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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.

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.

The acting was good, and convincing enough . Ferdinand Marian as the jealous husband plays his part well, and does seem a little crazy. Zarah Leander as one of the leading actresses in Germany did well too, though I reckon most of her roles are similar in that she needs to act cool, and sing with her characteristic deep voice. Leander can be seen as a substitute for Marlene Dietrich who left for America, and Leander's role here reminds me of Dietrich's role in Blonde Venus. There are some similarities to both narratives as well as both women's role as a mother. Karl Martell and Boris Alekin were pretty much the only ones who seemed to brighten up the film with their charismatic persona.

The story was interesting enough for the most part, though it is interesting to analyse the film in terms of Nazi propaganda. The Puerto Ricans are depicted as uncivilized, rough and corrupt, while the Swedish (ultimately the Germans) are seen in clean environments and depicted as rich, gentlemanly and having better technology. Plus, the son is the ideal image of an Aryan. Coincidence? I think not! (Leander's character is established as Swedish so as to divert any accusations that this film is Nazi propaganda. I really didn't think about this at all, but that is what my professor says, and it makes sense)

Though the ending does cause some confusion. Asteree says she has no regrets, but throughout the film she complains miserably about how she wasted her life there. Making the message at the end a little ambiguous.

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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.

"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.

I love this film. I love it for itself, and I love it for the light it sheds on Sirk's later Universal pictures of the '50's. The DVD from Kino comes with a brilliant little essay by Jan-Christopher Horak where, among other things, he asks the question "But was it (this film) really transgressive?" This same question has been asked about Written on the Wind, Imitation of Life and all the others. And all of us who love Sirk's films need to ask ourselves this question from time to time. I can say that what I find transgressive in Sirk's work is the multiplicity of angles and approaches that the films reveal. They dare to find the beauty and truth in melodrama. They dare to be ironic without snickering. For all the acclaim that Far From Heaven received, no one, as far as I know, commented on the fact that, compared to Sirk, Haynes stacks the deck. None of his minor characters have the emotional or psychological complexity that Sirk's do. They are stick figures for us to laugh knowingly at. They are "camp". But Sirk plunges into his work with such camp icons as Leander (here) and Rock Hudson (elsewhere) and comes up with a text that continues to resonate long after the images have flickered away.

Horak goes on to say that in this film, Puerto Rico is exciting, exotic and dangerous, a typography of the Other, while Sweden represents "all that is Heimat". A vision of Aryan homeland, and thus a site for subliminal Nazi ideology. Did Sirk do no more than artistically mirror the status quo? I think not.Sirk was a successful director of "women's pictures" in the early days of the Third Reich, just as he was in the America of the '50's. What is oppositional in his work is not any kind of obvious political subtext, but an attitude towards image and material where the despotic Don Pedro is counterpoised with the smothering, nearly incestuous Astree. And both of them are covered in shadows, slats, mirrors, flowers - all of the accoutrements of the Sirkian hothouse atmosphere. Some sickly-sweet, unhealthy thing is always insinuating itself into the mise - en - scene. Sirk is like what Walter Benjamin called Baudelaire: a secret agent of his class and society. His missives send images of that society to its members that correspond to the vision they have of themselves. And underneath that there is another level of text. Nothing so obvious as "critique". But portraiture - "la verite en peinture" - sometimes as devastating as Goya's.

I recently watched Veit Harlan's 1940 Nazi propaganda "Jud Suss," "the most hateful" film ever made. I had to see more of its star, the actor Ferdinand Marian.

The first eighteen minutes of "La Habanera" constitute one of the most beautiful, economical sequences in film. The camera glides like the most sinuous and powerful of ballroom dancers; shots and sound accumulate artistic power like the carefully placed words in a sonnet. On the dramatic seaside cliff of a tropical isle, Astree (Zarah Leander), a sheltered Swedish tourist, watches Flamenco. The camera caresses everything it sees: sea, foam, rock face, palm fronds, the costume of the Flamenco dancer, her pride in her skill, Spanish and Indian physiognomies. With variations that make your heart ache, like the notes of a fugue, the same visual motifs replay throughout the film: exotically costumed women performing for audiences, caged birds, men saying goodbye, water, both wild and domesticated, fruits, flowers, and light filtered and fractured by venetian blinds, mosquito nets, ceiling fans, and snow. The ear as well as the eye is invited to participate in the dream: the shrill call of a bigoted aunt, "Astree, Astree!" frosts the most tender of moments, the bullfight crowd roars. "La Habanera" engulfs you; you're on vacation. Director Douglas Sirk's artistry never lets up till the final frame; symmetry serves as the strands of his web. "La Habanera," the title song, is insistently seductive as a toreador – you want to sway with his hips and let him dictate movement – and then it is grating and cruelly taunting – you want to slam shut the window and silence the singers – and, finally, it is heartbreakingly poignant – you want to follow, but realize that you no longer can.

