seglora Reviews

Abenteuer in Wien (1952)

Masterpiece of European film noir

[17 November 2016]

"Abenteuer in Wien" from 1952 should be regarded as one of the best film noirs produced in Europe and could compete with the best film noirs from the US. There is also an American version of this film with just a few actors changed under the name of "Stolen identity" where the soundtrack is in English. "Abenteuer in Wien" is a very difficult film to get hold of. The Austrian Film Archive issued some years ago a DVD which is of very good quality but I doubt that it is much known outside Austria/Germany. There are elements of the film which reminds of Hitchcock but in my mind this film is superior to many Hitchcock's films, as this film has also a poetic quality seldom found in Hitchcock's films . This film is both entertaining, funny, dramatic and have a fantastic atmospheric beautiful photography capturing Vienna five years after the war. Anybody enthusiastic about "Third Man" and its Vienna locations should not miss this film. The action take place during 12 hours during New Year's Eve in Vienna. The plot is very ingenious and all bits of the puzzle come nicely together. All actors are outstanding. There is no overt violence and the only shot fired is not even heard due to pneumatic drills in the reconstruction of the city after the bombings. There are fantastic scenes of New Year's Eve celebrations mingled with a chase in the labyrinth parts of Vienna which spins out to the bombed parts of the city. There is a very original touch of the movie like the murderer planning his deed while rehearsing Schuman's piano concerto in Musik Verein. In contrast the humble surroundings of the unfortunate taxi driver working without identity papers in the war torn city. By pure chance he gets involved in this murder plot. There are remarkably actors even in minor parts lasting just a few minutes which give a special colour and feeling of the film . The drunken New Year's Reveller with the balloon is a revelation lasting only a minute. These were hard times in Vienna with much of the population living of tips and bribes .There are fine vignettes of bureaucracy reminding of the old Empire I have not seen the American version of the film which seems to have only the main actors slightly changed but I doubt that the original can be surpassed. It seems almost sacrilegious that Viennese population should speak English instead of Viennese German, which is part of this picture's great charm. The director Emil Reinert died only a year after the film but his master piece deserves to be much more well known.

Enhörningen (1955)

melodrama from an old master

[30 May 2016]

This Swedish film was directed by Molander towards the end of a career which had started in 1910 as a script writer for films by the famous directors of the silent era Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller. He eventually began directing himself and had a career that spanned almost five decades. Internationally, he is most famous for "Intermezzo" (1936) and as the director who discovered Ingrid Bergman. This film "Enhörningen" ("The Unicorn") has been forgotten, for which there is an easy explanation, namely Ingmar Bergman. During the 1950s Bergman's films began to conquer the world and naturally crowded out other films, especially those by older directors such as Molander. Retrospectively, Bergman's best films were done in the 1950s and this film was supposed to be dated by comparison. However, Ingmar Bergman cooperated with Molander, and had a very high opinion of his filmmaking and great respect for him. In fact, there is a strong influence of Molander in the earlier Bergman films and anybody seeing this film would certainly agree. Molander was considered an accomplished craftsman with an excellent film technique. This is evident in the beautiful black and white photography in this film. The oppressive feeling in the hospital scenes and, in particular, the interesting mass bird scene outside the hospital are a bit reminiscent of Hitchcock. There are always interesting camera views, beautiful use of shadows and striking deployment of a moving camera, e.g. in the very odd short nightclub scene in Paris. So why has this film been forgotten? Apart from competing with superior films from Bergman's best period from the 1950s, perhaps this high-strung melodrama and the very theatrical acting would put some people off. One might complain that the ages of the actors are not appropriate for their roles. Inga Tidblad (aged 55 at the time) plays the main character, including her younger self when recalling the main events of her life, and so we see her in the role of a 20 year-old woman alongside a younger actress (Isa Quensel) playing her mother. Nevertheless, this film features some of Sweden's most famous stage actors. Inga Tidblad was a contemporary of Greta Garbo at theatre school but, unlike her, chose to stay in Sweden and had a distinguished and long career, mainly in the theatre. She was acclaimed in plays by Shakespeare and Strindberg, and was also the first Mrs Tyrone in the world premiere of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey into Night", which took place in Stockholm. Another doyen of Swedish theatre, Edwin Adolphson, plays the lady-killer in "The Unicorn". His position in Swedish theatre and film was not unlike that of Laurence Olivier in Britain, and I would say that there is also some physical resemblance. As an interesting casting decision, which rarely occurs in films, he appears alongside his own daughter, Kristina Adolphson (aged 18), who plays the daughter of the lady-killer. Edvin Adolphson had a 60-year career and, as a curiosity, one of his earlier wives was Harriet Bosse, the veteran actress once married to the playwright August Strindberg. It is rather astonishing that the music composed for the film by the renowned composer Lars Erik Larsson is not mentioned in the credits. The music is very suggestive but used carefully and sparsely throughout the film, indeed only in the most dramatic moments. The whole production is well crafted.

