rmoba13

This should be a cult film for those with mean elderly relatives. We have recommended this to folks with hypercritical mothers, mothers-in-law, and others, who also said "She's mean." And nobody else believes them, because the relative can be just so nice to others. we've seen the little smirk that comes across her face when she makes somebody else suffer. She is also willing to suffer herself, if it means others suffer even more.

This film rings so true that it must have been based somebody's actual experience. Packaging family angst as a comedy probably wouldn't sell in Hollywood, so we have to pick this up from the French.

Cinematically, it's better than average, with notable performances from Tati and her niece and nephew.

It's charming and amusing to boot.

The music (10/10) is sufficient reason to hunt this up, with the brilliant work of Henryk Wars (aka Henry Vars who wrote the Flipper theme),and lyrics by Emanuel Szlechter. The most famous are "Tylko we Lwowie" -- "Only in Lwow" and "Dobranoc Oczka Zmruz" -- "Goodnight blinky little eyes" which have become a Polish standards. There are also fine exterior shots of Lwow as place setting. This premiered in April in Warsaw where the studio is located, in spite of being nominally in Lwow.

Finally, the entertainment folks from Lwow were Jewish or Jewish influenced, as well as by Roma(Gypsie, Cygane), Ukrainian, Austro-Hungarian, and whoever else came through. This is a escapist movie that one might expect for the last spring/summer before the War. I would strongly recommend this film for those wishing to see something of the culture destroyed by the Holocaust or by the Soviet annexation of Lviv.

I must also recommend Bedzie Lepiej. This is in Polish, no subtitles, yet; Polish speakers go no further.

The Story, a comedy: The tramps Szcepko and Tonko perform Christmas puppet show for change and share their single Christmas Eve fish with Krysia and her father. Krysia, is orphaned but refuses to go live with her supposedly snobby, upper-crust grandmother. Instead she shares attic lodging with Tonko and Szczepko. Evenually Krysia ends up at her grandmothers house, but soon returns to the attic, where she is on the lam with Tonko and Szczepko. The tramps send Krysia to boarding school and finance this through a faked kidnapping scheme. Krysia finds love with an architect (who has the forgettable song here). In spite of cooperation of the boarding school butler, the whole thing unravels, but with a happy ending.