THE GARDEN OF EDEN

A film of and about deceptive appear­ances, The Garden of Eden starts as a Viennese drama but soon morphs into a Riviera comedy. Its script was penned by Hans Kraly, Ernst Lubitsch’s collaborator on 30 films, and was briskly directed by Lewis Milestone in a joyful, light-heart­ed mood. Corinne Griffith plays Toni, a young woman raised by her baker guardians in Vienna. Unsatisfied with baking pretzels for life, she dreams of becoming an opera singer. She departs for Budapest, under the impression she is auditioning for a serious singing role. However, on her first night on stage, Toni is shocked to discov­er – unbeknownst to her – that she has been dressed in a see-through costume. Further revelations follow: the venue is a disreputable music hall, and its patron­ess offers her girls to wealthy men. Disil­lusioned and pursued by a persistent rich man, Toni finds solace with the theatre’s grandmotherly wardrobe mistress (Lou­ise Dresser). The two women pack up and leave…for Monte Carlo. Even more surprises await: the wardrobe mistress is actually a baroness. They soon check into the Hotel Eden, a playground for the sexual escapades of the wealthy, lav­ishly designed by the film’s art director and Milestone’s frequent collaborator, William Cameron Menzies. The hotel sets the stage for a series of further revela­tions, culminating in the second half of this charming comedy. The material could have easily been adapted into a screwball comedy in the sound era, and the film is undoubtedly ahead of its time. Milestone elaborates on some of his earlier mise-en-scène ideas, such as characters circling and be­ing circled. Described by Milestone’s bi­ographer Harlow Robinson as the direc­tor’s “most successful romantic comedy,” the original film featured a sequence in colour of which only a few frames have survived.