THE INDIAN TOMB PART 1 (1921)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

Some time back I saw Fritz Lang's 1959 remake of this classic German silent, which remake I've not yet reviewed. I wanted to see both parts of the silent before I did so, and I thought I'd found copies of both on YouTube. Surprise! I finished Part 1 and found that there was no Part 2. So here I'll confine myself to the silents' version of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and get around to the RETURN OF THE JEDI conclusion later.

Lang had a couple of reasons for being invested in remaking the silent work. He worked as a scenarist on the 1921 film and campaigned to be selected as director, though that job went to the more experienced Joe May. In addition, it was on this film that Lang met his future wife Thea Von Harbou. She was also on the writing staff, helping to adapt her 1918 novel, and supposedly she and Lang shared an interest in Things Indian. Thus the 1921 TOMB stands as a harbinger to the couple's collaboration on METROPOLIS, which Von Harbou wrote in 1925 and Lang adapted in 1927. 

The "tomb" of the title might be deemed a 20th-century fictional imitation of the Taj Mahal, which a Mughal emperor had built in 1631 to house the remains of his wife. Apparently Von Harbou wondered what it would be like if a modern-day Hindu ruler decided to create such a tomb, but for a wife who was not dead yet. 

Whereas the 17th-century emperor culled his builders from the Islamic world, in the 20th century the British still held dominion in India. Thus Ayan III (Conrad Veidt), maharajah of Bengal, decides that he wants to hire as tomb-designer the 20th century's most renowned architect, Englishman Herbert Rowland (Olaf Foriss). But Ayan's too impatient to send an emissary by plane to England. The rajah descends into a massive catacombs (one of the movie's many astounding sets) and awakens a holy man deep in suspended animation. Ayan commands this holy man, name of Ramigani (Bernhard Goetzke), to teleport himself all the way to England to obtain Rowland's services. And sure enough, in an era when cinematic miracles were not that common, that's just what Ramigani does. 

At that moment Rowland, in conversation with his fiancee Irene (Mia May, wife of Director Joe), happens to express his envy of the Taj Mahal as a great architectural milestone, one he wishes he might emulate. Irene assures him that he could beat that old Indian tomb all hollow, and then she's called away by a phone call from her dad. Viewers never learn why Irene's dad called her, so clearly the writers just wanted the actress to speak her lines and then get out of the way. 

In Irene's absence, Ramigani just manifests in Rowland's sitting room. Rowland walks in and is stunned to see an unfamiliar turbaned man in his house, particularly one offering him a fantastic job in India. The architect orders the equally perplexed butler to show the swami the door. However, Ramigami's there long enough to plant the seed of temptation in Rowland's mind, and the architect calls the envoy back and agrees to the contract. He's so besotted by his dream that he leaves immediately, informing Irene of his plans only with a note. Irene, for her part, has some intuition of danger and tries to find her fiancee with a phone call. The all-knowing Ramigani blocks this action by using telekinesis to disable Rowland's phone.

Nevertheless, Irene ferrets out Rowland's destination and hops a plane to Bengal. Rowland, arriving at the palace of the rajah, takes in all the exotic sights for a while. But eventually he finds out the awful truth. Ayan's wife Savitri cuckolded him, not just with a young British officer (Paul Richter, who would later essay the role of Siegfried for Lang's NIBELUNGEN), but one whom Ayan considered "a friend." The movie rather lightly passes over the morality of this affair, leaving the audience to assume that Savitri and the young Brit represent the forces of true love. Rowland is disturbed to learn that his new project is designed to be a method for murdering a willful wife, but he can't try to leave without provoking the rajah's wrath.

Irene reaches the rajah's palace but Ayan won't let her see Rowland, using the excuse that he doesn't want the architect's labors interrupted. There's a suggestion that Ayan might be thinking about taking Irene to wife once Savitri is out of the picture, but no major romantic advances take place. Indeed, as the film reaches the two-hour mark, May sets up the cliffhangers for Part Two: British Lothario about to be captured by Ayan's soldiers while Rowland realizes he's contracted leprosy. Another miracle-stunt is provided by Ramigani, who rescues Irene when she wanders into a tiger-pit, apparently by making her unseen by the big cats.

I can't make a final determination of the artistic worth of Joe May's INDIAN TOMB until I've seen the whole thing. The first half is slow going for modern tastes, though I can appreciate that May sought to capture the wonders of Exotic India with the sort of "painterly" approach at which Silent Cinema excelled. That said, the only sequence I found visually evocative was the swami's rescue of Irene from the tiger-pit. No one will ever know if Lang might have made the 1921 TOMB better, but in his later German works like METROPOLIS and the aforementioned NIBELUNGEN, Lang showed himself better at artful mise-en-scene than anything in TOMB. Of course, given that I've seen none of May's other German works, that comparison doesn't prove Lang to be the better director in all respects. Though TOMB was not a financial success, it was almost certainly green-lighted because May had scored with MISTRESS OF THE WORLD, a serial with EIGHT feature-length parts. (And modern audiences think the MCU invented interconnected movies...) As it happened, both Lang and May emigrated from Europe to America in the 1930s, though Lang transitioned into A-level films while May, who didn't bother to learn English, spent the remainder of his career in B-flicks.

Without seeing Part 2, I can't be sure of TOMB's combative status, but since I remember the general outline of Lang's remake, I think the whole movie can best be termed a subcombative adventure.