Redemption

Redemption (1930)

In Russia in the early 1900s, Fedya, a handsome, self-indulgent womanizer, falls in love with and marries Lisa, his friend Victor's fiancée. Fedya quickly tires of domestic life and resumes his profligate ways, drinking and gambling away his family's fortune. Lisa refuses to leave him despite his deplorable ways, so he takes drastic measures to ensure that she will no longer be harmed by his actions and reputation.

Date of release
1930-04-05
TMDB
5.7 / 10 (3)
Runtime
1h 15m
Genres
Drama
Director
Fred Niblo, Lionel Barrymore

Casting

Interesting facts

Redemption is a 1930 American pre-Code drama film directed by Fred Niblo, produced and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and starring John Gilbert. This production is Gilbert's first talking film, but it was not released until months after the premiere of His Glorious Night, his second "talkie". Redemption is based on the 1918 Broadway play of the same title by Arthur Hopkins, who in turn based his work on the play The Living Corpse by Leo Tolstoy and first staged in Moscow in 1911.

Production

Director Fred Niblo began production on Redemption on February 25, 1929, almost 14 months before the film's release in early April 1930. Initially, according to the widely read trade paper The Film Daily, Niblo intended to do two versions of the film.

News updates in trade publications document that filming on the production stretched from March to late-June 1929. That length of time suggests that Niblo was working on both silent and sound versions, but at some point during that period MGM canceled the former and committed to only completing a talkie.

Despite several months of filming, editing, and readjusting recorded dialogue, MGM remained dissatisfied with the results. The studio even enlisted Lionel Barrymore to redirect some scenes as part of a "salvage attempt". Nevertheless, while the film was set for release either in the late summer or early autumn in 1929, it was instead "shelved after failing to impress studio executives".

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended