La Habanera

"La Habanera" has not a very high intrinsic value. The plot is a romance with a very predictable happy end.

The film has however some historical interest. It was made by Douglas Sirk when he was still in Germany and operated under his real name Detlef Sierck. Sierck went ultimately to the USA but he did so later than other German directors. "La Habanera" was made in 1937 when the Nazi regime was already in power for a few years. Together with the fact that the screenplay was written by Gerhard Menzel, a writer who was also involved with some of the worst Nazi propaganda, the film got a bad name for a long time. Objectively there is much escapism and very little Nazi ideology in the plot. The film is much less "politically incorrect" than the oeuvre of Leni Riefenstahl, and even her films are gradually being reassessed according to artistic (and not political) standards

Like Fritz Lang Douglas Sirk was married to a wife with Nazi sympathies. His second wife was Jewish and of course they wanted to leave Nazi Germany. At this time the story of his life showed striking similarities with the story of the main character of "La Habanera". Leaving the country with his second wife also meant leaving behind the son that he had with his first wife. This son stayed in Germany with his Nazi mother, played as child star in Nazi propaganda and died at a young age in the war.

The main character of "La Habanera" is played by the Swedisch actress Zarah Leander. While her compatriot and contemporary Greta Garbo went to Hollywood, Zarah Leander became an UFA (German filmstudio) star. She ended up on the wrong side of history. Greta Garbo became an icon, Zarah Leander fell into oblivion.

An incredibly stupid film, this one should be avoided. Leander has done so much better work for the screen, and one shouldn't waste one's time on this miserable attempt to create the exotic, sensual southern atmosphere that would make the middle class German hausfrau's heart beat quicker. Leander herself is much better in less melodrama, and in this particular film she doesn't even have the best possible songs to sing. Go for something else instead.

Zarah Leander was to German cinema of the 1930s what Garbo and Dietrich together were to Hollywood. She physically suggested Garbo and had the same deep, Swedish-accented voice. Unlike Garbo, and much like Dietrich, she often sang in her films while swathed in baroque costumes and tons of makeup and curlicued coiffures so as to convey an extreme artificiality. La Habanera, stylishly directed by Detlef Sierk (the future Douglas Sirk) and beautifully shot is the perfect vehicle for this lush romantic vision of the tropics.

Astree, a young Swede, travels to Puerto Rico with her bilious old aunt, is so enraptured by the tropical atmosphere and the attentions of a local Don (Ferdinand Marian) that she jumps ship to stay there. Ten years later, she's miserable in the remorseless heat and torpidity, crushed by the realization that she made an impulsive mistake, married a man she didn't love and now is sentenced to remain trapped and homesick. Her only consolation is her son whom she estranges from his father, spoiling him, doting on him and singing him twee songs with lyrics about snowflakes on nose tips intertwined with melodic recitations of the letters of the alphabet. One would hope that by the age of 9 the boy would be ready for something a bit more advanced. A parallel plot line involves two Swedish scientists who travel to the island to research and develop a vaccine for the "Puerto Rico Fever" which blows in annually on a "fever wind" and sends people into comas from which they never emerge. The powerful Don does not want the world to think infectious fevers exist on the island – hurts business. So he connives to sabotage their efforts.

Throughout the story the haunting but kitschy title song by Lothar Bruhne and Bruno Balz is sung by various groups of "natives," used as underscoring and in a climactic scene, performed to the hilt by Leander and a Caribbean orchestra in one of most rapturous musical sequences of 1930's filmdom.

Threaded through the plot are criticisms of the United States (via the Rockefeller Institute and a sly dig at President Roosevelt) and a suggestion that Nordic types are better off with their own kind. The depiction of Puerto Rico is pure fantasy, but no worse than the usual Hollywood image of Latin America of the period.

This is the first of the two melodramas Detlef Sierck made with Zarah Leander,and although it is more celebrated and more popular,I think that its screenplay is definitely weaker than that of "Zu Neue Ufern" aka "Paramatta" or even the overlooked " Stutzen Der Gesellschaft" (1935) which predates many of Sierck's topics which will be developed in "all that Heaven allows" notably.But the directing is more inventive in "Habanera".

It's strange that both "Habanera" and "zu Neue Ufern" are "exotic" works ,both taking place in South America;but while in the latter ,Europa (England that is) is considered a country where prudery (this scandalous show!)and cruelty (the heroine is sentenced to hard labor for 600 miserable pounds)rule,it plays an opposite role in the former:Sweden is some kind of Eldorado -one should note that Detlef Sierck is Danish and his star is Swedish- where civilization reigns and where science and medicine allow their citizens to live in freedom and happiness.The heroine's new hot land is the country of crooked physicians ,of corrupt cops ,of evil.

Detlef Sierck's directing is the best of the four German movies I've seen by him.He creates a stifling atmosphere with his dark rooms ,without showing any sun,where the shadows of the blinds reflect on the heroine and give the viewer the strange feeling she is in jail.The only freshness he gets is provided by a sequence in Sweden and,oddly,when the heroine tells her son about her country .

Zarah Leander sings ,but nothing here approaches her sensational "yes sir ,no sir" in the music hall in "Zu Neue Ufern" .But her rendition of "la Habanera" has a great emotional power ,because her former love is listening to her .

To those who would think that Sirk was embracing Nazi ideology: 1)He left Germany after "zu neuen Ufern" the same year. 2)His first American movie "Hitler's madman" was a strong anti-Nazi manifesto,actually propaganda 3)He made " a time to love and a time to die" in 1958,from E.M.Remarque,the pacifist writer whose books were burned by the Nazis;it tells the story of a German soldier who died in WW2;exactly what happened to Sirk's own son.

The earliest example of Douglas Sirk's filmography that I have seen is this German melodrama starring Swedish singing star Zarah Leander. Although hardly a major film when judged against his later, more renowned Hollywood output of the 1950s, at the same time it is just as well-crafted and visually polished a film as any he ever made. A Swedish tourist, vacationing in Puerto Rico with her stuffy elderly aunt, falls in love with its exotic ambiance and laid-back lifestyle and impulsively elopes with its leading citizen Don Pedro (Ferdinand Marian) while at the harbor. Cut to 10 years later and their marriage, which has bore them a son, is at the end of its tether; meanwhile, the resilient aunt decides to entrust an old friend of her niece's – called over there to investigate the outbreak of an epidemic fever – to bring her back home. Don Pedro tries his utmost to keep the real health situation in his community under wraps and this serves to add another layer of animosity towards the Swedish scientist. The titular anthem is heard in various forms throughout the film and, for whatever reason, Leander feels the need to belt it out in public as a farewell gesture to the land and man (who has eventually succumbed to the fever himself) that had captured her heart all those years ago.