The Garden of Eden. 1928. USA. Directed by Lewis Milestone. Screenplay by Hanns Kräly, based on the play by Rudolph Bernauer and Rudolf Österreicher. With Corinne Griffith, Louise Dresser, Lowell Sherman, Maude George. New York restoration premiere. DCP. Silent, with recorded score by Stephen Horne and Frank Bockius. 80 min.
Lewis Milestone’s The Garden of Eden positively bubbles with comedic charm. The gossamer beauty Corinne Griffith gives a star turn as Toni, the naive young Viennese pretzel maker who answers a fake ad to become a famous opera singer in Budapest, only to find herself in a tawdry speakeasy with the mannish Madame Bauer (Maude George) and her clientele of lecherous tycoons. When the cabaret’s kindly wardrobe seamstress (Louise Dresser) takes pity and whisks her off to a glittering Deco hotel in Monte Carlo, it’s their turn to put on disguises. United Artists called in its topnotch talent for The Garden of Eden: Milestone, who demonstrated the lightest of touches (Two Arabian Knights, The Front Page) when he wasn’t taking on the heaviest of subjects (All Quiet on the Western Front); Hanns Kräly, Ernst Lubitsch’s favorite screenwriting collaborator, who could be counted on to bring a continental sophistication to this Shakespearean comedy of mistaken identities; the pioneering cinematographer John Arnold (The Big Parade, The Wind, and The Cardboard Lover, presented in this festival), who works wonders with crystalline reflections and match flames; and the wizardly art director William Cameron Menzies, who transforms the Hotel Eden into a sumptuous garden of earthly delights. The screening on January 11 is introduced by Robert Byrne, founding director of the San Francisco Film Preserve.
Restored in 4K in 2025 by San Francisco Film Preserve. In collaboration with George Eastman Museum, Library of Congress and the Maltese Film Works. Funding provided by Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts.
