The Garden of Allah

CinemaSerfDec 2024

3.0

Holy orders don't always suit everyone, as this rather disappointing drama concedes with neither "Domini" (Marlene Dietrich) and "Boris" (Charles Boyer) having the spirit to see their vows through. She is told by her reverend mother that maybe a time of reflection is in order, and where better than the Sahara. He? Well he has a slightly more duplicitous story to tell but that isn't something he immediately shares with her when they encounter amidst the shifting sands. Indeed, his Trappist monk malarkey quite endears him to her and soon they are head over heels. Now for the fly in the ointment. A bedraggled regiment of Foreign Legionnaires arrives at their remote oasis, and their captain (Alan Marshal) finds something familiar about the man! Whilst these sandy shenanigans are ongoing, we have the aristocratic count "Anteoni" (Basil Rathbone) keen on our lady, the mischievous "Irina" (Tilly Losch) with her nose out of joint and John Carradine wandering around trying to find water using divining rods. It's perhaps worse because the cast - which also includes C. Aubrey Smith - looks quite so impressive on paper, and it's a shame that this turns out to be so mundanely pedestrian. It doesn't help that they clearly never left the studio, but there's nothing at all between Dietrich and Boyer and Rathbone's camel isn't the only thing that looks like it's taken the hump. It might have looked better, or at least more authentic, had it been filmed in monochrome but sadly it wasn't, doesn't and isn't anyone's finest eighty minutes. Sorry.