The Soldier and the Lady (1937)

(On Cable TV, July 2022) The two most interesting things about The Soldier and the Lady are both outside the frame of the film itself. From a plot level, the film follows its hero as he delivers a message for the czar—a complex bit of adventure that has him travel deep in Russia, avoid his mother and be blinded by a glowing hot scimitar blade. It’s a reasonably good adventure tale, but it’s not executed with any exceptional amount of flair. What’s more interesting, at least for me, who grew up on Jules Verne novels, is that The Soldier and the Lady is a retitled adaptation of Verne’s Michel Strogoff. The other most interesting thing is sometimes visible in the film itself: The rocky technical capabilities of 1930s cinema didn’t allow the expansive tale to flourish, which was compounded by the film’s rather unusual history. In order to get the film rolling, RKO hired the producer and lead actor of two previous European adaptations of the same story (one French, one German). In order to cut costs, RKO then asked director George Nicholls, Jr. to reshoot scenes featuring the lead actor and other characters, and insert combat footage from the French version into the American one (leading to perceptible quality change between the two kinds of footage). This is an amusing footnote reflecting a more freewheeling period of film history—and that’s probably more interesting than the humdrum adventure tale seen on-screen.