The US film industry could do many things but the one thing it was really in a complete pickle about was sex (see His Own Law for a discussion of the absurdly elaborate ellipsis used for what is an extremely un-naughty sexual iiaison). The Europeans were cruelly capitalising on this US incapcity. Stiller produced his charmingly frank sexual comedy Erotiokon in the year; Lubitsch made Mme DuBarry. His Die Bergkatze would come the next year and Buchetowski's Sappho Mad Love in the English version) both with Pola Negri writhing as only she knew how and Murnaus' Der Ging in der Nahct, another very frank film about adultery. Tne trade papers in 1920-1921 were full of rumours about US producers angling to procure the services of Pola Negri and Ernest Lubitsch (Stiller and Murnau would also eventually come) in order to pep up their act in this respect. When Lubitsch did come in 1923 it was specifically to try and sex up the image of Mary Pickford but the attempt was mangled by Pickford's over-protective production team and gave it up as a bad job after after the rather feeble Rosita (Pola Negri, who had come to the US separately at the same time, did rather better in a rival production on the same theme). And when the US finally managed to produce a sex symbol (Valentino), it had to be done in a peculiarly puerile genre of rape-fantasy films.
The imported talent was similarly rather confined by the US situation. Lubitsch would of course rather famously find ways of introducing sex on the sly, but even this was a slow and delicate process and only became much easier after the advent of sound wen clever scripting could be used to pull the wool over the censors' (in reality of course, in the US system, the producers') eyes.
This particularly raunchy little number (prostitution, voyeurism, possible incest) presented without the least attempt to disguise or tone down the subject. All this and a mysterious legend about a family with strangling hands including a paralysed stroke-victim unable to warn his son of the danger he is in.. This theme was at least partly culled from an old French Grand-Guignol piece called La Griffe but it is all good, creepy stuff. It must have had them wringing their tiny hands with envy in Hollywood.
The aptly named Carmen (really Franziska) Cartellieri (the smuggling episodes in the film are clearly based on Merimées's Carmen) is not very beautiful and is not much of an actress (no real rival to Asta Nielsen or to Negri or to the Italian divas) but she certainly pulls out all the stops in what is altogether an action-packed fast-moving and entertaining film
The imported talent was similarly rather confined by the US situation. Lubitsch would of course rather famously find ways of introducing sex on the sly, but even this was a slow and delicate process and only became much easier after the advent of sound wen clever scripting could be used to pull the wool over the censors' (in reality of course, in the US system, the producers') eyes.
This particularly raunchy little number (prostitution, voyeurism, possible incest) presented without the least attempt to disguise or tone down the subject. All this and a mysterious legend about a family with strangling hands including a paralysed stroke-victim unable to warn his son of the danger he is in.. This theme was at least partly culled from an old French Grand-Guignol piece called La Griffe but it is all good, creepy stuff. It must have had them wringing their tiny hands with envy in Hollywood.
The aptly named Carmen (really Franziska) Cartellieri (the smuggling episodes in the film are clearly based on Merimées's Carmen) is not very beautiful and is not much of an actress (no real rival to Asta Nielsen or to Negri or to the Italian divas) but she certainly pulls out all the stops in what is altogether an action-packed fast-moving and entertaining film