Mare Nostrum **** (1926, Antonio Moreno, Alice Terry, Alex Nova) – Classic Movie Review 12,440

Rex Ingram’s spectacular 1926 MGM war drama silent film classic Mare Nostrum stars Antonio Moreno and Alice Terry. Ingram bought a studio in Nice and shot more than a million feet of film. MGM had to cut scenes deemed anti-German by the German embassy.

Producer/ director Rex Ingram’s spectacular 1926 Metro Goldwyn black and white American war drama silent film classic Mare Nostrum stars Antonio Moreno, Alice Terry, and Alex Nova.

Dublin-born silent-film meister director Rex Ingram’s spectacularly shot silent World War One war epic features the romance between Spanish merchant sailor captain Ulysses Ferragut (Antonio Moreno) and German spy Freya Talberg (Alice Terry, the director’s wife).

A real biggie in its day, it is an astounding looking film, with impressive, though obviously primitive, early special effects of naval battles and underwater scenes, beautifully shot by John F Seitz, and made by Metro Goldwyn on eye-catching locations in France, Italy and Spain.

The script by Willis Goldbeck is based on the novel by Spanish novelist Vicente Blasco Ibáñez.

Also in the cast are Mickey Brantford, Rosita Ramirez, Fernand Mailly, Hughie Mack, Apollon [Louis Uni] and Andrews Engelmann.

Ingram shot more than a million feet of film but edited it to a four-hour rough cut. The studio made further cuts, including scenes deemed anti-German by the German embassy. Mare Nostrum, with a running time of 102 minutes premiered at New York’s Criterion Theatre on 15 February 1926. Some audiences were bewildered by the title (taken from the Latin term used by ancient Romans for the Mediterranean Sea), but movie-goers of Spanish and Italian descent flocked to the Mediterranean-themed film and it grossed almost $20,000 in the first two weeks of its release. Mare Nostrum, which depicts a German U-boat destruction of a Spanish merchant ship, was praised in France and banned in Germany.

Though long thought lost, the film has been re-discovered and restored.

Alice Terry and Antonio Moreno.

The cast are Alice Terry as Freya Talberg / Amphitrite, Antonio Moreno as Ulysses Ferragut, Apollon [Louis Uni] as The Triton, Álex Nova as Don Esteban Ferragut, Kada-Abd-el-Kader as Young Ulysses, Hughie Mack as Caragol, Mickey Brantford as Esteban Ferragut, Mademoiselle Kithnou as Dona Cinta, Rosita Ramírez as Ulysses’ niece Pepita, Frédéric Mariotti as Toni the Mate, Pâquerette as Doctor Fedelmann, Fernand Mailly as Count Kaledine, Andrews Engelmann [André von Engelman] as Submarine Commander, and John George as a Servant.

A sound remake Mare Nostrum was made in Spanish in 1948, starring Fernando Rey and María Félix, and directed by Rafael Gil.

The young Michael Powell worked as an apprentice grip on the film, introduced by set designer Harry Lachman.

Rex Ingram’s reputation rested on the huge success of his 1921 film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, an adaption of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s work. Ingram was determined to adapt another Ibáñez work, his 1918 novel Mare Nostrum, ‘an epic tale of World War I espionage and naval battles’. Luckily, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had saved Metro Pictures from bankruptcy, and earned the director the undying gratitude of the head of Metro, Marcus Loew, the man who formed MGM on April 17, 1924 by combining Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and Louis B Mayer Pictures into one company. So Ingram was able to purchase the former Gaumont studio located in Nice, France, financed by MGM and requiring extensive upgrades before making Mare Nostrum.

Rex Ingram was born Reginald Ingram Hitchcock on 15 January 1892. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage in North Hollywood on 21 July 1950, aged 58. Ingram made only one talkie, Scuffle, filmed for Gaumont British Pictures in Morocco. After it flopped, he left the movie business, working as a sculptor and writer in Los Angeles.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,440

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