| Barbed Wire | |
|---|---|
 Lobby card | |
| Directed by | Rowland V. Lee Mauritz Stiller (uncredited) |
| Written by | Rowland V. Lee (adaptation) Jules Furthman |
| Based on | The Woman of Knockaloe by Hall Caine |
| Produced by | Rowland V. Lee Erich Pommer Jesse L. Lasky |
| Starring | Pola Negri Clive Brook |
| Cinematography | Bert Glennon |
| Production company | Famous Players Lasky |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date |
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| Running time | 7 reels (67-79 minutes) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | Silent (English intertitles) |
Barbed Wire is a 1927 American silent romance film set in World War I. It stars Pola Negri as a French farmgirl and Clive Brook as the German prisoner of war she falls in love with. The film was based on the 1923 novel The Woman of Knockaloe by Hall Caine. Unlike the original novel, which is set at the Knockaloe internment camp in the Isle of Man, the film takes place in Normandy, France. Some plot alterations were made in the adaptation, including most importantly the insertion of a happy ending.
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Cast
- Pola Negri as Mona Moreau
- Clive Brook as Oskar Muller
- Claude Gillingwater as Jean Moreau
- Einar Hanson as André Joseph Moreau
- Clyde Cook as Hans
- Gustav von Seyffertitz as Pierre Corlet
- Charles Willis Lane as Colonel Duval
- Ben Hendricks Jr. as Sergeant Caron
Reception
Despite the central peaceful message of both the film and the novel, the British audience reacted to the film with an upsurge of anti-German sentiment. Incensed by this, Hall Caine wrote to The Sunday Times objecting to the ‘monstrous’ and ‘malicious’ misrepresentation by ‘certain sections of the press’, which described the plot as ‘pro-German’.
References
- Barbed Wire at the silentera.com database
- Andrew Kelly, Cinema and the Great War, Routledge, 1996
- ‘Forgotten Prisoners of the Great war’ by Panikos Panayi, in History Today, Volume: 62 Issue: 11 2012
External links
- Barbed Wire at IMDb
- Barbed Wire at the TCM Movie Database
- Synopsis at AllMovie
- Extensive synopsis and review on Movies Silently
- Barbed Wire advert poster
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- 1927 films
- American silent feature films
- American black-and-white films
- Films based on British novels
- World War I prisoner of war films
- American romantic drama films
- Western Front (World War I) films
- 1927 romantic drama films
- Films with screenplays by Jules Furthman
- Films produced by Erich Pommer
- Films directed by Rowland V. Lee
- 1920s American films
- Silent war films
- Silent American romantic drama films
- Films based on works by Hall Caine
- 1920s romantic drama film stubs
- World War I film stubs
- War drama film stubs