Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 9786302004489 Format: Black & White, Silent, NTSC ISBN: 6302004489 Label: MGM/UA Home Video Manufacturer: MGM/UA Home Video Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: MGM/UA Home Video Release Date: September 01, 1998 Running Time: 105 minutes Studio: MGM/UA Home Video Theatrical Release Date: January 30, 1928 Sales Rank: 13988
Amazon.com: Ernst Lubitsch brought his famous touch to this sentimental romantic drama, a famous operetta about a young prince who falls in love with a commoner. A kindly tutor (Jean Hersholt) effectively raises the boy in a splendorous kingdom of rolling hills and vast forests while his distant father rules in the cold, tradition-bound palace. When he turns 18, Prince Karl Heinrich (Ramon Novarro) is sent to Heidelberg for an education, in more ways than one. He enrolls incognito to get a taste of real life and falls in love with the kittenish, sweetly rambunctious barmaid Katchen (Norma Shearer). The prince becomes so caught up in his student revelries, school chums, and his first love, that he forgets he has a world outside of university until royal duties call him back to the palace. Shot partly on location in Germany, where the gorgeous countryside contrasts with the lavish palace and quaint German beer garden built on the MGM lot, this was the grandest of Lubtisch's productions to date, though one where his famous wit played second fiddle to glossy melodrama. The marriage of Lubitsch and MGM seems near perfect: the studio offered the glitz and the star power, and Lubitsch the intimacy. This is real tearjerker material, but Lubitsch's sensibility brings rollicking fun and a playful sense of sexual discovery in the first half, and pathos to the bittersweet romantic drama that ends the film. --Sean Axmaker
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Put me on DVD - please !
The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg
I can hear this silent movie screaming out, "Don't let me die! Put me on DVD."
Rating: - love, royal style
This 1927 silent classic may seem like a frothy piece of fluff at first, but it is actually quite tragic, and true to life. Exquisitely directed by Ernst Lubitsch, it has meticulous attention to detail, ... Read More
Rating: - Delightful At Every Turn...
Having been a silents fan for years, but just now discovering the real gems, through more wide releases of VHS and DVD, I have to say that my first viewing of a silent Lubitsch film was a true delight. Having ... Read More
Rating: - Totally charming love story
This Ernst Lubitsch production would have to be one of the most delightful silent films produced. In reality it is a fairytale but done with such sincerity and care for the story and characters that you cannot ... Read More
Rating: - The silent screen at its most charming
TV host Joe Franklin, WOR-New York's long-reigning king of 2 am nostalgia (THE JOE FRANKLIN SHOW), has described this most winning of silent classics with affection as "Viennese fairy tale, all sugar and apple ... Read More
