The Indian Tomb (1921)

THE INDIAN TOMB  (1921)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Joe May
    Conrad Veidt, Olaf Fönss, Mia May,
    Bernard Goetzke, Paul Richter, Erna Morena
Epic German melodrama in which Conrad Veidt (looking like Vladimir Putin doing a Rudolph Valentino impression) plays an Indian maharaja who enlists a back-from-the-dead yogi (Bernard Goetzke, looking like Charlton Heston doing a Boris Karloff impression) to bring him an architect to design and build a fabulous tomb for his beloved princess. It turns out the princess isn't dead yet, just locked up for having an affair with a British adventurer (Paul Richter, looking like T.E. Lawrence doing a T.E. Lawrence impression), and the architect has to leave England without telling his fiancee, who finds out anyway and sails to India to track him down. So the raj sends the tiger hunters out after the T.E. Lawrence guy and the architect contracts leprosy and the fiancee has to sacrifice herself to save him and the servant girl who runs errands for the princess does a belly dance and then a deadly snake bites her, and the architect and the fiancee and the princess all escape and there's a big climactic chase over the water and up some cliffs to a suspension bridge over a canyon, because there has to be a suspension bridge in a movie like this. That might make the picture sound more exciting than it is, but some of it's not bad, in a long, slow, over-the-top silent movie way. The production values are impressive, and Goetzke has a strange, commanding presence as the yogi. Veidt's as effectively understated as he is miscast, while the stocky, graying Fönss and the hefty, matronly May, as the dashing young architect and his adventurous would-be bride, are simply miscast. Fritz Lang co-wrote the script.