Secrets of the Orient
1928 film by Alexandre Volkoff, Anatole Litvak
Secrets of the Orient (German: Geheimnisse des Orients) is a 1928 German-French silent drama film directed by Alexandre Volkoff and starring Nikolas Kolin, Iván Petrovich and Dimitri Dimitriev. It was made at the Babelsberg Studios in Berlin while Location shooting took place in Nice and French Tunisia. The film's sets were designed by the art directors Alexandre Lochakoff and Vladimir Meingard. A sound version of the film was prepared by Gaumont for English speaking audiences. While the sound version has no audible dialog, it features a synchronized musical score with sound effects using both the sound-on-disc and sound-on-film process.
Cast
Nikolas Kolin as Ali, shoemaker in Cairo
Iván Petrovich as Prince Achmed
Dimitri Dimitriev as Sultan Schariah
Gaston Modot as Prince Hussein
Julius Falkenstein as Astrologer
Hermann Picha as Sultan's fool
Aleksandr Vertinsky as Vezir
Marcella Albani as Sobeide, Sultan's favorite
Agnes Petersen-Mozzuchinowa as Princess Gylnare, daughter of Sultan
Nina Koshetz as Fatme, wife of Ali
Dita Parlo as Slave of the Princess
Brigitte Helm
Steffie Vida
Music
The sound version features a theme song entitled “In Old Kashmir” which was composed by Ed Elton.
References
Bibliography
Bock, Hans-Michael. Das Ufa-Buch. Zweitausendeins, 1992.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Secrets of the Orient” as 1928 film by Alexandre Volkoff, Anatole Litvak. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1928 film by Alexandre Volkoff, Anatole Litvak. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3819226. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928 and 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “Secrets of the Orient” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.