Anna and Elizabeth

For the music duo, see Anna & Elizabeth.

Anna and Elizabeth
German film poster
GermanAnna und Elisabeth
Directed byFrank Wisbar
Written by
  • Gina Fink
  • Frank Wisbar
Produced by
  • Hermann Ephraim
  • Frank Wisbar
Starring
CinematographyFranz Weihmayr
Edited byAlice Ludwig
Music byPaul Dessau
Production
company
Distributed byTerra Film
Release date
  • 13 April 1933 (1933-04-13)
Running time
74 minutes
CountryGermany
LanguageGerman

Anna and Elizabeth (German: Anna und Elisabeth) is a 1933 German drama film directed by Frank Wisbar and starring Dorothea Wieck, Hertha Thiele and Mathias Wieman. The film reunited Wieck and Thiele who had starred in Mädchen in Uniform together two years earlier, "in yet another tragic story with a lesbian subtext."[1]

The film's sets were designed by Heinrich Beisenherz and Fritz Maurischat.

Synopsis

Elisabeth, a wealthy young aristocratic woman who uses a wheelchair, hears of Anna, a young peasant girl who is apparently able to work miracles, believed to be through supernatural powers. She brings the reluctant village girl to live with her, and appears to have been cured simply through her sheer belief in Anna's powers, but it is Elisabeth's own will that makes her walk, but so firm is her belief in Anna, she desires her constant companionship.

However, an attempt to demonstrate Anna's skills to the public fails, and in her despair Elisabeth throws herself off a cliff while Anna returns to her simple village life.

Cast

Lesbian theme

British queer theorist and film critic Richard Dyer explains:

"Ana und Elisabeth's fetid atmosphere and hysterical conclusion feels like an attempt to batten down the hatches on the emotions unleashed by Mädchen in Uniform; yet those feelings do still come through, with if anything greater intensity and ardour; Elisabeth is able to walk through her belief in Anna, they do have a transcendent communion as suggested by Anna's intuitive sense of Elisabeth's suicide — even at plot level; the strength of lesbian feelings is not denied, and the filmic treatment enhances it.[2]

Thiele was forced to leave Germany when Adolf Hitler came into power, because of her association with gay/lesbian films.[2]

Reception

The New York Times praised the acting of Wieck, but was less impressed with that of Thiele. While admitting that the director had a natural flair for tragedy, the reviewer thought that the film was sometimes so slow-moving that it lapsed into ponderousness.[3]

Wanda Hale from The New York Daily News wrote "Hertha Thiele's work as the victimized and unhappy Anna is as fine and restrained piece of acting this reviewer has seen in many a day, but Miss Wieck, as the susceptible and bad-mannered Elisabeth, acts more like a maniac than a physically sick person; with less thought and time on unimportant details the film would have been considerably bettered."[4]

C. A. Lejeune of The Observer stated "this story of village life with Thiele and Wieck is a slightly erotic reversal of their relations in Mädchen in Uniform; the film is a study in hysteria, with morbid camera work, and tense direction; it's virtue is intensity, its fault the too complete departure from a normal view of life."[5]

See also

References

  1. ^ Bock, Hans-Michael; Bergfelder, Tim (2009). The Concise Cinegraph: Encyclopaedia of German Cinema. Berghahn Books. p. 530. ISBN 978-0-85745-565-9.
  2. ^ a b Dyer, Richard; Pidduck, Julianne (2003). Now You See it: Studies in Lesbian and Gay Film. Psychology Press. pp. 61–62. ISBN 978-0-415-25499-1.
  3. ^ "Movie Review: 'Anna und Elisabeth' With Dorothea Wieck and Hertha Thiele - 'Liebelei'". The New York Times. 2 July 1933.
  4. ^ Hale, Wanda (14 June 1936). "Anna and Elizabeth New German Film". The New York Daily News. p. 81.
  5. ^ Lejeune, C. A. (28 January 1934). "Some New Films Of The Week". The Observer. p. 13.
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