Il barone di Münchhausen

Someone should do a book on the making of this one. It might represent the best blindsiding of the Nazi regime by artists who had scores to settle. I'm always amazed and grateful it made it past the censor. First, the writer, Erich Kastner, was blacklisted, a Jew, and had his books burned by the Nazis. But they were SO desperate for a good writer they got him on board for this. You sense they wanted world distribution....even down to the product placement shot of a Munchausen children's book Albers is holding before the flashback. Hans Albers, the Brad Pitt of his day, was forced to give up his Jewish girlfriend, Hansi Berg, and work for the Nazis. He sent her money in London all through WWII. She made it out in '38 escaping with her Dad. Dad (Eugen Berg) was not as lucky. He got caught and sent to the camps. He died there in '44. Kastner's script pokes fun of ALL authority, and embraces life itself, and urges the viewer to wake up and take it all in before it's too late; the Baron turns down power to enjoy life, and always has time for a good meal or a hot date. The photography is excellent, the KINO restoration the one to get..Carnival in Venice is wonderful to see and you find bits of humor and wit and set decoration that survived to the 80's version..but there is a haunting, melancholy air to this version, even when everyone is enjoying themselves...the writer knows too quickly everything can just GO and you're best to enjoy what you can while you can. I sometimes see a sad, long look in Hans Albers eyes...is he wondering if he would ever see his gal again? Does he KNOW where her Dad is? What does he THINK of the Nazis?? As it was, Kastner lived to 1974, the richest of the lot, when Disney made his two most famous books (Parent Trap, Emil and the Detectives) into movies. He is the only cast member who's name is associated with a Lindsay Lohan movie. Hansi came back to Hans and they lived together until Albers' death in 1960. She died in 1975.

I found the film to be very enjoyable. I was impressed with the use of color. The film used Agfacolor film, which if memory serves me correctly was based on pastels, not at all like Technicolor.

The film is very rich and vibrant in its cinematography and color, this is very much appreciated when one sees the work that went into the Moon set.

Hans Albers plays an arrogant but lovable rogue who takes many, many years to learn the lesson of what is truly important in a mans life.

I am in agreement with one reviewer in that this film is not at all for children and should be screened carefully, this is a European film and the Hayes Act didn't exist in Germany.

I first saw "Münchhausen" in my native Romania as a child during the war (I mean WWII) and the scene of the baron's landing on the moon and having a conversation with the head, lying on the ground, of a woman who left the rest of her body in her lunar home, made such a powerful impression on me that to this day I remember it in all its funny details. It was also the first movie in color I had ever seen; yes, those were the days when movies, as a rule, were in black and white.

Revisiting the movie now, as a euphemistically labeled "senior citizen," I was surprised that it holds up quite well. It amuses, it surprises, it is well acted, the dialog is clever, written after all by the famous novelist Erich Kästner under a pseudonym to cover up the fact that the Nazis saw themselves forced to employ him after burning his books.

There is something quite disturbing in hindsight about this movie. Why was it made? It was released in the year between the Battle of Stalingrad and the Allied Normandy Invasion the two events that were to seal Germany's fate. Was it an attempt to sustain both at home and abroad the far-fetched illusion that the war was going so well that all the German people cared about was laughing at the Baron Münchhausen's lies? Or was it an attempt at showing that Babelsberg could produce a grand spectacle just as well as Hollywood? And if a spectacle was being offered, why, in a country in which mass murder and deception were the order of the day, was even the hero to be a liar?

I am asking these questions because much in this movie is disturbing for reasons related to them. Take the Baron himself, played in this movie by Hans Albers, the greatest star, the Clark Gable of German movies in those years, yet by the time of this movie a man in his fifties pretending to be irresistible to females. It is as if MGM had cast an aging Adolphe Menjou as Rhett Butler in "Gone With the Wind." Now Albers is a fine actor, but to enjoy the movie you definitely have to suspend disbelief and pretend that the aging actor riding the cannonball is not bothered by arthritic pain.

The sets look more like cheap nouveau-riche furnishings and the costumes are cut from wartime stock. Ilse Werner, as Princess Isabella d'Este, is as beautiful as ever, and as Count Cagliostro we get to see Ferdinand Marian, the actor who just a few years earlier had disgraced himself by playing the lead in "Jud Süss," the most disgusting anti-Semitic propaganda film ever made, a fact that ultimately led Marian to alcoholism and a DUI death at war's end, considered a suicide by many.

