping God but being somewhat more superstitious (although in fiction the superstition was usually correct in the ironies of the story). But on the other hand North Africa and the Middle East were seen as hot and sexy uninhibited areas. In novels like Andre Gide's THE IMMORALIST you went to North Africa to escape the hypocrisy of European society (similarly, Evelyn Waugh would send Sebastian to North Africa in BRIDESHEAD REVISITED to drink himself to death with his lover).
Keeping all this in mind helps understand the misfire called THE GARDEN OF ALLAH. David Selznick produced it to use the new Technicolor style of film - and to give the film it's due Richard Boleslawski's movie is a beautiful one to look at. Further, he brought in Marlene Dietrich (who had already done a "desert" romance with Joseph Von Sternberg in 1930 - MOROCCO), Charles Boyer, Basil Rathbone, Joseph Schildkraut, C. Audrey Smith, Alan Marshall, and John Carridine for his cast. With all their hard work, though, and the beauty of the film itself, it remains a failure.
The problem is the hokeyness of the story to us today. Hitchens sets up the lovers (Dietrich and Boyer - their only film together, by the way) on parallel courses. She was brought up in a Catholic school run by nuns in France, and her father (a rich man) has died leaving her his fortune. She has had a secluded life so far in the convent and caring for her father, and she yearns to see the world and find love. Boyer has been a Trappist monk, who earns the money for his monastery by being the sole possessor of the recipe for the manufacture of the monastery's liqueur. But at the start of the film he has fled the monastery and is traveling on the same train as she is. They both leave at a city thirty miles south of the monastery.
At a fight in a nightspot both are at, Boyer rescues Dietrich. Soon they are seen together pretty frequently, and fall in love. He tries to leave but can't. Instead he proposes marriage and she accepts. The local priest (Aubrey Smith) does not know why but can't trust Boyer. A premonition by a seer (Carridine) that is told to Dietrich and Rathbone makes the latter equally wary about the marriage. But Dietrich is all for it. They go on their honeymoon (accompanied by their servants including Schildkraut). The keep staying in the desert apparently content, until the accidental arrival of Marshall begins undoing the entire situation: Marshall (a French army officer) met Boyer at the monastery, and knows his story.
SPOILER AHEAD:
When the matter reaches a boil, Dietrich and Boyer reluctantly return things to normal...or as near normal as possible. They tearfully part as Boyer returns to the Trappist life, and Dietrich hopes that in a better world they will be united forever.
Somehow today we wouldn't swallow this too thoroughly. The monk might decide to drop his duty to the God he swore allegiance to because he does want to be a regular man. The woman who needs love would likewise urge him to do so, and the hell with the world. Instead we have this 1936 solution - and while the actors make the best of their talents bringing it to a boil it sits badly. Also, Marlene is a woman of vast sex appeal. While Selznick dressed her quite well here (and the color helped too), she does nothing sexy in the film. Dancer Tilly Losch is sexier. Joan Fontaine would have been better in the part (ten years later). For all the passions of the story, her performance is dull - and the movie hard to accept.