Budapest Classic Film Marathon: Love and the Devil

Director: Alexander Korda

Director of photography: Lee Garmes
Cast: Milton Sills, María Corda, Ben Bard

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Lord Dryan weds Giovanna, the beautiful and famous Italian opera singer, and takes her back to England. Giovanna is deeply in love with Dryan but the chilly English climate edges her into depression and she begins to yearn for sunlight and the brilliance of her former life. She persuades Dryan to return to Venice. One night, her former stage colleague Barotti sneaks into the woman’s room without Giovanna’s knowledge. Dryan discovers the pair and shoots Barotti, while the apparently adulterous woman disappears. Love and the Devil was made by Sándor Korda during his short sojourn in Hollywood and it marks the end of an era from at least two aspects: this was his last silent film and his last collaboration with his first wife, Maria Corda. The film’s magnificent costumes and sets, the Italian city recreated in an American studio evoke the magical world of Korda’s later sound movies.

Other programs of the Budapest Classic Film Marathon in Urania >>