Tag: 1958

Lilli, a Girl From the Big City

  By

★★★
“The original Barbie”

The subtitle is not a joke. Lilli began her life as a comic – just a single drawing, with a line of her saying something funny – in the German newspaper Bild. Drawn by German artist Reinhard Beuthien, it ran from 1952-1961. With her child-like face, perfect slim figure, and long blond hair that she carried as a ponytail, Lilli was an attractive young woman. Also, she was saucy, sexy, independent and single: not at all as you would imagine young women to be in 1950’s Germany. It’s unsurprising that “Bild-Lilli” had her fans, and that dolls in her image would be produced from 1955 on. Though these were originally meant not as toys, but for marketing purposes.

When Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler went to Germany on holiday in 1956, she discovered the dolls and wanted to bring them to the American market. She had her designers create a new doll based on Lilli, and released her under the name “Barbie” in 1959. It seems Handler was afraid of copyright claims by the original producers. For Wikipedia tells us: “Mattel acquired the rights to Lilli in 1964, and all the promotional and merchandising activities related to the character were discontinued after then.” So, yes: while Mattel changed details here and there, Barbie was originally indeed a German girl named Lilli. Though looking at the All-American girl Barbie embodies today (also her animated movies, as well as the recent live-action one), it’s hard to recognize Lilli in Barbie nowadays.

However, long before the sale of rights, in 1958, Lilli had her own live-action movie. [I wonder if Mattel buying Lilli is why I haven’t seen this movie on TV for 30 years or more. It has never been released on videotape, DVD or Blu-ray.] This starred Danish actress Ann Smyrner, who won the role in a contest. Smyrner spoke only a little German, so was dubbed by German voice actress Margot Leonard. She would go on to fame for also dubbing Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg – basically, everyone young, female and sexy in 1950s and 60s cinema. I mention her especially, because I think that without her voice, Lilli might not have worked so well as a film character.

In this story, Lilli works as a reporter for a newspaper. Her introduction is already notable, driving an elegant sports car at high speed into a parked vehicle. When a policeman tries to fine her, she flatters and confuses him, kisses him on the cheek and leaves. In the newspaper office, she resists the flirtation of her boss with a move – is it early martial arts? – that leaves him on the ground. Really, we had not seen a female character like that in a German movie. It might have been slightly different in America, with some female characters in westerns and swashbucklers, but here, this was new. Although things were about to change, as I remember Lieselotte Pulver, whose Spessart Inn series of films began the same year.

Lilli is sent to report on a missionary congress in Sicily, getting there by ship. Honestly, I sincerely doubt this movie was filmed there, because we hardly see any Italian landscapes here. You see signs in Italian painted on walls indicating this is a hotel, a restaurant and so on. It’s meant to convince you that you are there because… well… it’s written in Italian language, so it must be Italy, right? Most of the scenes are inside on sets, and all of these might well have been in a German film studio. Also, some characters speak German with a fake Italian accent. It might have been convincing for a German audience in the 50s, but these feel kind of hilarious nowadays. (Although we still get German actors playing Italian characters, at least they leave out the fake accents now!) The opening credits say “Produced in the Arca studios, Berlin”, a facility which also produced a movie set partly in Africa!

But let’s be fair. For a 50s movie, Lilli’s adventure is quite exciting. She meets an old man (Siegfried Schürenberg) onboard the ship, who asks her for a favor and soon turns up dead in his cabin. She finds money printing plates in her room. Her investigations in Sicily lead her to a car garage where a traitor from a gang (Friedrich Joloff) is killed. As one of the murderers tries to abuse Lilli, he accidentally tears off her dress, leading to Lilli running away in her lingerie, causing a commotion in the streets until friendly sailors bring her back to the hotel. 

Another body appears, this time in her hotel room, and she gets friendly with potential love interest Mr. Morton (Hoven). He turns out to be up to no good, offering the gangsters a hand in getting the printing plates – most of these gangsters (including the gangster lady, below) are obviously not smart enough to deal with Lilli. When her little Italian friend is kidnapped, the big bad turns out to be the priest who accompanied her already on the ship (Peters). Lilli escapes, and has her sailor friends beat up the criminals in their own pub. The movie ends with the gangsters arrested, and Morton turns out to be Lieutenant Collins of Interpol, working undercover to help capture the villain. As Lilli already had Collins tied to a chair, she leaves her love interest struggling to free himself – a bit of revenge on her part.

Thinking about it, Lilli seems to spend most of the movie’s runtime escaping from some dangerous place or situation. She shoots with a gun at a vase, and engages in a – for the 50s – acceptable car chase. She even drives backwards, and fakes her own death by tossing the car down a slope​, Dr. No style. Though probably not acceptable for today anymore, she does it all in high-heels. But that trope is ironically subverted, when after that big chase, one of her high-heels breaks. This seems to be a bigger nuisance for her than the chase! But I have to say: for a German production, in a time when there were virtually no local crime films and no one would have understood the meaning of an “action movie” here, this film is almost ground-breaking.