A jeep driver with one flower behind his ear, another in his teeth, and a song in his heart picks up Astree and her overbearing, very chesty dowager aunt. They encounter Don Pedro de Avila, the island's padrone, astride a black horse. His face is framed by a wide-brimmed black hat and embroidered lapels. This romance-novel hero escorts the Swedish ladies to a bullfight. Don Pedro communicates his masterful inhabitation of his body. His steps spring; his arm, greeting spectators, sweeps with the majesty of inherited noblesse oblige; his hand nonchalantly tosses a handkerchief into a deferential peon's proffered hat, thus releasing a raging bull. When Don Pedro smiles his warm, crinkly-eyed smile at Astree, it is as if the sun is rising in the east. He is manly; when the bullfighter fails, it is he, at Astree's command, who dispatches the bull "with one thrust to the heart." He is attentive; Astree drops her fan in the bullring, and Pedro retrieves it, snaps it open, and returns it to Astree with a gesture that Nijinski could not perform with more seductive grace. Don Pedro accompanies Astree and Aunt Anna to their ship; he walks backward, away from the ship; there is a tension in his step as if he were a mime imitating a man saying goodbye to his love who is leaving aboard a ship. He pauses behind dockside exports to light a cigarette; even that casual, mundane move conveys erotic power. Within seconds, Astree has jumped ship; she's in his arms and her fate is sealed.

Fast forward ten years. Don Pedro, much aged, addresses Astree, nowhere to be seen. In her place, across an elegant armchair, drapes a lovely, lacey cloud, reminiscent of a brides' wedding gown. With a riding crop, Don Pedro tentatively taps, then seductively strokes, this white dress. His aggression rising, again, using the riding crop, he lifts the dress, as if lasciviously lifting a woman's hem. He then grabs the dress, manhandles it, rips it viciously, and throws it down. Only then does a very changed Astree enter. Her youth is gone. She, who had been so wild, gay, and impetuous, is now sober and resigned. Sirk has conveyed the previous ten years in Don Pedro's treatment of Astree's dress. Worship and passion morphed into obsession and then descended into oppression and contempt. Astree tells Don Pedro that she's come to despise the island, and him; she deeply regrets ever leaving cold, blond, superior Sweden.

Later, in a climactic scene, before hurting Don Pedro badly, Astree performs a profoundly sentimental gesture. She dons a traditional Caribbean costume Pedro had given her. By wearing this dress at a key moment, Astree gives Don Pedro a gift. Similarly, director Douglas Sirk, who was the husband of a Jewish wife, gives the audience, a gift. This scene undercuts the "Swede = superior; Caribbean = inferior" message. As Astree sings, Don Pedro watches her; he becomes ecstatic; it is clear that no matter how Nazi ideology or melodramatic convention dictate that this movie end, no one will ever love Astree as her racially "inferior," dark lover has. Pedro breathes her in like air; she moves him as his drug of choice. You know from watching her watching him that Don Pedro has given Astree the most unforgettable nights of her life.

There's so much else to talk about in this film, from the goofy font used in the opening title sequence to Astree's emotionally incestuous interactions with her strikingly cold, blond son. There's "Rosita," the male cross-dresser and Frieda-Kahlo imitator who plays Pedro's housekeeper. Rosita dresses like a nun, part of the film's anti-Catholic, pro-science, as well as anti-Caribbean, pro-Swedish, subtext. There's Dr. Gomez, a Simon-Abkarian lookalike, who, in a very funny scene, is regaled by a gallbladder-obsessed hypochondriac. There's Puerto Rico fever, perfidious islanders and the heroic Swedish doctor who fights both. There's the breathtakingly beautiful Zarah Leander, marketed as Nazi Germany's substitute for Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. But what this film amply demonstrates is that Ferdinand Marian was a compelling actor worthy of remembrance for so much more than having been coerced to appear in "Jud Suss," the "most hateful" film ever made.

On a holiday in Puerto Rico, Astree (Zarah Leander) falls in love with nobleman Don Pedro de Avila and marries him. Our story begins ten years later, when things have begun to come awry... And things are heating up for Don Pedro who, as patron of the island, has to contend with a pair of scientists who have arrived in Puerto Rico with plans to find a cure for Puerto Rico Fever, which de Avila doesn't want publicised as existing, since it would be bad for tourism.

I love La Habanera. I've seen it twice so far. I was lucky enough to tape it one time when it was on TV, so now i've got this little copy of it sitting on my shelf that i can watch whenever I like (there are no DVD or VHS releases of any Sirk films in Australia - and I wouldn't have chosen La Habanera if i was going to order some Sirk from overseas).

It's melodrama, and designed as crap for the masses - but there's just something beautiful about everything in it. The noble beauty in Don de Avila's face during the courtship scenes at the beginning, which has turned to harshness and brooding intensity when we cut to ten years later. His burning eyes and face burn up the screen. Some of my other favourite things in it are the ceiling fan during the card game, the light through the slats in the scientists' room, the face of Dr Luis Gomez, the scene where Dr Nagel goes out in the street on a windy night and finds the fever sufferer, and, best of all, the magnificent pond in the middle of the room during the scene where Ms Leander sings the Habanera, and in which we see the reflection of the room.

