When Marlene Dietrich was labeled box office poison in 1938 one of a handful of actresses so named by the trades papers, it was films like The Garden Of Allah. How a film could be so breathtakingly beautiful to behold and be so insipidly dull is beyond me. Also how Marlene if she was trying to expand her range and not play a sexpot got stuck with such an old fashioned story is beyond me.

The Garden Of Allah, one of the very first films in modern technicolor was a novel set at the turn of the last century by Robert Hitchens who then collaborated on a play adaption with Mary Anderson that ran for 241 performances in 1911-12. It then got two silent screen adaptions. The story is about a monk who runs away from the monastery out in French Tunisia to see some of what he's missed in the world. He runs into a similarly sheltered woman who was unmarried and spent her prime years caring for a sick parent. She's traveling now in the desert and the two meet on a train.

The woman is of course Marlene and the runaway monk is Charles Boyer. I'm not sure what was in David O. Selznick's mind in filming this story. Someone like Ingrid Bergman might have made it palatable for the audience. But you can bet that the movie-going public of 1936 when they plunked their money down for a ticket they expected to see Marlene as a modern day Salome rather than a saint with that title. The public still remembered Rudolph Valentino and you can bet that it was some desert romance and seduction that they were expecting.

As for the monks you have to remember that they are self supporting in their monasteries and this particular one bottles a special wine of which Boyer happens to be the one with the secret. The monastery will have to rethink it's economics if Boyer leaves. The monks are a sincerely pious group, but from the head man Charles Waldron on down they've a right to be a little concerned with some self interest.

Anyway a whole lot of religious platitudes get said here by a pair of leads that really are not suited for the parts. Most especially Marlene Dietrich. I would watch this film with an eye for the special color desert cinematography and forget the plot.
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