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The Indian Tomb
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - Eureka Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (16th February 2022). |
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The Film
 Prince Ayan III (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari's Conrad Veidt), also known as "The Tiger of Eschnapur" has his men dig up the yoghi Ramigani (Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler's Bernhard Goetzke) who had himself buried alive in a state of meditation. Ramigani wakes and attributes the miracle of his revival to the prince and promises to serve him in spite of his own prediction of the prince's plans leading to a bad end. Ramigani teleports to England and delivers Ayan's request that British architect Herbert Rowland (Journey into the Night's Olaf Fønss) construct a monumental tomb, offering rewards in riches on the condition that he not tell anyone where he is going, even his fiancée Irene (Hilde Warren and Death's Mia May). Rowland refuses the offer but the promise of realizing his creative abilities unfettered is too much, or as Ramigani remarks no one can "kill the sublime creations of his soul." Rowland agrees to the job and boards the prince's yacht, but he leaves behind a letter to Irene telling of his whereabouts. Ramigani makes the note vanish into thin air; however, Irene consults Orientalist Professor Leyden (Destiny's Hermann Picha) about a phrase she overheard on the docks after just missing the prince's yacht and learns the identity of her fiancé's host. Rowland arrives at Ayan's palace where he gets to meet the prince's "darlings" (his court of tigers) and is dissuaded by Ramigani from asking of the presence of a young princess Savitri (Lulu's Erna Morena) cited briefly on the battlements and pulled away by guards. Rowland is impressed by Ayan's riches, his gifts, and his vision of a tomb for his lost love; that is, until Ayan reveals that his lost love is neither dead nor loved him back. Ayan decries a love that would "enter into his adoration as in a coat" and then "give herself to a dog" that was once his best friend, British officer Mac Allen (Die Nibelungen: Siegfried's Paul Richter). Now he awaits his love's death, which may presumably be hastened by the death of hers, for "he is not without peril" who goes tiger hunting in India. Rowland refuses the commission until Ayan seemingly relents and declares the tomb a monument for a squandered great love; whereupon Rowland agrees if only to save him from an act he may regret. Meanwhile, Irene has arrived at the palace and is prevented from seeing her fiancé right away as Ayan explains that he is exploring the surrounding lands looking for inspiration, and then later that she as a reminder of Europe will prevent him from realizing his vision. Ayan, however, has not wavered in his plans, and has set Mac Allen up to be ambushed on a tiger hunt. Princess Savitri, in the meantime, relies on wily servant Mirrjha (Varieté's Lya De Putti) to seek help from the "white sahib" and his woman to save Mac Allen's life even if she must sacrifice her own. Despite a promise not to attempt to get near her husband without the prince's knowledge, she attempts in secret to find him in the palace; an act which will have dire consequences. Ramigani uses his powers once more in the service of Ayan's plans, but he already knows that the fate of all the characters is sealed when he considers his debt to the prince paid in full.  Based on the novel by Thea von Harbou – best-remembered as the maddening muse of Fritz Lang but a child prodigy who published her first novel at age seventeen and "The Indian Tomb" at thirty – and adapted by Harbou and Lang, the two-part property The Indian Tomb bookended both the career and the personal life of Lang (even though he was replaced in the director's chair before shooting by producer Joe May with himself). Once one puts aside the attitudes of the time – including a simultaneous reverence for exotic pageantry and lurid fascination bordering on the sadomasochistic with "archaic" honor systems that demand torture, death, or sacrifice – one is shocked that a scenario rife with the potential of serial thrills could be so boring. The first two hour and ten minute, seven act film The Mission of the Yogi is so glacially-paced as if May feared that Lang would not dwell long enough on the expensive – and this cannot be blamed on different projection framerates – so that it is more than an hour before Rowland learns of the prince's plans and beyond that before we even see more than glimpses of Savitri and Mac Allen. The second film The Tiger of Eschnapur moves at a faster clip, if only because all of the exposition was conveyed at painful length in the first film; however, apart from a few abrupt shocks and the amped-up cruelty of Veidt's prince, even a tense chase is undermined by the "stately" pace before a conclusion that is rather surprising and emotionally resonant. The film is gorgeous to look at but is ultimately a "museum piece" in the least complimentary definition of that term. The project was adapted again by director Richard Eichberg in two parts as separate simultaneously filmed German and French versions in 1938, by which time Lang and May were in Hollywood, the latter having become a Universal jobbing contract director helming efforts like The House of Fear and The House of the Seven Gables. When Lang returned to Germany in 1958 at the invitation of producer Artur Brauner, he undertook his own mammoth two-part adaptation, following the example of the 1938 film in titling the first part as The Tiger of Eschnapur and the second as The Indian Tomb in which the roles of Rowland and Mac Allen were conflated as a younger, handsomer German architect undertaking the public works of a well-intentioned maharaja manipulated by potential usurpers in his family, with the pair falling out over the love of Temple of Benares dancer Seetha, while Irene became the hero's sister who plots with her husband to rescue him. 
Video
Released theatrically in the US the year after its German premiere by Paramount precursor Famous Players, the two-part The Indian Tomb was released stateside in a restoration by David Shepard on VHS by Water Bearer Films and on DVD in 2000 by Image Entertainment. That earlier restoration came from a 1994 photochemical restoration from a French element with some inserts from a Czech rental copy and squeezed both parts onto one dual-layer disc. Eureka's 1080p24 MPEG-4 1.37:1 pillarboxed fullscreen Blu-ray comes from a newer 2K scan of the restoration which replaced more of the Czech material with the French – which debuted on Blu-ray in 2019 in Germany – and it generally looks like what one would expect from a composite of non-archival elements with all but the lightest damage digitally repaired, detail variable based on the contrasts of the material under the newer digital tinting, and some rare missing frames. The recreated intertitles are in German with English subtitles. 
Audio
The only audio track is an LPCM 2.0 stereo recording of a 2018 score by Irena and Vojtěch Havel which is incredibly monotonous and makes the film's pacing seem even slower, seeming as poor a choice for underscore as The Tiger Lillies' track for Varieté.
Extras
The sole video extra is "Turbans Over Waltersdorf" (46:19), a video essay by David Cairns & Fiona Watson, in which Watson provides a biography of Harbou while Cairns suggests that the pulpy elements in Lang's filmography often attributed or blamed on Harbou were actually as much his own input as they take turns discussing the source novel and adaptation – including enlarging the role of Irene for May's wife – rehabilitate the image of May as a director who could adapt his visual style to different films, as well as the attempts of film critics and historians like Siegfried Kracauer to read darkness and signs of incipient fascism even into lighter pre-war fare, describing books and films like "The Indian Tomb" as emblematic of feelings about post-WWI Germany's enforced seclusion and the desire to re-annex the world if only in the imagination. Brief interjections from academics like author Laxmi Dhaul provide commentary on Harbou's obsession with India and the notion that the country as a subcontinent was actually many things rather than a cultural whole from which those obsessed with exoticism and orientalism could draw. 
Packaging
Included with the two discs is 23-page collector's booklet feature the essay "A Passage to India?: Von Harbou’s Indische Grabmal on Screen" by Philip Kemp which covers Harbou's literary career, how Harbou and Lang came separately to work for May, their relationship and collaboration, the ill-feelings stirred up by May taking over direction, more detail about the differences between the text and adaptation, the 1938 version, and Lang's 1959 remake.
Overall
Glacially-paced - and montonously-scored in the case of this restoration - The Indian Tomb is gorgeous to look at but is ultimately a "museum piece" in the least complimentary definition of that term.
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