The Materassi Sisters (1944)

entertaining gentle comedy from golden age of Italian films

[22 April 2016]

This is a gentle comedy based upon a famous Italian novel written a decade earlier by Aldo Palazzeschi. It tells the story of three elderly sisters in Florence who out of compassion invite a young nephew, Remo, to stay in their house and give him everything he wishes for, which is a problem as the young man turns out to be a charming rascal who will ruin them. Two of the duped aunts are played by two acting sisters of certain fame in Italy. However, the actress from this film most known to international audiences is probably Clara Calamai, who played the leading role in a much more famous Italian film from around the same time — "Ossessione" by Visconti. Here she plays a quite different role as a sophisticated South American woman who arrives in Italy from Argentina and takes up with Remo. This is a short film, well acted and with swift tempi. It is amazing that films such as this and "Ossessione" could be produced in an Italy engulfed in the later stages of the war. There is on YouTube a long Italian television version of the novel from 1972, though without subtitles. This older and shorter version on you tube with English hardsubs deserves to be more widely known to an international public.

The Mistress (1952)

excellent forgotten film from post war Germany

[5 April 2016]

This interesting West German film was made when the country was in the first phase of reconstruction but still under the occupation of the Allied powers. The vignettes of German life at the time include such historically valuable details as the presence of the US military police as well as ample signs of reconstruction of the autobahns requiring frequent detours, which play an important part in this drama/thriller. The main character is an elderly, married truck driver (Hans Albers) with a newly-wed daughter. During his tours from Bavaria to Frankfurt he has a fateful encounter with a hitch-hiking young woman (Hildegard Knef), who is already engaged in a liaison with a black marketeer (Marius Goring). Albers was a great German actor with a big film repertoire who was often cast in aristocratic roles (cf. "Münchhausen" (1943). It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that he was able to play this truck driver so convincingly. Hildegard Knef, too, gives a brilliant performance, first ensnarling the old man according to the scheme plotted by her lover, but in the end becoming seriously involved with Albers. She makes this transition very convincingly, demonstrating what an accomplished actress she was. Marius Goring was an English actor who also made some films on the Continent. Usually typecast as a villain in British films, he plays the same type of role here in his usual assured manner. It is interesting to compare Albers in this role with his slightly younger French contemporary Jean Gabin, who also plays a family man and truck driver in Verneuil's film "Des gens sans importance" (1956), which features similarly a fateful encounter with a young woman. "Nachts auf den Straßen" is a well-crafted film, with an interesting story, excellent performances by some of the best German actors of the time, and beautiful photography which captures the fascinating background of a Germany in transformation but still scarred from the war. This is a forgotten film which I think deserves to be known by a broader international public, hence the English hard subs available on youtube (so far)

Naughty Arlette (1949)

Light footed fluffy type of comedy

[25 February 2016]

