An sophisticated and very funny UFA super-production which I ripped from the UFA Klassiker Edition DVD. I translated the German HI subs into English. As extra on the DVD there is a 20 min. video essay (Enttarnung der Götter) by Hans Günther Pflaum. He doesn't say much, but shows newsreel clips from the set (harbor scene), a model of Amphitryon's villa and an interesting split-screen comparison with the French version "Les dieux s'amusent", shot simultaneously with French actors taking over the speaking parts (infinitely better than dubbing). I could rip and upload the extra later. The film made me think of Cukor several times (Dinner at eight - Marie Dressler - or The Women - Alkmene's four friends). IMDB
IMDB quote 1: This is one of the last productions in the UFA style at the beginning of the 30s, originally planned as an Erich Pommer production. The productions values are still here, but Pommer had already left for the U.S.A. The sets are fabulous, the dialogue is great (and very funny) and the cast is outstanding (note e.g. Willi Fritsch, showing that he can do more than just smile; and Adele Sandrock). This is Schünzel's masterpiece: his direction is elegance itself. [...] Many sources claim that contemporary German audience recognized the - concealed - Göring parody and other references to the present situation. After some hesitation the showing of the film was allowed by the Propaganda Minister Goebbels: he also recognized the Göring parody. The film became a great success. This film should be an international classic; and Schünzel a more known director.
IMDB quote 2: Just like the Roman comedy Amphitruo by Plautus, on which the movie is loosely based, Schünzel's musical film-version is a very funny doppelganger comedy.
The romance between Amphitryon (then famous heart-throb Willy Fritsch) and Alkmene (Käthe Gold) is portrayed in rather conventional ways, but the real stars are the minor characters, then well-known comedians Paul Kemp (playing both Mercury on roller skates and Amphitryon's drunkard slave Sosia) and Fita Benkhoff as Sosia's wife Andria. Their antics make this movie still worth watching. Similarly, Fritsch in his other role as aged Jupiter, bald and with beer-belly, and his tyrannical wife, the truly ancient Adele Sandrock, then the grand old dame of German cinema, are very funny. Both Sandrock and Benkhoff were nominated for the 1935 Oscars, the only foreign actors thus honored that year.
Maybe the best part of the movie, though, is the way director Reinhold Schünzl, a half-Jew who had to emigrate to the United States not much later, slyly parodies German militarism, and that under Nazi censorship and with SS men as extras (playing Theban soldiers in the mass scenes). I guess Hitler and Goebbels, who both visited the shooting of the movie, were fooled by the National Socialist realism of parts of the set (especially when the Theban army triumphantly returns from war), and I guess they also liked the traditional way gender roles are portrayed in the movie (in the end, Andria becomes an obedient wife full of newly gained respect for her husband, the new Sosia (a.k.a. Mercury), and is rewarded with a fashionable hat).
In brief, this is a really funny movie, and I only wish it had already been re-issued with English subtitles so that Schünzl could receive the fame and admiration he deserves.
Reinhold Schünzel page in French - look under S
about the Kleist play
text of Kleist play in German
wikipedia on the Amphitryon myth
11 page essay: Heinrich von Kleist's Amphitryon: Romanticism, rape, and comic irresolution (Jean Wilson 2001)
Script: Schünzel (after Plautus, Molière, Kleist)
Original Music by Franz Doelle
Cinematography by Werner Bohne and Fritz Arno Wagner
Production Design by Robert Herlth and Walter Röhrig
Cast
Willy Fritsch ... Jupiter / Amphitryon
Paul Kemp ... Merkur (Mercury) / Sosias
Käthe Gold ... Alkmene (Alcmena)
Fita Benkhoff ... Andria (Charis in the play)
Adele Sandrock ... Juno
Hilde Hildebrand ... First friend of Alkmene
Annie Ann ... Friend of Alkmene
Vilma Bekendorf ... Friend of Alkmene
Hilde Boenisch ... Friend of Alkmene
Ewald Wenck ... Dr. Äskulap (Eskulapus)
Aribert Wäscher ... the Theban minister of war
more caps:
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file details:
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Amphitryon (Schuenzel 1935) DVDRip.VO.avi [1.29 Gb]
Spanish subs, translated from English by candas
English subs, translated by serdar002
German subs