The Patriot (1928, Emil Jannings, Lewis Stone, Florence Vidor, Neil Hamilton, Harry Cordling, Vera Voronina) – Classic Movie Review 12,227

The Patriot (1928) is Ernst Lubitsch’s last silent film, though an alternative version added music, sound effects and a few lines of dialogue. But only pieces of this film are left, including the trailers.

The unforgettable German actor Emil Jannings plays insane Czar Paul I murdered by his trusted councillor Count Pahlen (the noble Lewis Stone), who then commits suicide. Florence Vidor is striking looking as the count’s mistress, Countess Ostermann.

Jannings is the top-billed star but Stone plays the character that gives the film its title. Stone (as Pahlen) has the last word: ‘I have been a bad friend and lover – but I have been a Patriot.’

Writer Hans Kraly [Hanns Kräly] won an Oscar for Best Writing for his adaptation of two plays: Paul I by Dmitry Merezhkovsky and The Patriot by Ashley Dukes (based on the novel Der Patriot by Alfred Neumann). Dukes’s play was performed on Broadway in January 1928 and John Gielgud made his Broadway debut in it.

The Patriot won the 1930 Academy Award for Best Writing and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Lewis Stone) and Best Art Direction. It was the only silent film nominated for Best Picture that year and the last until The Artist won in 2011.

The UCLA Film and Television Archive has 2500 feet of footage out of a total of 10,000, and one reel was found in Portugal. That makes it the only Best Picture Academy Award nominee for which no complete or near-complete copy has been found.

The film was remade in France in 1938 with the same title.

Emil Jannings as Czar Paul I.

The cast are Emil Jannings as Czar Paul I, Florence Vidor as Countess Ostermann, Lewis Stone as Count Pahlen, Vera Voronina as Mademoiselle Lapoukhine, Neil Hamilton as Crown Prince Alexander, Harry Cording as Stefan, Tullio Carminati and Carmencita Johnson.

Lewis Stone spent 29 years as a contract player at MGM, the studio’s longest-contracted actor and the longest-ever contracted actor at any studio up to his death on September 12, 1953, aged 73. He appeared in seven films with Greta Garbo but is perhaps best known as Judge James Hardy in 14 of the 16 popular Andy Hardy films, beginning with You’re Only Young Once (1937).

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,227

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