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Abenteuer in Wien (1952)
A great film, except for
This is a wonderful film noir, much better than the English-language version "Stolen Identity", largely because of the fine performance of Gustav Fröhlich in the male lead.
But...
What is up with this Germanic fantasy of young beautiful women falling for much older men? This is a common feature of early postwar German and Austrian movies. Here, its lovely Cornell Borchers (27 years old) falling in love with Fröhlich (50); in "Nachts auf der Strassen" (1952), it's Hildegard Knef (27) going for a tired out, paunchy Hans Albers (61); in "Film ohne Titel" (1948), Knef is only 23 and her crush Hans Söhnker is 45; the list goes on and on.
Apart from this distracting peculiarity, this is a highly entertaining film.
Hintertreppe (1921)
A war story, really
The Synopsis given above is, I believe, inaccurate, a misreading of the narrative. The Lover, played by Wilhelm Dieterle, unexpectedly disappears and is not heard from - an occurence which would have been understood by audiences of the time to imply the young man being at the front during the war. Out of love for the Girl, who is devastated by her man's absence incommunicado, the Mailman (Fritz Kortner) forges a letter to her, to make her happy. She discovers the ruse and is terribly upset; she has to assume that the Lover has been killed. But she also sees the kindness of the Mailman's actions, and returns his affection. But then the Lover returns, showing the Girl the letter she wrote him earlier, which no doubt declared her love for him. "What's going on? You wrote this to me, and now I see you creeping out of this person's place!" It looks like a betrayal, and perhaps it was, since a kiss can be code for something more intimate. There is an inevitability to the tragic denouement.
This is a superb example of expressionistic kammerspiele film. I take my reading of the narrative from Anton Kaes' excellent book "Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War". The theme of the returning soldier being unable to fit back into his former world is common in Weimar films: Joe May's "Heimkehr" and Pabst's "Westfront 1918" are among the better known examples of this.
Sprengbagger 1010 (1929)
45 minutes missing
That's likely a critical point - that about 45 minutes of the original film are missing from Arte's version that I saw. It might explain much of the narrative incoherence here: what happened to Old Mrs. Hartmann after the mill burned? Why does nobody seem to care about that afterwards? Kowal-Samborsky is a fine actor, but why does he strike us as so unsympathetic? Why does Ilse Stobrawa (who sure has a resemblance to Renee Stobrawa - are they sisters?) get herself blown up? Her character is very unconvincing, although she seems like a good actress: her part is poorly developed. The one-dimensional Viola Garden, who gives no dramatic interest whatsoever to her character, simply appears to be untalented. And what is the point of this film anyway, what position is it taking in the modernization / tradition battle? The Russian-style editing (ie, super fast cuts with shots often repeated to raise tension) seems botched here. In Russian films, the "message" we are presented with is always unambiguous; Sprengbagger takes no apparent position. One can neither be instructed nor moved by this film. I suspect that if we had the complete film, we would perhaps be able to make better sense of the narrative, but I'm afraid we would also criticize it for being too long.
Dnevnik Glumova (1923)
Insert to a stage play
What comes to us as an incomprehensible 5 minute farce was really, according to Wikipedia, an insert for a stage play; it was made to be shown at several points in the performance of "Alexander Ostrovsky's 1868 comedy Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man (Na vsyakovo mudretsa dovolno prostoty) that he realised in 1923 for the Proletkult organisation."
Die schwarze Kugel oder Die geheimnisvollen Schwestern (1913)
Creative direction by Franz Hofer
On first viewing, this film seemed to me a rather archaic mix of revenge drama and narratively illogical "attractions". But then I read Yuri Tsivian's essay in "A Second Life: German Cinema's First Decades", which drew attention to the symmetrical composition of many shots, especially involving the sisters. He seems to see this as an example of the director's stylistic imaginativeness, like his use of camera masking. But it also, it seems to me, has narrative implications: the mirror-like doubling of the sisters occurs when they are "of one mind". When, on the other hand, they are not pursuing the same goal, as when Edith is attracted to the viscount, or when she follows Violetta as she goes to confront him, the doubling is absent, thus adding psychological implications and complexity to the film.
Schleppzug M 17 (1933)
Heinrich George directed
Poorly shot and poorly edited film, made interesting by its focus on late Weimar Berlin. And it's fun to see Betty Amman vamping in something other than Asphalt.
Bonitinha Mas Ordinária ou Otto Lara Rezende (1981)
Yet another sick sexploitation drama
Having read the review of this film in this section, I decided to give it a look, to try understand something of a foreign culture. I regret doing so. This is just another repulsively misogynistic expression of adolescent male fantasy. It doesn't matter how well it is made, the movie is repellent: just like watching slick Nazi propaganda. Nothing but skillfully-made lies.