Weimar Smiles
Weimar smiles: musicals, comedies, and truffles
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Die Puppe (The Doll) 1919 All ages Young Lanzelot (Hermann Themig), pursued by 40 virgins, chooses to marry a life-size doll instead. With a nod to filmmaker Georges Méliès' trickeries and fairground attractions and German Romantic author ETA Hoffmann's Tales, Ernst Lubitsch creates a playful fantasy with painted backdrops, authorial interventions (the director himself appears like a magician to set the scene), and shifting levels of representation. Released in the same year as Robert Weine's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Lubitsch's charming film bears surprising similarities. Thu 4 Sept 2.00pm / Cinema A |
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Die Drei von der Tankstelle (Three from the Filling Station) 1930 All ages Universum-Film’s first musical comedy is a light-hearted satire about three unemployed men who decide to open a gas station and each fall in love with the charming Lilian Harvey. A major hit across Europe and the US, its success no less than masterworks by directors Ernst Lubitsch and Rene Clair, popularised the early talkie operettas. Sat 6 Sept 11.00am / Cinema A |
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Monte Carlo 1930 All ages Within ten years of The Doll 1919, Ernst Lubitsch was the most famous German director in the world, directing spicy musicals in Hollywood. Monte Carlo is one of his most remarkable. A runaway bride (Jeannette MacDonald in her underwear) heads for the casinos and gambling dens of Monaco and encounters the dapper Jack Buchanan. This dizzying musical-comedy is best known for MacDonald’s performance of 'Beyond the Blue Horizon', and also stars Claude Allister as a prune-faced prince, aptly described as one of cinema’s greatest walking sight gags. Thu 4 Sept 3.00pm / Cinema A |
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Die 3groschenoper (Threepenny Opera) 1931 All ages Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s classic of left-wing Weimar cinema occasioned Bertolt Brecht’s famous essay Threepenny Lawsuit and endured attempts by the Nazis to destroy all copies. Featuring legendary performances by Lotte Lenya and Rudolph Forster as Mack the Knife, the charismatic king of the London’s underworld. Sun 7 Sept 1.00pm / Cinema A |
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Lady in the Dark 1944 All ages Nightmares and anxious dreams plague Ginger Rogers, the editor of a fashion magazine who doesn’t know what to do with the men in her life. A lavish Technicolor musical based on the Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin Broadway production, the songs — most famously 'My Ship' and 'The Saga of Jenny' — are dreamed up on the couch of Rogers’ psychoanalysist. * The screening of Lady in the Dark has been postponed. Screening times to be confirmed.
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Pennies From Heaven 1981 All ages This Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical with Brechtian overtones is a dark and vastly entertaining adaptation of Dennis Potter’s celebrated BBC miniseries. Steve Martin plays Arthur, a cheesy sheet music salesman who does what he can to survive the Great Depression. When Arthur mimes a love song, the voice of Connie Boswell or Bing Crosby springs from of him, occasioning stunning dance and music sequences. Sun 7 Sept 3.00pm / Cinema A and Wed 10 Sept 6.00pm / Cinema B
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