aka La Atlántida

(Adventure, 1 hr 15 min, Black & White)

United Artists - U.S.A.

DIRECTORS:

Arthur Ripley & Gregg C. Tallas

CAST:

Maria Montez (As: Queen Antinea), Jean-Pierre Aumont (As: André St. Avit), Dennis O'Keefe (As: Jean Morhange)

COMMENTS:

Based on the novel "L'Atlantide" by Pierre Benoit. On May, 1947, Maria and her husband Jean-Pierre signed their first contract as independent actors with the German producer Seymour Nebenzal for acting in a new version of his 1932 film DIE HERRIN VON ATLANTIS. Maria was hired with the fantastic sum of US$100.000, for that time, per 10 weeks of work.

O'Keefe and Aumont are foreign legionnaires in search of a lost archeologist who find a secret passage in the middle of the Sahara desert which leads them to the Lost Continent.

Montez is the queen of Atlantis, a ruthless woman, who has the habit of spending her time playing chess with her prisoners.

The contact with this woman is sinister for her playmates who could not resist her charm and when they were seduced they end up as golden statues decorating the royal palace.

This soldiers discover the lost archeologist as one of the golden statues.

Aumont is the objective soldier who falls hopelessly in love with the Queen and blind by jealousy he kills his partner (O'Keefe). With guilt in his hear, Aumont manages to escape, he comes back to his legion and confesses his crime, but nobody believes him.

Later, trapped by Antinea's spell, he goes back to the Atlantis, but before arriving there, he dies in the middle of the desert in a sand storm.

The distributors rejected this film, considering it to much artistic for being commercial, forcing to Nebenzal to re-edited it.

The scenes of this movie were fantastic, unforgettable and glamorous, as the one where Montez is over a bed with the form of a shell of 10 feet of wide and 7 of high and she was wearing sensual siren dresses. Maria's fans were pleased with the scenes in which she appeared in the company of pet panther.

The critics of that time said, besides of a pretty Montez, the movie had too little to offer.

But time was a friend of this film and nowadays it is considered as a classic and it is used in some universities for their classes.

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Vivian Pérez

E-MAIL: balamia@yahoo.com

Luisa Peguero

E-MAIL: asuil70@yahoo.com

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