NinadeL

I categorically disagree with the fact that Máňa and Hron are needles in this film. They both have their fans and not only when playing a couple. Then there's the lovely Olga Augustová as the spicy Pavla Garbo. I don't need to comment on Burian, but Karel Lamač succeeded on all fronts with this film. If not, then Czech cinema would have had much bigger problems with sound and would have had to leave Anny Ondra in Berlin for alleged incompetence much earlier. At that time, however, it was not yet known that Magda Schneider and Pepa Goebbels would be needed.

As in most cases concerning Lamač's double or multi-productions, he set himself back with this one as well. As in the later Grounds for Divorce, he knew that twice the same thing is not the same thing. Fake Field Marshal continued his very fruitful collaboration with Burian, although he never participated in the French versions (even after Martin Frič took over directing.

Although this is a very important and interesting film from a historical point of view, it is problematic from an audience perspective. It combines the return of Lída Baarová to Czech cinema after she was banned from working in Germany, along with the casting of her younger sister, Zorka Janů. Before that, they had only starred together in Madla from the Brickworks, and in the case of the then 12-year-old Zorka, that can't yet be considered a role. Then there was the onset of directors Čáp and Krška, both of whom I respect very much, and the slowly maturing Beneš in contrast to the slowly fading Nedošinská. However, in the end, my impression of it is quite awkward. The entire film seems to me like a collage glued together from the building poem from Ecstasy, the youthful naivety of Before Graduation, and then spiced up with an uncontrollable girl's heart that oscillates between May Fairy Tale and Sweet Sixteen. The final cry belongs entirely to The Sins of Youth.

This magnificent and in all respects well-balanced adaptation of Dostoyevsky became the culmination of Lída Baarová's work in the pre-war Reich. It's truly remarkable how much viewers were deprived then and now when it came to her work ban. Baarová could have made many more great films. Fortunately for her, she found a new refuge back home and later in Italy and Spain.

This magnificent Parisian costume drama was one of Lída Baarová’s many great acting and musical opportunities. This time she shone alongside Mathias Wieman, who was partnered in the 1930s with such stars as Leni Riefenstahl, Brigitte Helm, and Anny Ondra.

The film, which was withdrawn from Czech movie theaters for political reasons, is one of the few in which Lída Baarová played a supporting role in the Reich. But let’s be honest - in an all-male film, any actress can shine on any screen. All the more so if by that time Baarová had already been definitely adjusted to the highest standards of the UFA.

Classic Karel Lamač on the road. He drew this shoot among the better and more expensive films he had out there (or rather the best he did with Anny Ondra in Weimar), and he essentially left Burian to do what he needed to do and the film was made. He had fun, he relaxed, and before you could say shoemaker, he was back on the train. How can we evaluate a group of friends and acquaintances performing together? Baarová appeared here thanks to her role in Lelicek in the Services of Sherlock Holmes, but from then on Nina Burianová banned her from her husband's films, as well as from appearing in his theater. Jan Richtr slowly drank himself to death, Betty Kysilková did her good routine in a bigger way and for example Růžena Šlemrová at 46 years old presented a hysterical newlywed. In the end, even these things can be the ingredients for a good comedy.

This time Frič dared to act under Lamač's direction and in Burian's film. His Holmes performance is really something unprecedented, especially since he lacks a Watson. The theme of variations on Doyle, here in the original transcription by Vavris and later by Wasserman, is really as common as saffron in Central Europe in the 1930s. In total, three films were made, two of them directed by Lamač. After the double production of Lelicek in the Services of Sherlock Holmes, he made The Hound of the Baskervilles in Germany in 1936, and a year later the popular Reich actors Hans Albers and Heinz Rühmann took up the theme in Two Merry Adventurers. I really like Betty Kysilková's absurd dance, and I'm sad that the double role, which was eventually played by Lída Baarová (though a wonderful actress just starting out), should have gone to Suzanne Marwille (who looked just as good, and her film experience was not inconsiderable). At least Frič compensated her in Adjutant to His Highness.

I enjoyed watching this film again after five and a half years. The film is incomplete and archivists should reconstruct some of the film's themes, such as the degree of popularity of the detective story starring Leon Clifton. Or the next generation being inspired by the success of their predecessors (Grosslichtová certainly followed Ondra's work closely). Or the comparison of the emerging film youth (Baarová) in the arms of veterans of the theater stage (Rubík). There is a lot to enjoy here - in addition to the excellent costumes, for example, the rare acting performances of John Gollwell and others.

I really enjoy the Aztec intermezzo and it even makes me forget the episodic sloppiness in the form of Hans Richter.