La fille de Hambourg

Yves Allégret's best works were made in the early fifties.he was then in top form ,abetted by brilliant script writer Jacques Sigurd and excellent thespians such as Simone Signoret(his then-wife),Bernard Blier,Gérard Philipe,Jeanne Marken ,Madeleine Robinson and many more.His four best works were certainly "Dédée d'Anvers" "les Orgueilleux" and his two masterpieces,film noir at its most desperate the bleak "une si jolie petite Plage" and the nasty "manèges".

After 1953,the slump began."La Fille de Hambourg" was based on a Benazeraf idea and that man became one of the tycoons of porno movies in the sixties/seventies:the hookers in the window was thus a true omen of his future.Even Frederic Dard who contributed cannot save the story.Its construction is appalling ,beginning with three minutes in a prisoners camp to make us comprehend that Gélin met Knef during WW2:she was giving him cigarettes to sweeten his plight.Then Gelin comes back fifteen years later or so and with two pals,finds her back in the mud where she fights in a shady club (and I mean fight :the guests are asked to clean the girls after the competition).The rest is so trite it's not worth any mention.

Take any of the four movies I mention above.

The French director Yves ALLEGRET certainly had his best films behind him in 1958. Ten years earlier he had filmed the classic DEDEE d'ANVERS (1948) with his then wife Simone SIGNORET. A French Black Series masterpiece! But now he staged the West German world star Hildegard KNEF as a GIRL FROM HAMBURG.

The sailor Pierre (Daniel GELIN) is back in Hamburg with his ship. Fifteen years earlier he had been exploited as a prisoner of war in the port of Hamburg. He met a young girl named Maria (Hildegard KNEF), who he hasn't been able to get out of his mind since then. While on shore leave, he and his friend (Jean LEFEBVRE) immediately set out in search of the beauty he hadn't seen for a long time. And Pierre actually finds what he is looking for: in the entertainment district of St. Pauli, he recognizes Maria as a vulgar mud-catcher. The years have passed, and what has changed is not necessarily beautiful and lovely. Maria also works as an entertainer and works for her pimp. Nothing is anymore as the glorified look into the past suggested. But not everything went well for Pierre either; his marriage in France almost failed. Despite initial misgivings, the two disillusioned people in their mid-thirties become closer. A new beginning seems possible, but of course a film from the Black Series cannot have a happy ending...

Produced by the legendary French film studio PATHÈ, this film is largely a West German production. A lot of local color from Hamburg, the economically miraculous development of the port after the lost World War is an important part of the plot.

Hildegard KNEF (1925-2002) speaks in German and French. After her Broadway career ended with SILK STOCKINGS, the actress gradually regained her footing in the West German film industry. A year later she was awarded the GERMAN FILM AWARD for her supporting role in THE MAN WHO SOLD HIMSELF (1959). For Hildegard KNEF herself, LA FILLE DE HAMBOURG was one of her five favorite films from her own work. This is very understandable!

Daniel GELIN (1921-2002) can also be heard saying a few sentences in German. The actor is known from the Hitchcock classic THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1956) with Doris DAY and James STEWART. In 1989 he was seen for a few episodes on the then West German television station ZDF as the French lover of Countess Guldenburg (Christiane HÖRBIGER) in the popular family series DAS ERBE DER GULDENBURGS / THE LEGACY OF THE GULDENBURGS.

Yves ALLEGRET (1905-1987) has created a beautiful film noir that is harmoniously and atmospherically set in the port city of Hamburg in the late 1950s. Shortly after his death, the director was awarded the CESAR FILM AWARD (h.c.).

My esteemed French colleague & expert M. Monteil is exactly right about Yves Allegret's 4 classic films, of which the Gérard Philipe picture UNE SI JOLIE PETITE PLAGE is in my Top 10 favorite movies of all time. But this latter effort is also enjoyable for those (like me) addicted to pessimistic French fare.

A 1960 art-house release here in America, I was fortunate to finally see it through the auspices of Alain, perhaps the most comprehensive DVD collector going.

Hang-dog expressive Daniel Gélin is perfectly cast in the world-weary central role, a WW II survivor who heads to Hamburg for a bender with two of his French buddies, clutching a 1943 photo of a pretty German girl who was kind to him. He bears her tiny white brooch as a souvenir.

He meets her accidentally in her post-war guise of a mud-wrestler, performing nightly at a German restaurant where patrons wear huge bibs/tarpaulins to protect them from the spray during the show's antics. Gélin, like a bridesmaid, is the "lucky guy" thrown a sponge to wipe the mud off her bikini-clad body post-match, but is unrealistically disheartened that she doesn't remember him after a decade has passed (and who knows how many traumas & travails she has experienced in the interim).

Hildegarde Knef runs with the central role -an amazing beauty who director Allégret quite obviously patterns (down to her short hairdo) to emulate his great star Simone Signoret (whom he piloted in one of her best roles as Dédée d'Anvers).

For me the teaming of Knef and Gélin was a satisfying romantic throwback to the great '30s and '40s movies, though more down-to-earth than say the idealized casts typified by Madeleine Sologne/Jean Marais of THE ETERNAL RETURN. This is clearly not cinema of the quality of Gélin's best picture, Becker's RENDEZ-VOUS DE JUILLET, but I enjoyed it.

The duo carries the film surely on their backs, falling in love again, but with fate (natch) throwing them a tragic curve. The lethal gimmick injected in the final reel I won't reveal but it was awkwardly set up and delivered in otherwise a fine, convincing little narrative.

The authentic, neo-realist scenes of Hamburg harbor are well-shot by master Armand Thirard, and fit in nicely with the studio-bound interiors and fake streets of the Red Light District. Allegret's direction is earthy but tasteful, a far cry from the rewarding porn of the film's producer and story concocter, the great sex-meister José Bénazéraf.