The Barbarian (1933) a.k.a. Night in Cairo - DVD5 [DDR]
The Barbarian, also known as A Night in Cairo (1933) is a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film about an American woman tourist in Egypt who has several suitors, among them an Arab guide who is more than he seems. The Barbarian stars Ramon Novarro and Myrna Loy. The film was filmed previously by MGM as The Arab (1924) with Novarro and Alice Terry.
CAST:-
Ramon Novarro as Jamil El Shehab
Myrna Loy as Diana Standing
Reginald Denny as Gerald Hume, Diana's fiancé
Louise Closser Hale as Powers
C. Aubrey Smith as Cecil Harwood
Edward Arnold as Achmed Pasha
Blanche Friderici as Mrs. Hume
Marcelle Corday as Marthe
Hedda Hopper as Mrs. Loway
Leni Stengel as Ilsa
Akim Tamiroff as Colonel (uncredited)
Producer: Sam Wood
Director: Sam Wood
Screenplay: Elmer Harris, Anita Loos (writers); Edgar Selwyn (play)
Music: Herbert Stothart
How perfectly charming: a Cairo guide named Jamil has returned Diana Standing’s (Myrna Loy) lost Pekinese. She doesn’t know that Jamil stole the dog so he could get close to the beautiful tourist. Writing in her biography (co-written by James Kotsilibas-Davis), Loy recalled: “Every woman’s dream of heaven in the twenties was to be carried off to an oasis by Valentino, Ramon Novarro or any reasonable facsimile. Well, that’s just what happened to me in The Barbarian.” Novarro plays the rakish Jamil, who traverses the desert dunes – with captive Loy in tow – in this exotic pre-Code romance made even more exotic by Loy’s famed sequence in the flower-strewn waters of an oasis bathing tub.
MOVIE REVIEW:- The Barbarian (1933)
When Myrna Loy appeared in The Barbarian (1933), she was a star on the rise, while Ramon Novarro, who had been big box office during the silent film era, was winding up his career as a star. Loy had been at MGM under contract for two years and now the studio was finally giving her a starring role. Despite the fact that Loy was on her way up and Novarro was on his way down, the two became very close friends.
The Barbarian was a sound remake of Novarro's own 1924 silent film The Arab, based on Edgar Selwyn's play of the same name, in which he had starred with Alice Terry. For the 1933 version, screenwriter Frances Goodrich and her husband, Albert Hackett, worked on the assignment for a few days before giving up. Goodrich told her agent that that story was old-fashioned. American tourist Diana (Loy) goes to Cairo with her aunt and uncle (Louise Closser Hale and C. Aubrey Smith) on a tour and to meet her fianc (Reginald Denny). While there, she encounters Jamil (Novarro), who acts as a tourist guide and falls in love with him, not knowing he's really a prince. To avoid trouble with the censors over having a Caucasian and an Arab in a relationship, it's later revealed that Diana has some Egyptian blood. It sounds ridiculous now and it was ridiculous then to Goodrich, who complained that "It was all so false, all hooey." There was certainly more than a passing resemblance to an old Rudolph Valentino "sheik" film, but Valentino had been in his grave for seven years and sheiks were pass in the age of Clark Gable and The Great Depression. Anita Loos and Elmer Harris took over the screenplay from Goodrich and Hackett.
The working title of the 1933 film was Man of the Nile, but was later changed to The Barbarian. It went into production on the MGM lot in February 1933, with location shooting done in Yuma, Arizona. The cast and crew, which included director Sam Wood, were shooting on the studio back lot on March 10, 1933, when the Long Beach Earthquake struck. Measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale, the quake caused considerable damage and rattled nerves. The Barbarian was shut down for the day when the arc lamps that lit the set fell over and the palm trees followed suit. Less dramatic but shocking enough to cause the censors to get involved was Loy's supposed "nude" swimming scene. Existing stills do make it seem as though Loy was naked under the water, but she admitted in her autobiography that she was actually wearing a flesh colored bodysuit. Nevertheless, the censors demanded that "all shots in which the girl's body is visible through the water" be cut. While The Barbarian made a $100,000 profit for the studio, it was considered racy enough to be banned from rerelease after the 1934 adoption of the film censorship rules known as The Production Code.