Now, one can say, let's just watch the film for what it is, and not in its historic context. But then, Marian's acting of Cagliostro, a swindler, is crafted with the same mannerisms he used in creating the Jew Süss. In short, the undeniable artistic qualities of this movie are infected with the severe moral deficiencies of its makers, and this surprisingly renders the movie more interesting than it has any right of being. This is what disturbs me.

You've got to hand it to that Josef Goebbels. When the little club footed maniac wasn't busy trying to get into the pants of every starlet of the German cinema, his UFA Studios could turn out some good work. Such is the case of the lavish spectacle Munchhausen. The color cinematography and special effects definitely equal the quality of anything Hollywood could do.

The Munchhausen Stories in German culture are akin to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. The author Rudolf Erich Raspe was trying for Swift like satire of the political events of his time. In time though they became beloved for their face value alone. In fact the protagonist became a synonym, Munchhausen's syndrome is a diagnosis for one who tells exaggerated stories or outright lies the better to ingratiate themselves with another individual or a group.

In fact at the same time that German romantic cinema star Hans Albers was doing Munchhausen over in Germany, a different kind of Munchhausen was popular in America. Jack Pearl, a former vaudevillian, had a radio series based on the Munchhausen character and his famous line to those who questioned the authenticity of his stories was "Vas you dere Charlie". Quite popular back in the day.

The story of the fabled Munchhausen is told in flashback during a party in modern Germany by the current Baron Munchhausen . By the way, another reviewer said that it would be Germany in the Thirties before World War II started. Not necessarily because the Nazi regime was notorious for not asking the kind of sacrifices demanded of its civil population until late in the war. Such a lavish type party was definitely in keeping with the regime's culture of the time.

Though Goebbels kept it light as he did most of UFA's product except those that were outright propaganda, they did get their shots in. During the part of the film concerning Munchhausen's visit to Imperial Russia, the German background of Catherine the Great played by a fetching Brigitte Horney is emphasized. Catherine was a name she took when she married the Czar, she was in fact Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst. Also there is a scene when Pugachev, the peasant leader of a revolt in Siberia, is brought in caged like an animal and looking like something from Dr. Moreau's laboratory. Pugachev was later played by Van Heflin in the film Tempest in the next decade. The caricature was definitely in keeping with the Nazi ideas to depict Slavic people as some kind of subhumans, almost as bad as Jews.

Throughout the film as Munchhausen travels from St. Petersburg, to Istanbul, to Venice and even the moon, Albers's faithful sidekick is Herman Speelmans who is like Sancho Panza or even Gabby Hayes if you will. Speelmans does a fine job and dies on the moon in a beautifully played scene.

As the propaganda is kept to a minimum, Munchhausen has survived to be appreciated on its own merits which are considerable.

The fabulous exploits of Baron MÜNCHHAUSEN include several wars, numerous plots and beautiful women without number.

At the height of World War Two, as the tide was beginning to turn against the Third Reich, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels commissioned this lavish motion picture as a commemoration of the 25th anniversary of Ufa, the government-run German film association. More importantly, it was also to be a rival of the great fantasy films which had come from the Allied nations, such as THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) and THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940). In that it succeeds brilliantly and needs no comparison to any other film.

The film is a great, lighthearted romp as it follows the adventures of the Baron from Prussia to St. Petersburg, Constantinople, Venice and even the Moon. It is fascinating to see the high quality which the Germans were still able to lavish on the picture, even as their Empire was beginning to crumble around them. The production values are of a very high order and the Technicolor photography is sumptuous to the eye. Remarkably, there is no National Socialist propaganda in the film and the War is never mentioned.

In the title role, Hans Albers gives a surprisingly sensitive performance for such a robust production. He takes the legendary character and gives the viewer a portrait of a dashing, reflective, amorous, compassionate, resourceful man. Whether riding on a cannonball, ingratiating himself with the Ottoman Sultan, or examining the fantastic flora of the lunar planet, Albers always makes Münchhausen totally believable.

All the acting is of a high order, but especially worthy of mention are Ferdinand Marian as the mysterious Count Cagliostro, Brigitte Horney as a flirtatious Catherine the Great, and Gustav Waldau as an aging Casanova.

It should be mentioned that this is not a movie for children. Given its European origins it should come as no surprise that MÜNCHHAUSEN is a good deal more libidinous than the standard Hollywood fare of the time.

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There was a real Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Münchhausen (1720-1797), a German adventurer and teller of tall tales, but he had nothing to do with the book of fictional exploits which borrowed his name, written by Rudolf Erich Raspe (1737-1794), upon which this film was based.