"Sodom und Gomorrha" or "Legende von Sünde und Strafe" or "Queen of Sin and the Spectacle of Sodom and Gomorrah" is a German/Austrian silent film from 1922, so only five more years until this has its 100th anniversary. The director and writer here is Michael Curtiz and you may have heard of the name before. He was in his 30s when he made this film here. Really early in his career he made many many Hungarian films and this black-and-white silent film here is from the years after when he made many German films before he finally went on to Hollywood where he received several Oscar nominations before winning Best Director for "Casablanca". Now about this movie here. It says on IMDb that the original is 2.5 hours long and the most recent version is 1.5, but the one I saw went for 2 hours, slightly over. The film starts really natural, but you already hear from the title that there are biblical references in here, so it did not stay that way. This film is also a pretty good example of how actors back in the day played several characters in the same film the way you may have seen it it in "Cloud Atlas" for example recently with these characters mostly playing at very different times, so that there is no conflict really between characters by the same actor running into each other.
As for the story here, it was okay at best, but I personally was bored quite a bit too on some occasions. It's pretty tough to appreciate a film like this if it is not on a level like "Metropolis" or "M". The good thing here, however, is that this is finally a silent film where they used a sufficient quantity of intertitles as the lack of intertitles destroys many many old silent films because you see characters talk, but you have no clue what they are saying and consequently what is going on because there are no words seen on the screen. Finally, like I already said the biblical references here make this an okay watch perhaps for people with a great interest in religion. Apart from that, I would only recommend this movie to those who really love old black-and-white silent films. Germany was a great nation when it came to movies back then as the aforementioned "Metropolis" already tells you too. S&G is not one of the most or least known I guess, even if it is somewhat difficult to find it these days, especially with German title on the screen. But it's okay. You don't have to see it. You really aren't missing too much.
As for the story here, it was okay at best, but I personally was bored quite a bit too on some occasions. It's pretty tough to appreciate a film like this if it is not on a level like "Metropolis" or "M". The good thing here, however, is that this is finally a silent film where they used a sufficient quantity of intertitles as the lack of intertitles destroys many many old silent films because you see characters talk, but you have no clue what they are saying and consequently what is going on because there are no words seen on the screen. Finally, like I already said the biblical references here make this an okay watch perhaps for people with a great interest in religion. Apart from that, I would only recommend this movie to those who really love old black-and-white silent films. Germany was a great nation when it came to movies back then as the aforementioned "Metropolis" already tells you too. S&G is not one of the most or least known I guess, even if it is somewhat difficult to find it these days, especially with German title on the screen. But it's okay. You don't have to see it. You really aren't missing too much.