However, that doesn’t mean it is “good”. Lilli survives more due to luck than intelligence, and her enemies aren’t too bright either. Characters often don’t react as would be appropriate or logical. Why the chief of police (Rudolf Platte) feels the need to chase Lilli, because a body was found in her room, escapes me; she is hardly a danger to the public. Morton walking into the gangsters’ den and immediately being accepted by them is implausible. Lilli and Morton kissing, when they have barely met or exchanged more than three words, is even more so. The revelation of the priest being the villain has no punch at all, despite clearly being intended as a big twist. Another problem is dialogue which doesn’t give enough information for scenes to work or have impact. But then, this is close to the first attempt at a German crime movie after WWII, and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Lilli is adequately sassy, some of the gangsters are quite simple minded, and everyone falls head over heels for Lilli, as if they had never seen a beautiful girl before.

The cast is almost a “Who’s Who” of German actors at the time. Schürenberg (the German dubbing voice of Clark Gable and Shere Khan in The Jungle Book) would become very well-known due to his “Sir John” character in the Edgar Wallace movies. They also often featured Peters prominently, who made a career out of playing secondary villains. He would later appear in Dario Argento’s first giallo and could be seen next to Sean Connery in A Fine Madness (1966). Platte was a very well-known actor who started in films in 1929 and would work into the 1970s. Joloff was part of SF-TV series Raumpatrouille Orion (“Space Command Orion“, 1966), a German equivalent to Star Trek, and the German voice of James Mason and Dr. No. The Austrian Hoven had a big run in 50s and 60s German genre cinema, then became a director of horror and erotic movies at the end of the sixties. But perhaps the biggest name appears at the end. Udo Jürgens was a huge star in the German music scene, with hit after hit until his death in 2014. Here, he sings the title and end songs, and plays one of the sailors.

After this movie Smyrner made a career in German and Italian movies of the Sixties, appearing in German krimis, romances, adventure movies, westerns and even the early wave of erotic comedies at the end of the decade. She could also be seen in two early American SF movies. According to another well-known actress, Smyrner was interested in both men and women, though struggled with her image as an early “sex bomb”. After she left the film scene, when German film production effectively stopped in the early 70s, she started to write articles for Danish newspapers, mostly about theological themes. 

The Lilli movie, though almost forgotten today, paved the way for things to come. One year later, crime-comedy Nick Knatterton, based on another beloved comic strip, from magazine Quick, made it to the big screen with a similarly impressive cast. 1959 also saw the release of the first Edgar Wallace movie Der Frosch mit der Maske (“Face of the Frog”). That crime film focused more on horror, and was a major hit with audiences, leading to a series of 32 Edgar Wallace movies through 1972. Obviously, the less serious approach of Lilli, didn’t quite click with audiences at the time. But without this kind of pioneering work, would we have seen what came after? This little flick is amusing fluff, doesn’t harm anyone, and might have been a revelation for German girls in the 50s, with no other choices than becoming a house wife or a secretary! While the story is kind of a fantasy, Lilli shows there may be alternatives.

Dir: Hermann Leitner
Star: Ann Smyrner, Adrian Hoven, Claude Farell, Werner Peters
a.k.a. Lilli – ein Mädchen aus der Großstadt

The Young Boss

  By

★★★
“Singing samurai swings sword.”

youngboss18 years ago, the maid to a Japanese lord had twins by him. This was, apparently, a disgrace to the family – not the affair, so much as it being twins. So it was pretended she had only given birth to one daughter, Chiyo, who was brought up as the heiress. The mother and other daughter, Yuki, were sent away and after the former died, the daughter was brought up as a sword-wielding boy, Kichisaburo, by her mother’s brother, Edoya Kichibei. However, she still has a certificate proving her birth-right, and various factions are now stirring to establish her as the “rightful” heir to the title. Or, if she’s unwilling to go along with this, the plotters will simply steal the certificate from Edoya, and use an impostor to make their claim.

Misora has a double role here, playing both princesses. Though this dates from 1958, and any interaction uses stand-ins rather than more sophisticated techniques. Not that it matters much. She was a cultural icon, best known as a singer, selling over 80 million records during and after her lifetime. This explains the several occasions on which she bursts into song here. I was quite surprised, since I do not typically expect warbling in my samurai flicks. But she was also an actress, with over 150 films to her credit, and her performance is fine here. As usual, the “woman pretending to be a man” plotline is unconvincing, though at least the haircut and costumes help sell things in this case.

