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josef05
Reviews
Surprise Package (1960)
Good Surprise
I can not understand the negative comments about this film. I think that Yul Brunner is great in this film, mainly because he talks so mauch, which is completely atypical for him. Usually he played rather laconic characters. Noel Coward as ex-king is a perfect choice. Mitzi Gaynor is not the stupid blonde gangster bride, but basically very clever, only she is hardly taken seriously. She is also able to differentiate between good and bad, which the two main male characters, Nico and the ex-king, obviously cannot do. All in all a successful comedy that I can definitely recommend.
Hab mich lieb (1942)
You have to love.
In this romantic comedy with music, Marika Rökk plays the dancer Monika Koch, who arrives too late for the release of a new show and is then fired because of her idiosyncratic, and very sexy, solo dance number. Thrown by her landlady for rent arrears from the apartment, she finds comfort in the somewhat unworldly Egyptologist Dr. med. Georg Nöhring, who even gets engaged to her. But his friend Andreas Rüdiger talks him soon out of the engagement. Monika wants to confront Georg, but instead meets Andreas. They can not stand each other, but, as clever moviegoers know, if 2 people do not like each other at the beginning of the film, then they got marry in the end.
The story is not new, but always good. The music numbers and dance performances need not shy away from American role models. By the way, this film could easily be a US musical, all the elements are there, big revue numbers, chorus girls, a dancer who wants to succeed, confusions, funny characters like the theater director or the servant, etc.
I notice in the German films of this time that they play in a kind of parallel world in which neither war nor Nazis exist, which incidentally also applies to various post-war films. Also, the music sounds more American than German and Marika Rökk makes step numbers. Considering that films had to be approved by the Propaganda Ministry, I find that very interesting.
Das Mädchen von Hongkong (1973)
A German in Hong Kong
Frank Boyd takes a ferry from Macao to Hong Kong to visit a friend. At the Hong Kong Customs Inspectorate, he helps the young Chinese girl, Mai Li, who does not have a work permit by vouching for her. Because he can not pay the required 2000 Hong Kong dollars, his passport will be withheld.
Frank is confident that he will get the money from his wealthy friend, but unfortunately he was murdered shortly before Frank's arrival.
The father of his fiancé puts $ 10,000 reward for the capture of the offender and Frank wants to earn this money. So he sets out in this strange city to find the murderer of his friend, where he unknowingly brings Mei Li in danger.
In the 60s and 70s, several such German action films were shot in Hong Kong. They were not liked by the critics, but arrived very well in the cinema audience. They were a mixture of exoticism, action, violence and sex. The main actors sometimes came from English-speaking countries, sometimes from German-speaking countries. The hero of "The Girl of Hong Kong", Joachim Fuchsberger, was one of the most popular actors in Germany. With his good looks and his casual manner, he was the idol for such films.
The film is now released in Germany as a DVD on the market, but came to the cinema also an eglische version, whether the DVD is available, I do not know.
Witness to Murder (1954)
Different German Version
In the fifties, the dubbing of foreign movies, who treated the subject Nazis or ex-Nazis, were often different from the original. And because nearly all foreign movies and TV-shows had been dubbed in German, nobody realized the difference. Today, of course, you can find all the information on the web. In the German dubbed version the name of the murderer is Gabor Rethy. In the German version, also the scenes are cut out, where Richter is referred as an old Nazi, there is also a different version of the book cover. Besides that, this movie is a very fine example of a film noir, with great actors as Barbara Stanwyck, George Sanders and Gary Merrill.