''Sumurun'' (a.k.a. ''One Arabian Night'') is a 1920 German silent film directed by

Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch (; January 29, 1892November 30, 1947) was a German-born American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as ...

based on a pantomime by .

Plot

A company of travelling performers arrive at a fictional oriental city. It includes the beautiful dancer Janaia, the hunchback clown Yeggar who is lovesick for Janaia and the Old Lady who loves Yeggar. The slave trader Achmed wants to sell Janaia to the Sheik for his harem. At the Palace, the Sheik finds out that his favourite, Sumurun, is in love with Nur al Din, the handsome clothes merchant. He wants to condemn her to death but his son obtains her pardon. After seeing Janaia dancing, the Sheik is keen to buy her. Yeggar is desperate and takes a magic pill which make him look dead. His body is hidden in a chest. The women from the harem come to Nur al Din's shop and hide him in a chest so that he can be brought into the Palace. The chest containing Yeggar's body is also brought to the Palace and the Old Lady manages to revive him. The Sheik finds Janaia making love to his son and kills both of them. He then finds Sumurun making love to Nur al Din and wants to kill them but he is stabbed in the back by Yegger.

Cast

Production

The filming of ''Sumurun'' began at the Ufa studios Union Berlin

Tempelhof Studios The Tempelhof Studios are a film studio located in Tempelhof in the German capital of Berlin. They were founded in 1912, during the silent era, by German film pioneer Alfred Duskes, who built a glass-roofed studio on the site with financial bac ...

on 13 March 1920. The monumental sets were realised by

Kurt Richter Kurt Paul Otto Joseph Richter (24 November 1900 – 29 December 1969) was a German chess International Master and chess writer. Chess achievements In 1922, Richter for the first time won the Berlin City Chess Championship. In 1928, he tie ...

and Ernő Metzner. The costumes were designed by . This is the last film in which Ernst Lubitsch was starring. ''Sumurun'' was classified by the Film Censor's Office as not suitable for minors. The première took place on 1 September 1920 in the

Ufa-Palast am Zoo The Ufa-Palast am Zoo, located near Berlin Zoological Garden in the New West area of Charlottenburg, was a major Berlin cinema owned by Universum Film AG, or Ufa. Opened in 1919 and enlarged in 1925, it was the largest cinema in Germany until 192 ...

in Berlin.

Reception

In Germany, ''Sumurun'' was highly praised by contemporary critics and was described as "a cinematic journey into a universe of emotions and passions of great intensity and utter perfection, with a remarkable Ernst Lubitsch in one of the main roles." In America, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' wrote that ''One Arabian Night'' (the title under which ''Sumurun'' was released) gave added evidence that Ernst Lubitsch "is the superior of most directors anywhere, and that Pola Negri, a Polish-German actress, is one of the few real players of the screen who can make a character live and be something other than an actress playing a part." It concluded that, despite some shortcomings, it remained one of the year's best pictures.

DVD releases

The film was released on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

in the U.S. by

Kino Lorber Kino Lorber is an international film distribution company based in New York City. Founded in 1977, it was originally known as Kino International until it was acquired by and merged into Lorber HT Digital in 2009. It specializes in art house films, ...

as part of the box set "Lubitsch in Berlin" in 2007 with English

intertitle In films, an intertitle, also known as a title card, is a piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of (i.e., ''inter-'') the photographed action at various points. Intertitles used to convey character dialogue are referred to as "dialo ...

s. It was also released in the UK by Eureka's

Masters of Cinema Masters of Cinema is a line of DVD and Blu-ray releases published through Eureka Entertainment. Because of the uniformly branded and spine-numbered packaging and the standard inclusion of booklets and analysis by recurring film historians, the ...

series as part of the box set "Lubitsch in Berlin: Fairy-Tales, Melodramas, and Sex Comedies" in 2010 with German intertitles and English subtitles.

References

External links

* * {{Authority control 1920 films Films of the Weimar Republic German silent feature films German black-and-white films Films directed by Ernst Lubitsch German epic films Films based on One Thousand and One Nights Films shot at Tempelhof Studios UFA GmbH films Silent adventure films 1920s German films