Word: filming
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Captain From Koepenick is a full color re-make of a mid-30's film about the Prussian military at the turn of the century. The story involves an ex-convict, who, becoming piqued with the government, buys an old infantry uniform, commandeers a dozen healthy, helmeted Berlin youths, marches them to the neighboring town of Koepenick, and ends up arresting the mayor and sending him to jail. The film, as it might appear, is primarily a comedy, and the last fifteen minutes are delightful in a Teutonic, beer and wursty manner...
...pathos is neither expected nor effective, and is, in fact, somewhat grotesque. This is not the fault of Heinz Ruhmann, who plays the exconvict, Voight--interpreting all of his many moods, from puckish drollery to soggy weltschmerz, with maximum effect. The fault rather lies in the nature of the film...
...down, both in political implication and in social description. As the movie proceeds one can see the effect which could have resulted from the blending of abject misery with bitter humor. There are flashes of what must have been really fine pathos on older, flickering, brownish black-and-white film. Blind street singers grind out a Weill-ish ballad, one playing a hand organ, the other tapping a drum with sticks taped to his elbows. A dying consumptive girl cries out in fear of the whiteness of the window in the early twilight. But, even though the color is muted...
...pathos is, in this production, an awkward intrusion. Contrasting strangely with the thick boffola of the comic scenes, it produces a sense of dislocation, a sort of emotional lacuna. Not that there is anything wrong with emotional lacunae: such an effect was doubtless what the producers of the original film were after. But the dislocation in the present version acts to no purpose and fails to convey the desired jarring effect...
...like Gigi, was adapted from Colette by Anita Loos. As Gigi hoisted a young girl, Audrey Hepburn, into the limelight, Chéri may hoist a young man, Horst Buchholz. Playing the title role, this European film actor manages-not wholly through ability but through his matinee-idol appearance-to be the most effective part of a generally empty show. He plays the overindulged, sexually precocious, humanly immature son of a pre-World War I grande cocotte, who has brought him up to make a rich marriage...