A young woman, Andrea, meets an elegant stranger with whom she spends a night of passion. After he disappears, she is left alone and marries an older man who provides her with security but no love. Years later, she is reacquainted with her former lover... Ita Rina’s portrayal of Andrea as a sensual, emancipated woman made her a star. EROTICON is a rare example of an internationally successful feature film that impressively combines avant-garde visual language and traditional narrative form. German premiere of the new restoration.
This silent flicker features what probably is the Garbo-Gilbert team of Czecho-Slovakia: Ita Rina and Olaf Fjord, the former reminding of the pre-Paramount Pola Negri of her early Ufa days, and Fjord impressing even more favorably for possible American consumption. Miss Rina’s profile nullifies her for Anglo-Saxon appeal, although her heavy emoting here would stampede the box offices if the censors dared okay this one.
Eliminate the rough stuff and there’s no flicker. It’s some pretty hot to punctuate an otherwise drably trite romance wherein Fjord is the heavy lover who has a way with wimmen and those he doesn’t slay, he cripples. […]
Miss Rina and Fjord are the picture. It opens grippingly with Ita’s father providing shelter to the lead who has missed the last train. Quite naturally the amorous situation between Fjord and the railroad man’s daughter is built up when the old man goes into the stormy night for his nocturnal duties.
All the elements are there for a most plausible development, even unto Georges presenting Ita with a bottle of the Erotikon perfume which accounts for the original title of the picture, EROTIKON. The French transferred it into SEDUCTION, quite fitting. […]
SEDUCTION, playing here (in Paris) at the Imperial, on a thrice-daily reserved seat schedule to an 85c top, has been a wow because of the hot stuff.
That’s what killed it for America.
Abel., Variety, 30 October 1929