There is a poetry to the images that you may not notice unless you come in half-way through (like I did, on my first viewing), so that you can't really follow what's happening in the plot. Doing this was a revelation for me. I was forced to just look at the pretty pictures, and i found, to my surprise, that there was something transfixing and poetic about them.

Second run through, when I watched it from the beginning, I found I also loved the story and the characters, which was a bonus. I found myself caught up in this little world Sirk had made for me. And the seemingly outlandish soap-opera lines somehow seemed perfect!

10/10. Mainly from surprise at how passionate i've grown for what is essentially a simple melodrama.

Having seen "La Habanera" a few years ago, I had relegated it in my mind to the second ranks of Sirk pictures. But a re-viewing tonight was a surprise. The melodrama plot is, perhaps, just a touch too sketchy, but the handling of it is magnificent. This is a film of extremely subtle montage, aided by a flawless sense of framing, angle and composition. Sirk's visual imagination is seemingly inexhaustible, and he is aided by first-rate art direction. It should be no surprise, really, that his last film in Germany should be a masterpiece. One is prepared for it, certainly, after seeing the wonderful "Hofkonzert," a delicious rococo bon bon, or the excellent melodrama "Zu neuen Ufern." But in "La Habanera" the easy flow of genre to genre (adventure film to comedy of the Hawksian type -- some very fine work from Boris Alekin as Dr. Gomez -- to musical to melodrama) makes for something very special. A near-contemporary comparison is Stahl's "Letter of Introduction" - - which similarly moves effortlessly from genre to genre without disconcerting its audience. No mean feat!

If you want to see a melodramatic love story, see The Notebook [2004]. This film should be seen for its stereotypical portrayal of non-Aryan people. After all, the film was made in Germany at a time when spurious theories of racial superiority were being concocted by the leaders of Nazism. The moral of the story is that a Nordic woman should never dare to marry or get involved with anyone not from her own race because she will be victimized in the process. In the end, the nobler northerners get it their way against the weaker southerners. This is so even when an argument could be made that don Pedro was simply the victim of a typical pattern of racism for ten very long years. In fact, he couldn't even teach his son Juan to love the culture of San Juan because his mother brainwashed him to long for snow in the middle of the Caribbean. Hard as he tried, don Pedro could not overcome the iron-will of his wife. In hindsight, should the story be true, the ones making a grave mistake are the arrogant people who go back to Sweden before the outbreak of World War 2.

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.

Facing a mass migration out of its country, the German government turned towards its vibrant cinema to partially stem the outgoing tide. The National Socialist German Workers' Party, which took over Germany in 1933, saw its citizens leave in droves. The Party's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, in control of the country's movie industry, enforced the order that every film in Germany must have a purpose to further the Nazi party's goals. November 1937's "La Habanera" was one such propaganda movie that illustrated how difficult its was for Germans to live in a foreign country, a theme Goebbels delighted in.

"La Hanabera" is especially known for the early directorial work of Detlef Sierck, who in 1942 changed his name to Douglas Sirk when he relocated to Hollywood. His popular 1950s melodramas, such as "All That Heaven Allows" and "Written in the Wind," both with Rock Hudson, places him in the top tier of film directors. The former stage director who jumped into motion pictures in 1934, Sierck left Germany right after making "La Habanera" because of his marriage to Jewish actress Hilde Jary.

The UFA studio in Berlin, Germany, had just hired Swedish film star Zarah Leander in 1936. The former cabaret singer had appeared in Scandinavian films beginning in 1930 and had received a number of Hollywood offers. But she chose Germany so her children could be near their homeland. "La Habanera" made Leander UFA's biggest star. Soon after, Goebbels had a chance meeting with Leander and asked the actress, ""Zarah... Isn't that a Jewish name?" "Oh, maybe," Leander replied, "but what about Josef?" "Hmmm... yes, yes, a good answer", Goebbels reportedly responded. Leander was hyped as Germany's answer to Greta Garbo (The Germans considered the Scandinavians part of the Aryan race.).

"La Habanera," meaning "The woman from Havana," has Leander as young Astree Sternhjelm, who's accompanied by her elder aunt Ana (Julia Serda) to Puerto Rico for vacation. Ana leaves her aunt when the cruise boat returns to Europe, and remains in Puerto Rico because she fell in love with both the climate as well as a wealthy land owner. Following Goebbel's edict showing Germans miserable living overseas, their marriage disintegrates after ten years. Meanwhile the island is plagued with a pandemic that the Puerto Ricans want to keep secret. Tension mounts as two doctors, one a former lover of Astree, arrive on the island to investigate the rumors, which ends up pitting Astree's husband against the doctors.

Film reviewer Patti Aliventi said that while "La Habanera" is "melodramatic at times, the film is telling a story that for the most part is compelling and intriguing. How many women have taken a vacation and had a 'fling' only to wonder all their lives about what could have been. Sirk takes the fantasy and adds a healthy dose of reality as the cultures clash."

"La Habanera" was banned in the United States because of several criticisms at Americans and its possession of the island. Leander, who never became a German citizen, made eight films under the Nazi regime before leaving Germany in 1943 for Sweden after her German villa was bombed. She remained popular as a singer in Sweden while she was active in film until 1966.