New Films: Schwarzwaldmädel [Black Forest Girl]

This highly anticipated first color film made in Germany since the war has now opened at the Turm Palast cinema. It is based on the eponymous operetta by Leon Jessel and August Neidhart, which caused a pleasing stir in the spirits of our mothers in the year 1917. Spirit is the trump card in this screen adaptation as well, despite all the turbulent embellishments that screenwriter Bobby E. Lüdtge endowed it with—and the “girls of the Black Forest” triumphantly assert themselves against all of Frank Fox’s musical updates. But the driving force behind this film appears to have been neither the script nor the music, but the color, color at any cost. Ice shows, lavish balls, scenes at the Baden-Baden casino, Swabian country fairs—the filmmakers have created an exorbitant plethora of chances to use color. The colors, however—it must be said—are not yet such that they appear natural. And the seriatim of images is not yet the seamless cinematic sequence long since standard in black-and-white films, thanks to the dissolve technique. Still, there are some splendiferous scenes, the festive procession, for instance, with its wealth of local folk costumes, and an abundance of intimate interiors. The technical difficulties are legion, and you see it in this film. Neither Hans Deppe as director, nor the actors, can make us forget it. All of them—Sonja Ziemann, Rudolf Prack, even distinctive types like Paul Hörbiger, Fritz Kampers, and Hans Richter have an air of haziness, which only Gretl Schörg and the indestructible Ernst Waldow manage to fight. But difficulties are there to be surmounted—let us be surprised by the second ever German color film!