Egypt in Berlin

There is no better place to show the newly restored silent film "The Loves of Pharaoh." The Egyptian-style architecture of the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles is perfectly suited to the content of Ernst Lubitsch's monumental film.

The famous German director filmed "The Loves of Pharaoh" - a fictional historical epic about love, power and jealousy set in ancient Egypt - in 1921. Shortly after, Lubitsch turned his back on Germany and immigrated to the United States, where he became one of the most popular and successful Hollywood directors of his generation.

Even before Fritz Lang and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, Lubitsch was instrumental in establishing German cinema in Hollywood - with directors, actors, scriptwriters and cameramen. Hollywood was fascinated by his technical filmmaking finesse. He was responsible for perfecting epic film genre, became famous in Hollywood as a comedy film director, and was praised for what became known as the "Lubitsch Touch."

The Austro-Hungarian-born American filmmaker and screenwriter Billy Wilder said at a Harold Lloyd Master Seminar in 1976 that if he knew the formula for the "Lubitsch Touch" he would patent it: "Nobody in the world could come up with a better solution than Lubitsch. It's done with a kind of à côté."

Egypt in Berlin

"The Loves of Pharaoh" was filmed in the Steglitz district of Berlin in 1921. From an enormous temple to an ancient Egyptian city and a giant Sphinx, Ernst Lubitsch and his outfitters built all the film's scenery to the original size. Masses of spear-carrying soldiers, dozens of horses, and sumptuous costumes - the producers of the film spared no expense or effort in order to reproduce ancient Egypt as authentically as possible in the German capital.

"An epic film. Rows of cars are parked outside the Ufa-Palast at Zoo. Half of Berlin is in the auditorium. The great and the good. The kingdom of Pharaohs is depicted in an indeterminate epoch. The entire backdrop is merely a colorful cloak for a highly stylized love story. A Greek slave becomes queen. A monarchy is destroyed in the process. War breaks out across the land. Mass scenes of unprecedented impact," reported the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger newspaper after the premiere of the film at the Zoo-Palast cinema.

Music from the well-known operetta composer Eduard Künneke added to the success of the film.

Painstaking reconstruction

In the intervening years since its premiere in Berlin, Lubitsch's film went the way of so many other classics of cinematic history. Copies of the film were damaged and scattered around the world.

Decades later, film museums and archives made it their job to reconstruct and restore such treasures of film history. In the case of the "The Loves of Pharaoh," fragments were found in Russian, Italian and American archives. The Munich Film Museum and the Federal Archive led the restoration of the Lubitsch classic, while the Munich restoration specialists Alpha-Omega dealt with the digitalization of the film.

The result is a nearly fully complete version of "The Loves of Pharaoh." It is the first completely digital restoration to add color to a previously black and white film. Ancient Egypt sparkles on the canvas in blue and yellow, in green and red. The US premiere, which follows an initial screening at the Neues Museum in Berlin, will be accompanied by a live orchestra in the time-honored Egyptian Theater.

Benchmark for a genre

The significance of "The Loves of Pharaoh" was emphasized by the director of the UCLA Film and Television Archive, Jan-Christopher Horak, who had a sneak-preview of the digitally restored version of film in September.

Horak wrote his master's thesis on Ernst Lubitsch and considers the film to be an important link between the directors German and American work: "The monumental sets and cast of thousands possibly influenced Cecil B. DeMille to make 'The Ten Commandments' (1923), both films becoming benchmarks for establishing the genre of sword-and-sandal epics."

Almost 90 years since its original premiere in Berlin - the world premiere was then in New York - Ernst Lubitsch's classic of film history proves once again how highly regarded German cinema was in Hollywood.

Author: Jochen Kürten / Helen Whittle

Editor: Kate Bowen