In common with some French directors (cf. Duvivier's "Anna Karenina") Gréville made several films in England after the war. This film is a light-footed, fluffy type of comedy set in a girls' school in England with a plot based on the arrival of the first male teacher in this school and the flirtatious attempts mainly of Arlette, a French girl, played by Zetterling. She was a minor Swedish actress who worked mainly in the UK and Hollywood and ended up as a director, also of minor films. She is terribly miscast in this role, being way too old. She plays so over the top that you laugh every time she is on screen, which is clearly not what the director intended. The so-called French accent which she puts on when speaking English is very badly executed — anybody who has heard Greta Garbo or Ingrid Bergman would recognize Zetterling's voice in this film as being tinged definitely not with a French but a Swedish accent. Sometimes you wonder whether Zetterling found inspiration in Marlene Dietrich's night-club singer in "Der blaue Engel", which is patently ludicrous considering that her role is supposed to be that of a schoolgirl in England. The other members of the cast are quite good apart from the American girl in the school (too old and using inexplicable nautical jargon all the time). Hugh Williams as the teacher is a reliable performer and his daughter (also a pupil at the school), played by Petula Clark, comes across very convincingly as a teenage girl. Those interested in early post-war British cinema might enjoy spending one and a half hour with this lightweight but well-crafted film. At least — unintentionally on the part of the makers of the film — they would be assured of some laughs thanks to Zetterling's exaggerated performance

Dual Alibi (1947)

interesting film noir with on of the best twin roles

[14 February 2016]

This is a very fine and interesting film noir — among the better films of post-war British cinema. The story with twin trapeze artists might be a bit far-fetched in some aspects, but the opening of the film is brilliant, as is the ending. The photography is in beautiful dark tones and the music accompanying the trapeze acts is excellent. Herbert Lom is convincing in the role of both twins. I think the merit of his subtle performance lies above all in not exaggerating too much the difference in character between the two twins. Extreme characterization is normally a much easier option for an actor or actress when one thinks of other famous stars playing twins, such as Bettie Davis, who did this twice in "Stolen Life" and "Dead Ringer", or Olivia de Havilland in "The Dark Mirror". This is an excellent British film noir which deserves to be much better-known. Apart from this, I have not seen any more films by Alfred Travers, who seems to be a totally forgotten director. Astonishingly, hardly anything seems to be known about his life and career (apart from the titles of the films he directed), not even the date of his death. This must surely have happened, as the only scant detail available about this director is that he was born in 1906, in Constantinople.

For Them That Trespass (1949)

post war film noir UK deserving minor classic status

[11 February 2016]

The Brazilian born director Cavalcanti started his film career with mostly documentary film before the World War11 .He worked mainly in France and the UK, and had a part also as a sound engineer, in one of the most famous British documentary film ever "Night Mail" (1936). After the war, Cavalcanti was active as a director first in the UK until the beginning of the fifties and then mainly active in France. During his stay in the UK he directed some famous films like two segments in "Dead of the Night"(1945) and "Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby" (1947). "For them that trespass" (1949) is an interesting crime drama in Edwardian times . The photography in black white is excellent and gives the feeling almost of an expressionist film in the mould of the early German cinema. The later famous director J Lee-Thompson was involved as a script writer. The scenes involving the railway workers and their work is sometime reminiscent of Renoir's "La Bete Humaine" (1938). The story is about an ambitious young writer from the wealthy suburbs wanting to experience the true raw life in the lower depths on the "wrong side " of the road. However, the film quickly transform itself into a crime drama with revenge. Richard Todd is the petty thief wrongly accused of murder and becomes actually the main role in the film. Todd has perhaps some forced Scottish accent but many of the scenes from the lower depths has a genuine feeling. As usual for British film from this time period, the minor characters are excellent. Frederick Leister plays the Vicar, which has only a few minutes role but during that time he encapsulates completely the role of a laid back, eccentric clergy man full with understatements. Another extra ordinary minor role is the Mad Artist played by George Hayes. It is difficult to play insane roles convincingly and they are often prone to exaggeration. However, Hayes has found the right balance and his facial expression and eyes are very compatible to a delusionary mind. It is strange that this film is not more well known. It is very entertaining and interesting to watch to the finish. This together with a beautiful photography, fine acting and an interesting plot, makes this, in my mind, a minor British classic film after the war. "For them that trespass" (1949) is deserved to compete for our interest with much more common film titles during this period.

