Redemption is a 1930 American pre-Code drama film directed by Fred Niblo, produced and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and starring John Gilbert.
[3][4] Living in Russia in the early 1900s, Fedya Protasoff (John Gilbert) is a handsome, self-indulgent womanizer who continues to squander his family inheritance drinking and gambling.
Despite Fedya's deplorable actions, Victor displays an act of enduring friendship and helps him by purchasing the estate at auction for the greatly inflated price of 125,000 rubles.
While his marriage to Lisa continues to crumble, Fedya becomes infatuated with a young "Gypsy" woman, Masha (Renée Adorée), and they begin living together in a "cheap boarding house".
Confronted with his duplicity and with the guilt that he is continuing to destroy any hope of happiness for Lisa and Victor, he has an associate, Petushkov (Nigel De Brulier), bring him a pistol outside the courthouse.
By February 1930, a full year after production started on the film, studio personnel and other Hollywood insiders, including reporters and writers for trade publications and popular fan magazines, were aware that MGM executives clearly had problems with the overall quality of Redemption and had postponed the film's release until well after the premiere of His Glorious Night, Gilbert's second screen project with recorded dialogue.
[13] She contends that recording problems with Gilbert's "high-pitched, tense” voice and the star's rattled nerves in the presence of "the little talking device" as two reasons for the delayed release of Redemption.
[14]For their participation in what Variety labels a cinematic "long yawn", the paper predicts, "Gilbert will be the chief sufferer and Fred Niblo will not go unharmed in reputation.
Yet, with a degree of optimism, the newspaper expresses hope for the star's prospects in the new era of sound, "In time he may catch on to the demands of dialogue in films, but at the moment he remains...a far better pantomime artist than speaking actor.
The respected New York-based trade journal Harrison's Reports insisted that John Gilbert was not to blame for the film's lack of critical success and its disappointing draw at the box office.
Screenland, for example, refers to Redemption in its July issue as "deep, dreary" and full of "Russian gloom", cautioning its readers, "you will probably writhe your way through this film.
[18] The magazine's reviewer Norbert Lusk saw little in Gilbert's starring role to attract theater audiences, although he did find Boardman and Adorée's voices pleasing after hearing them for the first time:Judging by silent standards, his performance is not among his good ones.
Eleanor Boardman's voice, heard for the first time, is smoothly expressive, and Renée Adorée likewise reveals no loss of power and charm through audibility.