Trailer: The Patriot (1928, silent)

Trailer for the lost silent film "The Patriot" (1928) directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Emil Jannings.

“Loosely drawn from the history of the final years of Czar Paul I of Russia, son of Catherine the Great and assassinated in a palace revolt in 1801. On film, he is the ‘mad czar’ as played by Emil Jannings, who had won the first Best Actor Academy Award the year before. The Patriot received extraordinary reviews and five Academy Award nominations — for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor (Lewis Stone, who plays the title character), Best Art Direction and Best Writing — winning for the last of these. Only the sound effects, so promoted in the trailer (‘You HEAR as well as SEE!’) left reviewers unimpressed. ‘Jannings’s agonized roar,’ The New York Times thought, ‘might better have been left to the imagination.’ His performance, as overwrought as it looks in snippets here, was praised by the Times as showing ‘not the slightest sign of overacting ... There is, as a matter of fact, hardly a flaw to be found in the whole picture. It is a gripping piece of work with subtle touches that answer at times to the purpose of comedy. It grinds its way along for nearly two hours without slackening.’ We can be thankful that the trailer, at three minutes, is also something of an epic for the form in these years. Tantalizingly, The Patriot is known to have been publicly screened into the 1940s before all prints dropped from sight. These and so many films like them apparently survive no longer, although we can hope for discoveries. A six-minute fragment of The Patriot, for instance, turned up in 2001 in Portugal.” — Scott Simmon, “More Treasures from American Film Archives, 1894-1931” DVD set (2004).

“The Patriot” (1928) trailer is preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. The Archive has preserved other works by Ernst Lubitsch: “Eternal Love” (1929), “The Love Parade” (1929), “The Man I Killed” (a.k.a. “Broken Lullaby,” 1932), “Monte Carlo” (1930), “One Hour with You” (1932), “The Smiling Lieutenant” (1931), “Trouble in Paradise” (1932).