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Münchhausen
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| Year: |
1943
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Director: |
Josef von Báky
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| Stars: |
Hans Albers, Wilhelm Bendow, Brigitte Horney, Michael Bohnen, Ferdinand Marian, Hans Brausewetter, Hermann Speelmans, Marina von Ditmar, Andrews Engelmann, Käthe Haack, Waldemar Leitgeb, Walter Lieck, Hubert von Meyerinck, Jaspar von Oertzen
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| Genre: |
Fantasy, Adventure |
| Rating: |
  5 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
At an 18th Century ball, one young woman is enchanted by her dance with a refined older gentleman (Hans Albers), so much so that she begins to prefer him to her fiancé, and makes excuses to get him alone in the billiard room so she can admit her feelings. However, he tells her he is happily married and she is embarrassed, then switches on the outside light and rushes out to her car, driving off without telling her partner. The next day both of them return to the gentleman's mansion house, and begin to quiz him about one of his ancestors, the fabled Baron Münchhausen, and he has quite a story to tell...
Here's a film that was obviously expensive, had some degree of imagination for the time, and muses over the state of life and death with some depth, but will forever be stained with the regime that was in power when it was being made. That was because Josef Goebbels of the ruling Nazi party was the production's main instigator, wanting a colourful adventure on German screens to take the population's minds off the way the tide of the war was turning against them, something to rival the Technicolor fantasies of the Allies, big hits like The Wizard of Oz or The Thief of Bagdad. He did get this after a fashion, and by not mentioning the war in the screenplay the escapism was cemented.
That screenplay, oddly enough, was scripted by a writer banned by the Nazis, Emil and the Detectives author Erich Kästner, who used a pseudonym though even that was eliminated from the credits. Although there were no overt references to the then-current conflict, there is the notable pall of death hanging over what should, if Goebbels had his way, would have been a lighthearted adaptation of a classic of German fables, so while Münchhausen was given the magic ability to live forever, or until he decided to return to mortality, the mortality of those around him is always pressing on his thoughts. So much so that he spends so much time reflecting on his life that the intended joy in the film is relegated to a few leaden bits and pieces.
That's not to say this wasn't imaginative, and certainly to get through the whole two hours or so without making overt allusions to the hell on earth Europe had turned into was quite a feat, but there's a number of scenes where our hero, also played by Albers, uses various supernatural or superhuman means to get out of one scrape or another. For example, there's the famous ride on the cannonball which hits an Ottoman tower and leaves him unscathed but a prisoner of the Sultan, which should offer opportunities for fun but ends up with another soul-searching conversation, this in spite of the Sultan being a largely comic character. There's also a ring of invisibility and the Baron's dazzling, faster than light sword-fighting techniques, not to mention the fastest runner in the world.
The question remains, however, is it possible to enjoy, or at least appreciate, Münchhausen if you did not know its history, and the truth was it was heavygoing in the way that smiling and laughing through the tears can be. No matter that he romances Catherine the Great or meets the Woman in the Moon, the Baron keeps returning to the fact that he sees everyone around him fall away from life, as if the truths of the war were inescapable even in escapism. Although nobody could blame the likes of Albers and Kästner for getting involved, Albers in particular was resolutely non-political but as Germany's biggest star he wasn't going to say no to the fascists, you're always aware that there was a dire situation occuring just beyond the studio walls. Still, although it's not especially entertaining, there are all sorts of reasons people would want to see it, and questions which would arise: who were those men playing the black slaves? And why was there nudity in a supposedly family friendly film? The effect is more sickly than captivating, it has to be said. Musc by Georg Haentzschel.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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