NinadeL

Although the first sound adaptation of Jirásek was a somewhat more demanding production for Innemann, the result is still worthy of attention. The whole thing stands and falls on the authenticity of Bedřich Karen as Jan Sladký Kozina from Oujezd. The whole cast is very unbalanced, Kozina's mother is played by Leopolda Dostalová and his wife by Marie Grossová, and somewhere in the jumble of the Chodov people we also find Truda Grosslichtová, Rovenský, and Fiala. The only one in his place, given his typology and experience, is Theodor Pištěk as Lomikar. However, compared to Frič's later version, this one boasts a successful script by Wasserman and tasteful pathos.

Those who know The Red Shoes will also be well prepared for The Tales of Hoffmann. However, this creative adaptation of Offenbach's famous opera is in many ways even more expressive, opulent, and, in short, bigger. The opera "The Tales of Hoffmann" (1881) is already a very interesting transcript of E. T. A. Hoffmann and it's completely wild. Probably the most famous piece is the aria of the robotic Olympia, which is one of the best numbers of many singers of the last 140 years. I highly recommend it.

Strangely enough, this is a pleasant South Indian version of The Intouchables. The story is so universal that you really only need to change locations and everyone will find their place. And of course, lovers of Tamanna Bhatia's curves won't object either ;)

The Room Upstairs is one of those films that much has been written and thought about. It is atypical because it is the only French film of Marlene Dietrich. It also features the post-war return of Jean Gabin. Dietrich and Gabin met during the war in the Hollywood French Colony. Dietrich had already made an American film with René Clair in the early 1940s and had seen France as her dream home all her life. She could not live in Germany after 1930, and she had the peak of her career in the USA, but she decided to live the end of her life in France. As a teenager, she loved her French teacher and sang many great songs in French. So why the discontent accompanying The Room Upstairs? The global reason is simple. The film did not receive wider distribution in the US under the title The Room Upstairs until 1948, after Dietrich's American comeback in Golden Earrings. The copy was half an hour shorter due to the Catholic Legion of Decency's outrage, and local audiences weren't interested in watching their old German star as an Australian femme fatale seducing a bricklayer in the French countryside. Yet we can rise above such banalities, and regret that we don't have a translation of Pierre-René Wolfe's original 1935 novel. Connoisseurs of Marlene Dietrich's career, on the other hand, hold the film in high esteem, ranking it alongside such wonderful experiences as 1930s Desire and 1950s Monte Carlo, because the formula of all these films is strikingly similar, yet each has its own original approach. Marlene Dietrich, as a supremely attractive woman with a secret, is the ideal partner for life.

Crime films in Kidman's filmography are not the best examples we can come across in her career. But purely as a raw crime drama, Destroyer is of course passable. Secret in Their Eyes may have already suggested that someone of Kidman's caliber simply doesn't need a crime drama, but so be it. In order to become an icon and a household name in the broadest sense of the word, a person has to ease up now and then and cover literally every genre.

This is an amazingly wonderful sure bet. After the still echoing phenomenon of the first silent version, which she made with Garbo and Gilbert under the great title Love (and the film could thus promote the ambiguous sentence "Garbo and Gilbert are in Love"), it was simply necessary to return to the theme of Anna Karenina. The sound film may have brought many innovations to the dream factory, but in this particular case, it was not that bold. The modern film Love is almost tangible love for many reasons - it's the perfect film to experience to the core. However, the new version is classically anchored in 19th-century Tsarist Russia, between St. Petersburg and Moscow. Everything is distinguished and realistic. All involved are in top form, W. H. Daniels conjures incredibly composed camera rides in the studio, C. Brown knows all the shades of Garbo's acting, and Greta herself plays with everything she has inside her. It’s wonderful. Wonderful to look at, wonderful for the soul.

The stellar myth of Marion Davies, the life partner of media mogul William Randolph Hearst, has long resisted real recognition of the qualities of the actress Marion Davies. Her biographers, such as Fred Lawrence Guiles, see her peak in a series of films she made with director King Vidor. The problem is, of course, the poorer availability of her films in general, but if some titles are released here and there (for example, thanks to retrospective screenings or TCM TV or WB's DVD archive collection), we can compare the opinions of various critics. Personally, I have only the best experiences from Show People. It's a great comedy from behind the scenes in Hollywood that tells it how it is. A huge number of stars have cameos (including John Gilbert, Charlie Chaplin, Mae Murray, or Elinor Glyn), and Marion even charmingly parodies herself. Everything is included, from a naive girl's journey to the Mecca of filmmaking to the first slapstick to big-budget dramas. An ideal film for beginners and seasoned viewers of silent-era treasures.

Despite the negative connotations that surrounded Jirásek's entire work and his personality (especially after 1945), it is surprisingly possible to recommend virtually all of the film and television transcripts as current or otherwise in terms of quality or interest. Jirásek himself only lived to see the first silent Lucerna, which he really liked. Vávra relied on a classic title and experienced filmmakers and let the young acting of Boháč and Pivec (Vavřena and Frýbort) blossom without interfering too much.

This American version of The Intouchables was, against all odds, ideally placed. They took a little film from the cheeky national cinema, threw out all the crap, and made it pure again. With no hiccups. Even so, it can create something great that will be a joy to return to. Yes, the American setting is more universal, and the mere presence of Kidman in a supporting role creates viewer comfort in the reunion.

Much changes in the second series of this window into the hypocrisy of the 1950s. The duo from Nicki und Freddy machen Musik just had a successful tour, are making a movie, and are fighting the demons of the past. Reality is intertwined with fiction, and it's truly successful at times to see what the film industry of the late 1950s looks like, with an old director capable of groping both mother and daughter, and of course memories of the conscious films of the Third Reich. Other demons are memories of concentration camps, homosexuality, denunciations between the West and the East... and single motherhood and marriage. There is much to explain, and much to experience. Nowadays, such a family would no longer hold together under any circumstances. But if we keep our fingers crossed, we'll find out how the Schöllack family steps into the 1960s in Ku'damm 63.