Cagliostro (1929)
Directed by Richard Oswald

Film Review

Cagliostro was one of the few films made in France by Richard Oswald, a leading pioneer of German cinema and a visionary filmmaker of the silent era.  Oswald was not only one of the most prolific film directors of his time (he made around a 100 films), he was also one of the most daring, his subjects embracing such controversial themes as prostitution and homosexuality (the latter explored in his 1919 film Anders als die Anderen).  His most notable films include adaptations of The Tales of Hoffmann (1916), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1917), Peer Gynt (1918) and Around the World in Eighty Days (1919), although he is perhaps best known for his 1932 anthology horror film Unheimliche Geschichten (a.k.a. The Living Dead).

Cagliostro is one of Oswald's most ambitious works, a blockbuster historical epic which originally had a runtime of over two hours.  The film is credited as being based on the 1927 novel Cagliostro by Johannes von Guenther, a lesser-known German author of historical fiction.  It offers a romanticised account of the fantastic exploits of the real-life Italian adventurer and occultist Count Alessandro di Cagliostro.  Much of the same story is related, in a slightly more digestible form, by Alexandre Dumas in his 1850 novel The Queen's Necklace (a.k.a. Le Collier de la reine), which has inspired several films, including Marcel L'Herbier's L'Affaire du collier de la reine (1946) and Gregory Ratoff's Black Magic (1949).

In common with all too many films of the silent era, the original negative of Cagliostro has long been lost, along with all of its complete commercial prints.  By the late 1980s, all that existed of the film was a truncated negative that was used to create prints for the Pathé Baby home film system and a few excerpts, including sequences removed at the request of the censors.  In 1988, the Cinématèque Française pieced together a shortened version of the film, which runs to just under half of the film's original length.  With some additional inter-titles, this abridged version of the film is remarkably coherent, a compelling piece of silent cinema in its own right and a tantalising glimpse of a lost masterpiece.  Recently, the film has been released on DVD, with a score composed by the pianist Matthieu Régnault.

Cagliostro was a Franco-German production, one of the last films to be recorded at the Paris studios of the prestigious French film production company Albatros.  Oswald's assistant director on the film was a young Marcel Carné, who would become one of the most important French filmmakers of the following decade.  Another prominent future film director, Jean Dréville, worked as Oswald's technical assistant.  The cast and crew included various nationalities - French, German and Russian - prompting Carné to remark that the studio seemed like a real Tower of Babel.  The popular German actor Hans Stüwe was given the title role, in a cast that consists predominantly of French actors.  Suzanne Bianchetti reprises the role of Marie-Antoinette which she had previously played in Abel Gance's Napoléon (1927), the same film in which Edmond Van Daële had played Robespierre but now finds himself in the guise of Louis XVI.  Other notable actors in the impressive cast list include the renowned French stage actor Charles Dullin and the German film star Alfred Abel, best known for his role as Joh Fredersen in Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927).

Assisted by the legendary cinematographer Jules Kruger and a team of talented set designers, Richard Oswald creates a striking epic to rival the other great cinema masterpieces of the time in its narrative ambition and visual impact.  Even though half of the original film has been lost, what remains is a gripping story of court intrigue and villainy redeemed by love.  The lavish sets of the royal palace make an effective contrast with the more expressionistic representations of the dungeons and scaffold, the juxtaposition of privilege and cruelty anticipating the bloody revolution which will come after the events depicted in the film.  The film's most memorably brilliant sequence is an extreme close-up of one of the eyes of Marie-Antoinettte; the queen's iris serves as a crystal ball in which we see the terrible fate that is in store for her, her death on the guillotine.  Just as memorable is a scene of extraordinary bravado, one in which Jeanne de la Motte poses topless in the cursed necklace.  Somehow the jewels appear cheap and tawdry draped over the exposed breasts of the sizzling actress Illa Meery, a potent visual metaphor for the deadly association of sex and politics.

Film Synopsis

In the late 18th century, Joseph Balsamo, alias the Count of Cagliostro, finds fame throughout Europe as a magician, alchemist and fortune teller.  In France, he is requested to perform before the royal court of King Louis XVI.  Queen Marie-Antoinette is anxious to have her future told, but she is far from pleased when Cagliostro foretells that she is destined to die in ignominy on the scaffold.  Banished from the court, Cagliostro prepares his revenge by enlisting the help of Jeanne de la Motte, a young adventuress who has managed to win the confidence of the Queen.  With Jeanne's help, the magician manages to steal an expensive necklace that was intended for Marie-Antoinette, creating a scandal that will ultimately result in the overthrow of the monarchy.  His treachery exposed, Cagliostro is arrested, but he manages to escape the guillotine with his faithful wife Lorenza.  Shortly after the couple arrive in Italy, hoping to start a new life, they are captured by the Inquisition...