The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a 1929 American sound part-talkie film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film was directed by Charles Brabin and starred Lili Damita and Don Alvarado. In addition to sequences with audible dialogue or talking sequences, the film features a synchronized musical score and sound effects along with English intertitles. The sound was recorded via the Western Electric sound-on-film process.
The film closely follows the bestselling 1927 Thornton Wilder novel of the same name and won the second Academy Award for Best Art Direction.
Contents
Cast
Lili Damita as Camila (La Perichole)
Ernest Torrence as Uncle Pio
Raquel Torres as Pepita
Don Alvarado as Manuel
Duncan Renaldo as Esteban
Henry B. Walthall as Father Juniper
Michael Vavitch as Viceroy
Emily Fitzroy as Marquesa
Jane Winton as Doña Carla
Gordon Thorpe as Jaime
Mitchell Lewis as Capt. Alvarado
Paul Ellis as Don Vicente
Eugenie Besserer as A nun
Tully Marshall as A townsman
Background and production
The film and novel are very loosely based on the real-life story of Micaela Villegas (1748–1819), a famous Peruvian entertainer known as La Perichole. Her life was also the inspiration for the novella Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement by Prosper Mérimée; the opéra bouffe La Périchole by Jacques Offenbach; and Jean Renoir’s 1953 film Le Carrosse d'or (The Golden Coach).
Preservation
The complete soundtrack for this film survives on Vitaphone type discs. A mute print of the film exists at the George Eastman Museum film archive.
Remakes
The film was remade in 1944 with Lynn Bari, and once more in 2004, starring F. Murray Abraham, Gabriel Byrne, Robert De Niro, Kathy Bates, and Pilar López de Ayala.