The Exquisite Sinner

The film concerns a young bourgeois Frenchman, Dominique Prad, who spurns his family's lucrative silk business for the bohemian life of an artist. Fleeing his estate to join a band of gypsies, the mentally unstable painter falls in love with a pretty gypsy maiden, Silda. ==Cast==

• Conrad Nagel as Dominique Prad • Renée Adorée as Silda, a gypsy maid • Paulette Duval as Yvonne • Frank Currier as Colonel • George K. Arthur as Colonel's orderly • Matthew Betz as Secchi, the Gypsy chief • Helena D'Algy as Dominique's sister • Claire Du Brey as Dominique's sister • Myrna Loy as Living statue ==Background==

On the basis of Sternberg's impressive directorial debut, The Salvation Hunters, actor-producer Mary Pickford invited him to direct her next feature and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer brought him under contract. When Sternberg presented her with a screenplay entitled Backwash that incorporated experimental camera techniques and in which she would play a blind girl, Pickford declined it. M-G-M assigned Sternberg, now under an eight-movie contract, to direct a more conventional project, The Exquisite Sinner. ==Pre-production==

The Exquisite Sinner, Sternberg's first commercial feature, would be meticulously vetted by MGM: “In 1924, the year in which it was formed, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer …possessed a sophisticated system for accessing stories” monitoring every stage of production from story to the screen. Sternberg flew to Quebec, Canada to gather a sense of French Canadian “atmosphere”. ==Production==

The Exquisite Sinner was filmed in Hollywood during February 1925. Robert Florey, the films assistant director, provides a sketch of Sternberg's on-set persona in the journal ''Hollywood d'hier et d'aujourd'hui''. As the production proceeded, studio executives began to doubt Sternberg's commitments to satisfying their expectations of a commercial success. Despite Sternberg's eccentricities, Florey regarded the completed film as cinematically advanced in photographic technique, describing the movie as “full of interest” and exhibiting “the humor of which Sternberg was a master.” In an effort to salvage The Exquisite Sinner, “MGM set its veteran director Phil Rosen to work on a second version of the film…using the same stars.” This demonstrates that the studio was in a position financially and organizationally to delay release of a major production and “in the meantime entirely rescript and reshoot the film under another director in an attempt to produce a certain profit-earner.” The movie was re-scripted as “a bittersweet wartime romance, the studio hoping to emulate the success of King Vidor’s The Big Parade (1925), which also starred Renée Adorée in a romance with a young Frenchman. Film historian John Baxter describes the Hollywood studio system that was emerging when Sternberg was beginning to make commercial features: ==Critical response==

As The Exquisite Sinner was never released to the general public, the “reception” to the film is limited to studio employees involved in the production and to film historians. Writing in the early 1930s documentary filmmaker and critic John Grierson defended the film and its director: "He made a fine picture for Metro called The Exquisite Sinner and had been heaved off the payroll for adding some genuine local color to the Breton scene." The National Board of Review, despite the film's poor performance and Sternberg's own misgivings, selected The Exquisite Sinner as among the top forty best pictures of 1926. ==Preservation status==

SilentEra says a copy of the film is in the Turner Entertainment Co. archives. It is rumored that the Warner Bros. and Turner Entertainment archives holds a full print of this film, but as of 2014, no print has surfaced. Only a few images, promotional artwork and productions stills are currently known to exist. ==References==