The Bridge of San Luis Rey | |
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Directed by | Charles Brabin |
Produced by | Hunt Stromberg |
Written by |
Marian Ainslee Ruth Cummings Alice D. G. Miller Thornton Wilder (novel) |
Starring |
Lili Damita Duncan Renaldo Raquel Torres |
Music by | Carli Elinor Peter Brunelli (uncredited) |
Cinematography | Merritt B. Gerstad |
Edited by | Margaret Booth |
Production
company |
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Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release date
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Running time
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86 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929) is a film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in both silent and part-talkie versions. The film was directed by Charles Brabin and starred Lili Damita and Don Alvarado. Only the silent version exists at the George Eastman House film archive.
The film closely follows the bestselling 1927 Thornton Wilder novel of the same name and won the second Academy Award for Best Art Direction.
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).
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.