I Stand Condemned (1935)

interesting early Asquith film with Olivier

[11 February 2016]

This early Asquith film is set in Imperial Russia during World War I. Olivier plays a Russian officer (Ignatoff) who is recuperating in a military hospital, where he is looked after by a nurse, Natasha (Dudley-Ward). She is already engaged to Brioukow, a rich merchant of peasant stock, played by Harry Baur. This is a sentimental wartime drama with an interwoven minor spy plot. Its main interest lies in Olivier's performance .He was to repeat a Russian role but now with heavy Russian accent in "The Demi-Paradise" (1943), also made by Asquith. Harry Baur was a great French actor who starred in many films by some of the most famous directors before World War II. He was tortured to death by the Gestapo in 1943. He was most excellent in "Poil de carotte" (1932), Julien Duvivier's masterpiece. In this film, however, he is prone to a certain overacting and he is not helped by having been dressed up to look like Rasputin, although he is not really villainous in this role. Film buffs will be interested to note that there is an uncredited short appearance by Anthony Quayle in his debut on the silver screen.

The 20th Century-Fox Hour: A Portrait of Murder (1955) Season 1, Episode 2

interesting remake of Laura for George Sanders admirers

[5 November 2015]

The TV film "Laura" from 1955 was directed by the distinguished German-born Hollywood director John Brahm. Like so many directors in Hollywood, he started his career in Germany but left for the USA well before the Second World War. He is most famous for a handful of films he made during the forties, in particular for "The Lodger" (1944), "Hangover Square" (1945) and "The Locket" (1946). However, during the fifties, in common with so many of the émigré directors who failed to reach the same stellar status as Preminger, Curtiz and Wilder, he turned to directing for television and disappeared from the horizon producing endless productions in various TV series. Brahm is supposed to have ended up directing 150–200 television films. One of these is "Laura", which was part of a 20th Century Fox Television drama series. The film is also known by the title "A Portrait of Murder", perhaps to avoid confusion with the famous Preminger version of "Laura" (1944), or for unknown copyright reasons. It is stated as being a 60 min production, but obviously there were plenty of advertisements, as the complete advertisement-free version I have seen runs only for 43 min, and the title is "Laura" rather than "A Portrait of a Murder"! For film buffs it is interesting to compare this slightly abridged version with Preminger's film made 11 years earlier. The plot is the same and most characters are kept in the later version. The stellar cast from the original version led by Tierney, Andrews, Price and Anderson was naturally difficult to match in the low-budget TV production. In this version of "Laura" the detective (McPherson) is played by Robert Stack, a rather wooden actor for the role. However, the acerbic and witty character of Waldo Lydecker is in this version played by George Sanders, and he is, in my mind, clearly superior to Clifton Webb in the same role in Preminger's version who was too histrionic and effeminate. The main reason for watching this TV film is indeed the presence of George Sanders, who has so many fans around the world thanks to the mostly cynical characters that he portrayed during his long career, which saw him work in so many films both in Hollywood and in Europe (including with Rossellini). He often plays secondary roles, but when you see his name in the cast, even in minor films, you can always be assured of a solid performance, often delivered with the most subtle subdued humour and cynicism.

Ett brott (1940)

crime drama from Sweden

[29 July 2015]