Loy and Novarro got along splendidly during shooting and after filming was over, Novarro had Myrna Loy house-sit for him at his home in Los Feliz, while he was on a singing tour in Europe. While he was gone, Myrna Loy read an article that claimed that Novarro, who was "heretofore impervious to women," had fallen madly in love with Loy and she with him. Loy, who was really dating producer Arthur Hornblow (they would later marry), was furious and ran down to the studio where she made sure Howard Strickling and his publicity department would never pair her with a costar in the gossip columns again. She later said, "It was preposterous. Ramon wasn't even interested in the ladies and I was seeing Arthur exclusively, so the publicity department had chosen a most unlikely pair."
The working title of this film was Man on the Nile. According to Myrna Loy's autobiography, some scenes for the film were shot in Yuma, AZ. Loy also notes that, during a scene in which she takes a rose petal bath, she was wearing a flesh-toned bodysuit. Although the script of this film is notably different from Jesse L. Lasky's 1915 silent, The Arab, which was directed by Cecil B. DeMille, Edgar Selwyn authored both films and used some of the same material in both productions (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1911-20; F1.0133). In addition, M-G-M's 1924 remake of the 1915 film, which is also called The Arab, bears some resemblance to the 1933 picture. The Barbarian, however, is not a remake of these earlier pictures. Rex Ingram directed and Ramon Novarro and Alice Terry starred in the later silent film
An American tourist catches the eye of a disguised Arab prince who decides to kidnap her, then try to win her love.
A racy story of Myrna, who arrives in Cairo to meet her fiance. She attracts the attention of Ramon, a conniving Arab guide who enchants rich women tourists in order to take advantage of them. She falls under his spell, and he turns out to be more than he seems.
Overbaked account of sleazy, superficially charming Arab guide Novarro, who persistently pursues tourist Loy. Set in Egypt; lots of Myrna on display here-- including a nude bathing scene. Screenplay by Anita Loos and Elmer Harris.
In this drama, Diana (Myrna Loy) is a beautiful tourist from the United States who is visiting Cairo, accompanied by her Uncle Cecil (C. Aubrey Smith) and Aunt Powers (Louise Closser Hale). Diana is to meet her fiance Gerald (Reginald Denny) in Cairo, but she soon makes the aquaintance of Jamil (Ramon Novarro), a handsome local who works for the hotel as a tourist guide. Jamil returns Diana's lost dog, earning her gratitude, though she's unaware that Jamil took the dog himself so that he could return it to her. After several days of showing Diana Cairo's most magificnet sights (and scheming to keep Gerald at a distance), Jamil reveals his secret to Diana -- that he's actually an Arab prince who wants Diana's hand in marriage. However, Diana isn't especially taken with this idea at first, and and before long the darker side of Jamil's infatuation makes itself known. The Barbarian was based in part on one of Ramon Novarro's silent hits, The Arab, and the film inspired more than a few raised eyebrows in 1933 thanks to a scene where Myrna Loy swims in the nude at an oasis, though Loy later wrote that she was wearing a flesh-colored body stocking in deference to her modesty (and the censors)
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS:-
Video Codec: MPEG-2
Video Bitrate: 4999 kbps
Video Resolution: 720x480
Video Aspect Ratio: 1.333:1
Frames Per Second: 29.970
Audio Codec: AC3
Audio Bitrate: 192kb/s CBR 48000 Hz
Audio Streams: 2
Audio Languages:English
RunTime 84 mins
Subtitles: None
Ripped by: Trinidad [DDR]
Duration: 84 mins
