Only a wonderful Sultana can restore Sultan Malik’s lust for life. Impatient and bloodthirsty, the tyrant entrusts three emissaries to bring him the rare pearl that might gladden him; one of them, Kadjar, discovers Princess Daoulah, the “Sultaness of Love”. However, the maiden rejects the sovereign’s advances, yearning to see the man who once saved her from drowning but whom she only knows under a false identity. It turns out that her saviour was none other than Prince Mourad, who had also gone in search of her…
Filmed starting in the summer of 1918 in the south of France, La Sultane de l’amour was released in December 1919 after a widely acclaimed premiere at the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris in October. Its producer, Louis Nalpas, who wanted to work independently after having run Film d’Art during the First World War at the request of Charles Delac, took advantage of Delac’s return from the front to leave the company and move to Nice, where the light and landscape reminded him of his native Turkey. He founded the Compagnie des Films Louis Nalpas, and while scouting for this production discovered the Villa Liserb, a property on the Cimiez hill overlooking Nice owned by a South American (“Liserb” is “Brazil” spelled backwards, in French). Spellbound by the house and its extensive grounds, he rented it and transformed the site into a film studio; it proved the ideal location for recreating the orientalist atmosphere of the Arabian Nights.
The producer worked with an as yet unpublished story by the orientalist Franz Toussaint, who in 1912 had freely translated a portion of the great Persian author Saadi’s poem Golestan (Gulistān), coining the phrase “la Sultane de l’amour” (La Vie Parisienne, 28.09.1912). Nalpas worked with two partners, Charles Burguet and René Le Somptier, entrusting the sets to the painter Marco de Gastyne and hiring some of the great stars of the time. The production also prompted extensive coverage, with 13 photos in L’Illustration (15.03.1919), just after shooting was completed.
The film was very well received, as reflected in La Cinématographie française (18.10.1919): “The effort put into making this film far exceeds anything attempted thus far in France. No bluffing, no pompous blarney, or gibberish preface. No political or social theory, no boring or muddled intertitles… Beauty, truth, art – there’s the secret of the success of La Sultane de l’amour.” Writing in Hebdo-Film (18.10.1919), André de Reusse asked, “Why does Nalpas’ name appear on La Sultane de l’amour? The simple answer is this: skilled masons, sculptors of genius and impeccable craftsmen built the Opéra. Yet it’s still Garnier who inspired and designed it […] So? It is above all to Nalpas that La Sultane de l’amour owes the high grade I award it for having so beautifully served the glory of French film.”
La Sultane de l’amour, marking the revival of French cinema after the Great War, was planned as a spectacular work that would deliberately counter globally-screened American productions. Nalpas brought it to the U.S. himself in 1921 and sold distribution rights to First National, but in January 1922, for unspecified reasons, it was announced that the company would not be releasing the film (Film Daily, 22.01.1922). Given its success, the film was re-released in France in 1923 in a shorter version (1800 metres, compared to the original 2400-metre. copy now in the CNC), but tinted and stencil-coloured to enhance its commercial appeal. This made it the first colour film in French cinema, a titanic undertaking with 100,000 images stencil-coloured by 50 artists working on the footage over a period of four years.
Yet praise for the colouring, first planned when the film was released in 1919, was not unanimous. André de Reusse’s Hebdo-Film review, cited above, continues: “I’ve given this fine work the praise its uncommon qualities deserve. Being impartial, I must criticize its faults, which are nonetheless unforgivably serious and probably fatal. Indeed, we have learned that the film now hangs between life and death and will soon slumber in a common pauper’s grave. Alas, it seems certain that despite my desperate pleas, which I thought had convinced those responsible, the film’s admirable photography is going to be […] dishonoured by colouring that will turn this charming tale into a vulgar Epinal print.”
Curiously, it appears this colour version, or perhaps an earlier attempt, was first released in Italy in January 1922, where it was a public success, despite some critics complaining that the tones were too vivid and therefore unnatural: “I don’t believe men with perfectly, violently red cheekbones exist, even in the much vaunted land of India, unless subjected to a regimen of very high fever.” (M. Balustra, La Rivista Cinematografica, 25.07.1922)
But let us leave the last word to Jean de Mirbel in Cinémagazine (28.09.1923): “A re-edited La Sultane de l’amour has just returned to our screens. The work of Louis Nalpas and René Le Somptier has retained all its appeal, and its colouring is a marvel of taste. This French film, one of the best of the post-war period, deserves to be known to all those who have not had occasion to see it.”
The film was restored in 1992 by the CNC using a 35mm colour nitrate positive from the Cinémathèque de Toulouse, and was digitally restored in 2021. Digitization, reconstruction, and 4K restoration were carried out by the CNC laboratory using three tinted and stencil-coloured nitrate copies from the Cinémathèque française.

Dominique Moustacchi