It’s certainly tame by subsequent Japanese swordplay movies, no surprise given the kinder, gentler era from which this comes. In contrast to their arterial spray, no-one here dies with more than a smudge of blood on their robes. I’d rather have seen the heroine remain as Kichisaburo throughout, rather than reverting to a “princessy” look after her sister’s betrothed shows up to bring Yuki back to her ancestral home. It’s certainly a more interesting character, complete with a minion whose purpose appears to be to rabble-rouse on her behalf, like a personal ring-announce. Witness lines such as, “If you don’t know him, you must be country bumpkins! Listen up. He helps the weak, and crushes the strong. Known as a man’s man, he’s the second generation of Edoya Kichibei.” Meanwhile, in the blue corner…

The other subsidiary characters aren’t very interesting, unfortunately, and get more screen-time than they warrant. The romantic angle – Yuki falls for her sister’s betrothed – doesn’t work, and the political shenanigans of a lot of people with similar top-knots, bog proceedings down more than they enlighten or entertain. It does better when in motion, Misora proving effective with the sword. They wisely give her a style that relies much more on speed than strength, dispatching her victims in two or three swift strokes. It also ends satisfactorily, with a surprisingly poignant ending that sees the heroine step aside and return to her former life so Chiyo can be happy. And just time for one last song, naturally!

Dir: Kiyoshi Sakei
Star: Hibari Misora, Hashizo Okawa, Denjiro Okochi, Shunji Sakai

High School Hellcats

  By

★★★
“Pussies galore.”

hellcatsSpectacularly dated in some ways, this also possesses comforting resonances with the present day: hey, teenagers were brattily rebellious in 1958 too. New girl Joyce (Lime) is lured in by the bad-girl posings of the Hellcats, led by Connie (Lund) and her long-time second in command, Dolly (Sidney). They shoplift! They throw knives about! They smoke! This is all to the concern, not so much of her parents (who seem largely oblivious to the moral depths into which their daughter is sinking, providing her skirts aren’t too short), as her boyfriend, Mike (Halsey), who is concerned about where the Hellcats are leading Joyce.

Dolly, meanwhile, is none too happy at the increasingly cozy relationship between Connie and Joyce, that threatens to supplant her position as deputy. Matters come to a head after a party at an unoccupied house, where a game of “sardines” has a tragic conclusion. The death is hushed up, with all present vowing to keep it secret – but the cops are soon nosing around, and the pressure starts to cause cracks in the Hellcats – some members in particular…

Probably the most deliciously mad element is the first “initiation” through which Joyce has to go, involving her in the hideous crime of… wearing slacks to school. Clearly, these young women are completely irredeemable and beyond any hope of redemption. Yeah, it all seems remarkably sweet and innocent in comparison to modern life; though on the other hand, this was also while segregation was still part of American culture, and the entirely Caucasian nature of the film and its cast is also notable. But as so often, the bad girls seem an awful lot more fun than the blandly-uninteresting Joyce; give them seven more years (plus some plastic surgery), and they could end up starring in Faster, Pussycat! – there’s much the same enthusiastic spitting of over-ripe dialogue here.

It isn’t just their attitude: it’s notable that, unlike some entries in the “teenage girl gang” genre, the Hellcats are not an off-shoot of a male gang, or indeed, beholden to men in any way – the only male character of note is Mike, and he is basically as useful as a chocolate teapot. Even at the end, when Joyce is lured into a late-night meeting at the derelict cinema which is the gang’s HQ, he serves no significant purpose. That’s remarkably advanced for its time, and is the kind of forward thinking which keeps this watchable when, let’s be honest, many of the topical elements are more likely to trigger derisive snorts in the contemporary viewer. On the other hand, the amusement added certainly can’t be said to detract from the overall entertainment value.  While I’m not exactly going to claim this is some kind of hidden gem, it was certainly more watchable than I expected, given both the passage of time and its obvious throwaway nature, even in its day.

Dir: Edward Bernds
Star: Yvonne Lime, Brett Halsey, Susanne Sidney, Jana Lund

Carve Her Name With Pride

  By

★★★
“Worthy, but rather sluggish, retelling of the life of St. Violette of Szabo.”

This is based on a true story, so we know from the start this is going to end in front of a firing-squad – at least until the Hollywood remake, with a happy ending. Given this, the film still tries to crank up the tension, but as written, Violette Szabo comes off as beyond saintly, without flaws or imperfections. Almost as irritating, she is shown as being mostly inspired by the death of her husband, rather than any innate patriotism (Charlotte Gray similarly portrayed a female SOE agent as passive-reactive). Having said that, the movie generally stays true to the facts, though the poem supposedly written by her husband was actually, in far less romantic reality, by her SOE codemaster – interestingly, the SOE’s name is not mentioned at all. Much of the end is fictionalised; details of her interrogation, for example, are obviously unavailable.

The film does take much too long to get going – it’s almost half-way done before she touches French soil – and most of the exposition, especially early on, is unbearably clunky. However, McKenna is solid as Violette and, despite some questionable accents, so are most of the cast (look out for a young Michael Caine as a soldier on a train asking for water; Gilbert would later direct Alfie and Educating Rita, in addition to three Bond flicks). The characters are stereotypical, particularly Ze Germans, but we should remember this was made in 1958, only 13 years after the war ended, and balance was not an issue; Szabo’s torture at the hands of the Nazis still makes uncomfortable viewing. Rather than watching the movie at 11pm on Thursday night (as we did!), a Sunday afternoon slot should fit this admirably.

Dir: Lewis Gilbert
Star: Virginia McKenna, Paul Scofield, Jack Warner, Denise Grey