King Pausole: A strange, royal mess

Is it worth your time?

Honestly, you probably shouldn't watch this unless you have a very specific appetite for early sound-era weirdness. It's a bit of a slog if you want a coherent plot, but if you like seeing Emil Jannings acting like a bored, indulgent monarch, you might find something here.

People who hate slow, stagey European comedies from the thirties will want to stay far away from this one. It feels less like a movie and more like a captured theater production that forgot to tell the audience the punchlines.

The whole premise is just so much. The King has a wife for every day of the year? That's a lot of laundry to manage, honestly. When the daughter leaves, the movie suddenly decides it wants to be an adventure, but it never really leaves the feeling of a stuffy room.

Emil Jannings looks like he's trying to keep his dignity while wearing a ridiculous outfit. You can tell he's the star, but he seems to be in a completely different movie than everyone else. Sometimes he just stands there, staring off-screen, waiting for someone to finish their lines so he can get back to his nap.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Die Abenteuer des Königs Pausole (1933) through its definitive frames.

• The sets look like they were painted by someone who had never actually seen a tree before.
• The daughter running off with an airman feels like an afterthought.
• The musical numbers? Let's just say they exist.

If you've ever seen Princesse, à vos ordres!, you know that European directors of this era were obsessed with this kind of royal fluff. This one is just louder and longer.

There is a scene near the middle where they are just walking through a garden and it goes on for what feels like an hour. I checked my watch twice. The plants don't move. The actors don't move. It's just... green. Why? Maybe it's artsy.

It’s not as chaotic as Quick, but it has that same dated, frantic energy that doesn't quite translate to modern screens. You keep waiting for the King to actually do something, but he mostly just sighs and looks annoyed that his schedule got messed up.

I guess if you’re a fan of old-school costume dramas, this might be a curiosity piece. Otherwise, it’s mostly just a bunch of people in fancy clothes talking about things that don't really matter. It’s a weird, dusty relic.