Ein Tag, der nie zu Ende geht

War melodrama with Ruth Leuwerik and Hansjörg Felmy

Almost a year after his ACADEMY AWARD nomination for "Helden" (1958) with GOLDEN GLOBE nominee Liselotte Pulver and O. W. Fischer, director Franz Peter Wirth premiered this film in Munich's Gloria-Palast. The Divina film was produced by the great Ilse Kubaschewski and filming took place in the Bavaria Studios in Geiselgasteig and in Galway, Ireland. When I was in Galway, on the west coast of Ireland, in 1991, the city still had the flair that is also expressed in the film.

In 1943, a German submarine captain ends up shipwrecked on the west coast of neutral Ireland and tries to get help on land. He pretends to be Swiss in order to avoid further complications. However, they do exist. He falls in love with an American woman (Ruth Leuwerik), whose husband was killed in a German attack. Her admirer (Hannes Messemer, second fiddle again!), an American officer, becomes suspicious. How will the woman being courted behave? Will the German captain (from beautiful Hanover!) succeed in helping his team?

Questions upon questions! You can already tell that the plot isn't very believable. But played brilliantly! Ruth Leuwerik ("Darling of the Gods") drives a horse-drawn carriage and runs a village shop with Disney characters on the wall. And Hansjörg Felmy plays, as usual, powerfully and sensitively, and is therefore a completely different type of man than one is usually used to in West German post-war films.

In other roles, Mady Rahl ("Night fell over Gotenhafen") with red-dyed hair (Ireland!) Karl Lieffen and Wolfgang Völz (Käpt'n Blaubär) convince as a police officer.

Certainly not the best film by Ruth Leuwerik, the superstar of the German film industry of the 1950s, but her outstanding screen presence makes even a weaker film a great pleasure.

This uninspired romance of an Irish widow (stretching credibility to the breaking point: Ruth Leuwerik, all prim and proper German hausfrau) and a German submarine commander (gentlemanly Hans-Joerg Felmy, much too suave, even when not shaved) during World War II misses all the way down the line, although the idea is good. The war is artificially depicted, the sets are synthetic and story and screenplay so bland and vague that nobody knows which side it is supposed to be on.

The undistinguished direction places picturesque faces in patriotic poses when not concentrating on the banal love story. Ruth Leuwerik does what she can, and which a lot, to breathe some life into the lame going-ons, while Mister Felmy is offering granite-like support. Both deserve better material. The picture flopped miserably at the box-office and for good reason is not shown often on German TV.