Der Favorit der Königin

Summary

The Queen's Favourite

In London, ca. 1590, as an epidemic claims increasing numbers of victims, doctor Gordon Pembroke defies a ban on dissection to perform autopsies to try to understand the disease. The queen’s lover, Lord Surrey, who has eyes for Pembroke's daughter Evelyne, has the doctor executed and sentences Pembroke’s assistant, Arthur Leyde, whom Evelyne deeply loves, to a long prison term. But the jealous queen puts paid to Surrey's plans – she promises the lady-in-waiting to the Earl of Warwick and grants Leyde a pardon. Surrey has Evelyne kidnapped, but once she is at his mercy, she falls into a coma. When Leyde autopsies her, he makes a discovery ... Shot at the same Munich studio and in the same spirit as "Nathan der Weise" (Nathan the Wise, Manfred Noa, 1922), "Der Favorit der Königin" was also indebted to the ideals of the Enlightenment. In this suspenseful period film, the stated goal of the doctors is to "liberate science from its shackles, and the people from a scourge". In 1922, it was no doubt provocative – and not only in Catholic Bavaria – to articulate a democratic ideal that was a resounding call to the powers that be and the clergy that "the people’s voice is the voice of God".

Source: 68. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)