Tag Archives: 1940s

Wiener Blut / Viennese Spirit (1942) Willi Forst, Willy Fritsch, Maria Holst, Hans Moser, Comedy, Music

wiener-blut-aka-viennese-spirit-1942
Willy Forst of course is famous for looking back on the ‘old Vienna’ in a mixture of nostalgia and gentle irony in his films, but “Wiener Blut” may be the one which most highlights the question of what makes the ‘true’ Viennese style. We get a first answer right at the beginning, when Forst himself masqueraded as a medieval alchemist mixes the ingredients for the brew of this film, which are ‘humour’, ‘frivolity’, ‘heart’, ‘history’ and most of all, ‘music’. And the film gets this mixture right.
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La Main du Diable / Carnival of Sinners (1943) Maurice Tourneur, Pierre Fresnay, Josseline Gaël, Noël Roquevert, Fantasy, Horror

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A man arrives at an isolated mountain inn clutching a small box. The man is panic-struck when, during a sudden blackout, the box disappears. To the assembled guests at the inn he tells his tragic story. The man, Roland Brissot, was once a penniless artist who, one day, bought a talisman from the owner of a restaurant for one franc.
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The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944) Preston Sturges, Eddie Bracken, Betty Hutton, Diana Lynn, Comedy, Romance, War

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Trudy Kockenlocker, a small-town girl with a soft spot for American soldiers, wakes up the morning after a wild farewell party for the troops to find that she married someone she can’t remember–and she’s pregnant. Norval Jones, the 4-F local boy who’s been in love with Trudy for years, tries to help her find a way out of her predicament. Trudy complicates matters further by falling for Norval, and events snowball from there.
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Matto regiert / Madness Rules (1947) Leopold Lindtberg, Heinrich Gretler, Heinz Woester, Friedrich Braun, Crime, Drama

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If any one man is responsible for the rejuvenation of the postwar Swiss film industry, that man was director Leopold Lindtberg. Matto Regiert (Madness Rules) was co-adapted for the screen by Lindtberg from a novel by Friedrich Glauser. Heinrich Gretler stars as Police Constable Studer, the hero of several of Glauser’s most popular works.
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