Pola Negri had achieved international fame in the elaborate historical epics she made under Ernst Lubitsch’s direction in Germany, but her Hollywood career had gotten off to a slow start. Lubitsch had already begun refining his style for the American studio system, crafting smaller, more intimate human comedies that received rapturous critical notices. They reunited for Forbidden Paradise, a startling amalgam of old and new. Negri stars as Queen Catherine, the monarch of a Balkan backwater where misogynist Bolsheviks conspire to overthrow her empire of sex. Luckily, Catherine commands a loyalist brigade of officers who have earned “The Order of the Star” for personal services rendered to the queen. When one of Catherine’s lieutenants (Rod La Rocque) defects to the revolutionaries, she must lean upon her chancellor (Adolphe Menjou) and her checkbook to restore some semblance of order. Forbidden Paradise was greeted as another Lubitsch tightrope trick that promised to “please the more or less worldly-wise audience without any doubt,” per Photoplay, while “the unsophisticated ones will not be entirely ruined morally by it.” One of Lubitsch’s rarest films, Forbidden Paradise long circulated only in fragmentary, incoherent prints, now consigned to the ash heap of history thanks to this new “Order of the Star”-worthy restoration. 

Restored by The Museum of Modern Art and The Film Foundation with funding provided by Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. 

35mm from the Museum of Modern Art