Q: "The Garden of Allah" is a prime example of "popular women's literature", turn of the XXth century style, combining all the power of unbridled erotic and exotic reveries with the stimulating glamour of fake mysticism and the sado-masochistic bite of Catholic guilt. Just as Jane Eyre couldn't really be happy until her castle burned down around her and her lover was permanently maimed for his sins, or the heroine of "Rebecca" couldn't find true fulfillment in her marriage until her lordly husband was put on trial for the murder of his first wife (and her castle burned down around her), or poor Psyche couldn't leave well enough alone and had to extract Cupid's secret at all costs, Domini, the devout Catholic heroine of this piece of tripe, can only find true sexual realization by inadvertently marrying a man who has renounced his sacred religious vows. Like all such narratives aiming to stimulate the female reader and induce the vapours, this one relies on the oldest tricks in the book: basic misunderstandings and the inability to express one's true feelings at the right place and at the right time until it is too late. The logic is that any ultimate sexual ecstasy can be indulged in as long as one is willing to eventually pay a high enough price for it in atonement in the last act. It is Paul Claudel reduced to beauty salon magazine standards. Oh well... It could have been much worse and it often was...

Without the religious overtones, the film's plot is that of your basic porn flick: Oversexed monk driven mad by abstinence escapes to the desert where he has a few rolls in the dunes with a romantic, shapely but naive Catholic heiress before reintegrating his monastery, all passion spent, leaving her to clean up his mess. And I really resent another commentator's comparison with Anatole France's "Thais", a sophisticated novel whose intention was to make fun of the whole concept of Catholic sexual repression, some of which transpired in Massenet's opera of the same name, thankfully.

But what makes this picture unique in the annals of commercial female eroticism, of course, is the enormous constellation of talents gathered under one banner to make this cinematic wet dream come to shimmering, vibrant life. Imperishable Technicolor photography that will outlive us all, a truckload of worthy character actors (including one cute dog), a music score by Max Steiner that seems determined to accomplish the "composed film" that Michael Powell (who, ironically, had a bit part in the 1927 silent version) always dreamed about, tittering at times on the brink of dissonance but always coming through in splendid symphonic, operatic exoticism, a dream-like atmosphere where material considerations are no object, characters travel as if by magic from one spot to the next, dialog is sparse, vague and suggestive, the art direction is close to celestial, flower arrangements appear in the humblest hut or tent, the heroine's wardrobe is inexhaustible and all the male characters are either aristocrats, saints, doomed but horny sinners, mystics or poets.

Ahh... Hollywood! The MGM DVD presentation of this film is bare bones but impeccable. The bit rate is very high throughout, the colour registration is almost always perfect and the 2.0 mono sound truly does justice to Max Steiner's score and to Boyer's penultimate confession.

A historical note on this sort of "women's subject": The following year (1937), Julien Duvivier, visibly inspired by "The Garden of Allah", directed "Carnet de Bal", where a very similar clothes-horse butter-won't-melt-in-her-mouth heroine (widowed after taking care of an ailing husband in the exotic remoteness of some impossibly romantic Alpine lakeside villa) wants to discover what she has missed by looking up the male dancers in her first dance book. She finds them all in time, only to realize that whatever feeling there was at one point between her beaus and herself were either misunderstood, overestimated or else had lifelong tragic consequences. It was Duvivier's cynical way of telling us to beware of impossibly idealistic notions and that we all need to grow up sooner or later.
A: positive
Q: Note that I did not say that it is better...just more enjoyable. The lack of social commentary and realism helps keep things moving.

I was actually sort of surprised that this was not a Troma movie, as it has all the Troma trademarks, including spewing acidic liquids, wisecracks from the villain after every murder, a ridiculous bathtub rape scene (which is sort of hard to get upset about, since the rapist is a snowman), and dumb deputies.

There's a lot to love:

1. A snowman, about whom it is remarked that he has no legs or feet, drives a police cruiser around town.

2. Even though it is supposed to be close to (or below) freezing, nobody's breath shows and there are no signs of car exhaust when cars are running.

3. The snow reminds you more of flocking or Styrofoam peanuts than actual snow.

4. A teenage girl gets the hots for her boyfriend just a few hours after her brother is gruesomely murdered. She talks him into breaking into the sheriff's house, of all places, in order to get it on. But first, she tells him that he has to build a nice fire in the fireplace and open some wine.

5. After teen-aged Jake's head is cut off by a sled runner, his father argues with the sheriff about whether Tommy, the sheriff's son, had anything to do with it. The sheriff maintains that Tommy wouldn't have been fighting with Jake because Jake "is at least two feet taller than Tommy." At that moment, someone in the background chimes in, "Not anymore!"

6. When the evil snowman finally starts to melt away, the sheriff wrestles with a flat snowman made out of some sort of fabric for an extended period. This is much better than Tarzan wrestling with rubber crocodiles or gladiators wrestling with stuffed lions. If I were an actor, I would not have been able to keep a straight face at this point.

All in all, a fun film. There's not really even that much blood.
A: positive