The Barbarian

Audience Reviews

View All (4) audience reviews

Audience Member Important only as a time capsule to what modern audiences considered sexy at the time. The idea of an Arabian prince carrying you off and making love to you was one of the 1920s greatest fantasies for women. This film is so dated that everything is offensive in it, and modern audiences would not be entertained. It serves to pinpoint a time in history when this sort of behavior was a fantasy for American women. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/14/23 Full Review Audience Member Novarro is reprehensible and disgusting and so is the script. Loy should not have been in this movie, regardless of the prevailing attitudes of the times...how things have changed. It's still disgusting and deserves no stars. Rated 0.5/5 Stars •  Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 02/16/23 Full Review Audience Member Let's start with the positives - you have the very beautiful Myrna Loy appearing in a bathtub for goodness sake, a suave Ramon Novarro wooing her with beautiful songs, and an exotic pre-code tale set in Egypt. Where modern viewers will struggle is with the scenes in the desert, where Novarro mistreats and later rapes Loy. What started out as a forbidden romance, albeit with borderline creepiness in Novarro's persistence, becomes cringe-inducing, and I have to say, I also hated the ending. Men forcing themselves on women until they gave in was de rigueur for the time, and the fantasy about Arabs post-Valentino was still strong in America, but the film would have been stronger had it either had Novarro's character been truly honorable ('Barbarian' indeed), or Loy's ultimately capable of resisting him if he wasn't. As it is, one feels conflicted and kind of icky with the message it conveys about both Arabs and women. And yet, Loy and Novarro are both pretty compelling, and make it worth watching. Did I mention Loy appears in a bathtub? Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/13/23 Full Review Audience Member Old fashioned even for it's time, this film that recycles the old Valentino silent film formula of arabs basically kidnaping and forcing themselves upon western women who then later fall in love with their rapists/captors. Wannabe Valentino Ramon Novarro plays the arab and Myrna Loy plays the western tourist visiting Egypt (though it is made clear Loy's mother was Egyptian, so the audience doesn't have to feel too uncomfortable with an on-screen interracial couple). Besides the obvious offensiveness of the story, the film does feature the great Myrna Loy before she broke out as a star, which is more than enough to make this film worth checking out, especially since this is the pre-code era film where Loy bathes in the nude and probably has more risqué scenes than any other of her films. Pretty weak stuff Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/31/23 Full Review Read all reviews

The Barbarian

My Rating

Read More Read Less POST RATING WRITE A REVIEW EDIT REVIEW