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the audience applauded

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

More Arabian Nights stuff, this time emanating from the studio where the lion roared: according to the Internet Movie Database, there are twenty (count 'em) films that go by the name of KISMET and, although the Vincente Minnelli-Howard Keel musical version is the best-known of the lot, this earlier straight adaptation starring Ronald Colman and Marlene Dietrich is perhaps the best-regarded. For the record, I do have the former on VHS but won't have time to catch it just now and, of all the rest, I'm mostly interested in the 1930 German version (there was another one made in Hollywood the same year) which, like the film under review, was directed by William Dieterle! Speaking of which, I don't quite understand the reasoning of Warner Brothers (who have inherited DVD distribution rights to the MGM film library) behind recently releasing the 1955 version on this format on its own (so to speak, since it actually forms part of a Musical Collection) rather than coupled with the earlier version.Aged 53, Ronald Colman still cuts a strikingly handsome figure (even when dressed as a beggar) and his silvery hairline is amusingly obscured by the most unseemly of turbans for all but one scene in the film's latter stages. Equally splendid-looking is his 43-year old German co-star who, in the film's most celebrated sequence that was, ironically, later cut for TV screenings because of its 'erotic' content(!), has her legs painted in gold for a veiled dance number before the court of evil Grand Vizier Edward Arnold and Colman (who dubs himself the King of Beggars by day but moonlights as a sovereign of a far-away land). Given the maturing age of the two leads, it's no wonder that two younger actors were recruited in the persons of James Craig (as the Caliph of Bagdad who likes to go incognito through the streets of his kingdom as a gardener's son) and the late Joy Page (Colman's secreted daughter); she had made a memorable screen debut in CASABLANCA (1942) and died earlier this year aged 83.The cast is rounded up by Florence Bates (as Colman's nagging in-law), Harry Davenport (as Craig's wily adviser) and Hugh Herbert (as one of Colman's would-be comic-relief sidekicks). As was to be expected from Hollywood's premier studio, no expense was spared in bringing this opulent costumer to the screen – including shooting in eye-filling Technicolor amidst impressively-constructed sets – and this effort was rewarded by garnering the film four Academy Award nominations in that year's ceremony…although, as had been the case (and would be again) with similar Oriental ventures, the nominees all went home empty-handed!

This is not a bad movie, but it is not an important one. Made in the last decade of Ronald Colman's active career as a movie star, KISMET seems to be an odd choice for him. Normally he was playing English gentlemen types - Rudolph Rassendyll in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, or Robert Conway in LOST HORIZON or Dick Helgar in THE LIGHT THAT FAILED. If he played Americans, they were the Supreme Court Candidate in THE TALK OF THE TOWN or the title character Boston Brahman in THE LATE GEORGE APLEY. Here he was playing the philosophical thief Hafiz of 11th Century Baghdad. An odd choice indeed.To begin with, as he is playing an Arab, there was nothing physically "semitic" about Colman to suggest a citizen of Baghdad. However, the producers must have thought of him as a good example of a cultured type (Hafiz sprouts proverbs and examples of Middle Eastern wisdom), so he fit half the requirement. Still, it might have been better to have used someone who might have looked more like a citizen of the "fertile crescent". Robert Donat would have made a better choice.Secondly, if they had to do a story about ancient Islam at it's zenith of glory and power, why did they choose KISMET? It is an old play by Edward Knobloch which was written about 1910 and became the favorite starring part for the then great stage character actor Otis Skinner.* In fact, Skinner did a film version of the play in the silent period. But while not the worst example of a well made piece of hokum, it remains hokum. Skinner was quite well identified with the central role, but he died in 1942. It may be that Paramount felt they could get away with this just because he was no longer around.*Skinner's career, like so many of his contemporary stars like Richard Mansfield and Henry Irving can only be judged by snips and brief glimpses of their work - if they made an early silent film or even sound film (George M. Cohan in THE PHANTOM PRESIDENT comes to mind) we can see something of what they were like. Irving actually made surviving gramophone recordings of Shakespearean parts. In Skinner's case, most people who recall him at all today probably do so because Charlie Ruggles played him in the movie OUR HEARTS WERE YOUNG AND GAY which was based on a book by Skinner's daughter Cornelia Otis Skinner. If you can find the 1961 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the article on "Make-up" had a page of photographs of Otis Skinner in a dozen roles, including Hajjj (the actual name of Hafiz's character - the real "Hafiz" is the greatest of Persia's poets).Still the studio went to great lengths - they made it a color film (a rarity for Colman, by the way). They gave the two other best parts to the capable Edward Arnold as the evil Vizier, and to Marlene Dietrich as the Vizier's sexy (and bored) wife. This film reunited James Craig and Arnold (formerly together in THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER) with Craig as the Caliph. Except for romancing Joy Page as Colman's daughter, Craig really has little to do here. He's a target for Arnold's ambitious murder plans. Old Harry Davenport is the wise old Chancellor - a comparative figure of good to the evil Arnold.It's serviceable and no more. You watch KISMET and you won't be bored, but you will not be enthralled by it. Colman does try to bring some additional juice to Hafiz. When threatened with banishment he seems genuinely surprised, hurt, and horrified - like being told he will now be a fish out of water, although he can live anywhere else in the empire. There are also some humorous moments, such as the threatened plan to punish Colman (in this film he is threatened with punishment several times) by cutting off his hands - he was captured as a thief. His anticipated looks at this imprisoned, chained down fists are surprisingly amusing. But the screenplay keeps going from mock philosophy to comedy to romance to melodrama. The ride is made as smooth as possible, but it seems like it's on old fashioned back roads.So, I will say the film can be watched - but stick to THE LATE GEORGE APLEY or RANDOM HARVEST or A DOUBLE LIFE or CHAMPAIGN FOR CAESAR to get a better glimpse at Colman's acting strengths. He was just treading water here.

Color was beautiful, Coleman a delight and thats it. I never watched a more ridiculous dance routine that Dietrich displayed. All she did was prancing around in so-called seductive poses, rather than actually dance, exhibiting what was then called Hollywood's best looking gams. Sorry, Betty Grable was still the queen of the legs department. BTW, I was sort of shocked, if that is the right word, where at the beginning of the credits, it said Starring Ronald Coleman in Kismet, with Marlene Dietrich. She didn't even get co-star billing, and the role was not a cameo. The chorus girls had definitely better movements than she. Of course they are professional dancers..not Marlene.

This seldom seen non-musical version has Ronald Colman as the beggar who tries to pass his daughter off as a princess in the Baghdad of the Arabian Nights. Colman was not a bad actor and when cast in tosh like "Lost Horizon" or "Random Harvest" managed to bring a touch of class to the daft proceedings, but this is way too camp even for Colman, ("I suppose queens do play around the streets of Baghdad at night", says Harry Davenport's old Agha at one point). His performance is a mixture of urbanity and dullness.The queen he is in love with is played by Marlene Dietrich with her blonde hair piled on her head like a snake and with her thick Tuetonic accent is even more out of place than Colman. When she moves she is like a drag-queen ill-at-ease in her costume. The young lovers are James Craig, that hunk of beefcake culled from ham, and someone called Joy Ann Page. Charles Rosher's colour photography is a bonus but really, this makes the Minelli version look like a masterpiece.