If you have tired of the contemporary moronic crime dramas churned out by the Scandinavian countries, perhaps this seventy-five year old crime drama from Sweden could be a nice antidote. "Ett brott" ("A Crime") is a film version of a 1933 play by the Swedish writer Sigfrid Siwertz which was very loosely based upon a sensational crime that had occurred in aristocratic circles in Stockholm the year before, the so called von Sydow murders. Siwertz was a conservative author now totally obliterated from the consciousness of contemporary Swedish society, which is now multicultural, i.e. non-cultural, and where anything produced more than 50 years ago is considered irrelevant. "Ett brott" caused a sensation when premiered in 1940. Previously, most of the films made in Sweden in the thirties had been so called 'pilsner movies', silly comedies filled mainly with cheap jokes about alcohol consumption. "Ett brott", a serious crime drama, was completely different. It was a huge box office success and one of the most notable films to emerge from 1940s Sweden. It is easy to understand the reasons for this. The film's plot is very cleverly constructed, the pace is quick, the dialogue is witty and the actors are all well chosen, including for the many minor parts. The story is set in aristocratic circles in Stockholm and there is a fair amount of social satire. The artist Hans von Degerfelt (played by Anders Henrikson who is also the director of the film) provides an ironic commentary on the world of high society. Henrikson managed to imitate the typical aristocratic drawl that is just right for his role. The film is full of interesting characters played by some of Sweden's most famous actors at the time. The weak and ruined brother, Rutger von Degerfelt, is played by Edvin Adolphson, a very famous Swedish actor who had a film career that spanned almost 50 years. The wife of Rutger von Degerfelt is played very convincingly by Karin Ekelund. This is a difficult role balancing superficiality with deeper emotions. The police inspector, Lilja, is played by Gösta Cederlund, an interesting character actor, who plays this role with a mixture of astuteness and severity. Many of the minor characters also make a memorable impression. The female concierge, Mrs Dunér, is played by Dagmar Ebbesen who had been the star in many of the pilsner movies of the previous decade. She has a comic role here and, given her alcoholic on-screen husband (Gösta Bodin), it is one which perhaps does not differ too much from her previous roles in the thirties. The brash upstart journalist, Risberg, is played by Håkan Westergren with a typical Stockholm accent. His flirt, Miss Waldemars, is played by Ulla Sorbon, who tragically died of tuberculosis one year after the film was finished. There is also the cameo role of a mad woman, Miss Furuvik, played by the fine character actress Hilda Borgström. There are some minor blemishes in this old film. The ending, with Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony playing in the background, might perhaps strike a modern audience as being a touch too schmaltzy. Here and there we find some patches of ham acting, especially Carl Barcklind in the role of the family patriarch Andreas von Degerfelt. This could perhaps also be said of Edvin Adolphson's acting on some occasions. On the whole, this is a well-crafted crime drama, distinguished by its sharp dialogue, brisk pace and mostly satisfactory acting by the large cast. This film now has subtitles in English on the Opensubtitles.org website. Hopefully, an international audience will come to enjoy this little-known gem of Swedish cinema, so different from the films noir of 1940s Hollywood.

Doktor Glas (1942)

attempt of filming a novel not adaptable for screen

[21 June 2015]

The film is based on a short novel of Hjalmar Söderberg "Doktor Glas". The most famous film made from Söderbergs work is "Gertrud" by Carl Th.Dreyer in 1964.The "Doktor Glas" film is definitely not at that level but is still an interesting attempt of making a film of this novel, which some would say is not adaptable for screen. Doktor Glas is a very short introspective novel with long monologues and important memory sequences. The manuscript has been adjusted and some of the main character's acerbic remarks about life has been placed in the mouth of journalist Markel (Gösta Cederlund). The story ,very simplified, is about a lonely melancholic doctor poisoning the vicar, married to a woman, who have consulted him about their unhappy marriage. The story has the typical flair of fin de siècle with both Nietzscheanism and anti-clericalism. The role of the vicar (Rune Carlsten also the director of the movie) is played with certain panache but the main character Doktor Glas (Georg Rydeberg) is perhaps a bit too hieratic. The dream sequences are not totally convincing but the rhythm of the film is acceptable. Several of the minor characters are quite good as Doktor Glas's housekeeper Kristin (Hilda Borgström) and Markel (Gösta Cederlund) is always a reliable character actor. The film takes place in a restricted area in central Stockholm but the film does not feel like an ordinary Swedish film from the forties and has an almost French cinema style of the forties. The film is available on You Tube and there is an English subtitle downloadable. This film would feel exotic also for contemporary Swedes. Sweden, a country which has obliterated its past, now multi cultural (i.e.non cultural) and totally Americanised, so it could be interesting also for Swedes to see that their country was a European country long time ago. Other interesting films from Sweden made in the forties (apart from the earliest of Ingmar Bergman) are, Ett Brott 1940 (with Gösta Cederlund as the police inspector) and Två människor 1945(Georg Rydeberg main role) which is Carl Th. Dreyer's only film made in Sweden but totally disowned by the master director for inexplicable reasons.