The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929 film)

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929) is a sound part-talkie film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film was directed by Charles Brabin and starred Lili Damita and Don Alvarado. In addition to sequences with audible dialogue or talking sequences, the film features a synchronized musical score and sound effects along with English intertitles. The sound was recorded via the Western Electric sound-on-film process.

The film closely follows the bestselling 1927 Thornton Wilder novel of the same name and won the second Academy Award for Best Art Direction.

Cast

 * Lili Damita as Camila (La Perichole)
 * Ernest Torrence as Uncle Pio
 * Raquel Torres as Pepita
 * Don Alvarado as Manuel
 * Duncan Renaldo as Esteban
 * Henry B. Walthall as Father Juniper
 * Michael Vavitch as Viceroy
 * Emily Fitzroy as Marquesa
 * Jane Winton as Doña Carla
 * Gordon Thorpe as Jaime
 * Mitchell Lewis as Capt. Alvarado
 * Paul Ellis as Don Vicente
 * Eugenie Besserer as A nun
 * Tully Marshall as A townsman

Background and production
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).

Preservation
The complete soundtrack for this film survives on Vitaphone] type discs. A mute print of the film exists at the George Eastman House film archive.

Remakes
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.