Aleluia, Gretchen

In 1937, the German family Kranz immigrates to the South of Brazil, settling in a hotel in the country. The members of the family are sympathizers of the Nazis and worship Adolf Hitler. One of the young woman of the Kranz was seduced and abused by a SS officer, arriving pregnant, close to the delivery and very disturbed. With the beginning of the war, two young men of the group move back to Germany to join the Nazi forces. After the war, the place becomes a meeting point for Nazi sympathizers, giving support to former Nazis and assisting them to move to Argentina. Eurico (Carlos Vereza), a Brazilian traveling salesman, arrives to the hotel and stays with the Kranz, expecting to be rewarded with hold for helping the Nazi sympathizers. Although awarded in many minor Brazilian Festivals, "Aleluia Gretchen" is a boring movie. Due to the long period covered by the story for the running time of 118 minutes, and the great number of characters, most of them badly developed, the screenplay is very confused. I am a great fan of Brazilian cinema, but I was completely disappointed with this film. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Aleluia Gretchen" ("Hallelujah Gretchen")

Weird, boring to death, unconvincing and chaotic script, bad acting (despite some good actresses)... There are perhaps good moments about nazis and Brazilian native fascist integralists, but the movie is very bad in general. Sylvio Back has good informative historical documentaries, such as República Guarani, Revolução de 30, and, in a lower degree, Guerra do Brasil - Toda verdade sobre a Guerra do Paraguai. However, his narrative films do not have the same outcome: while Lost Zweig is moderetaly good, Lance Maior is bad, and unfortunately this Aleluia, Gretchen is by far the worst of his films I have watched so far.

In my reassessment process of movies watched in my teenager years , thus Aleluia Gretchen is the next, yesterday I'd found a fine print at Youtube, sadly the sound is too low, therefore unable to understand mostly of dialogues, upon this matter allied a slow pacing development and a complex plot the whole picture becomes a hard endurance for the audience.

The plot basically is about a German Krantz Family arriving in south of Brazil in 1937 to work at own Hotel business, among then has a boy hardly swayed and spellbound by Hitler's Nazi part together his with his odd mother, meanwhile the father seemingly doesn't take sides, turns out that a pregnancy daughter has been disturbed by her supposed dead husband, in fact she was one of some women that suffered eugenics process carried out by Nazi system, out of blue reaches there a street vendor aiming for get together the whole sympathizers of the Nazy part intitled in Brazil as Austland organization and others countries in South America as Argentina, Chile to nominee a few.

Sylvio Beck aiming for exposes that actually in Brazil had the bigger Nazy Party out of Germany where many Brazilians powerful families in south and southwest as well an immigrants coming from Germany and countries around that had supported the flag Nazy and its crazy ideology, nonetheless the slowing narrative spoils the offering.

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First watch: 1988 / How many: 2 / Source: TV-Youtube / Rating: 5.5.

In all of these years while watching movies I've always watched them from beginning to end, sometimes missing at the most two or three scenes, but always managing to visualize the whole thing, without walking out of it, no matter how bad they were. Since I know some film critics do walk out after seeing even just ten minutes of projection I decided to do the same with this film after torturing myself for over an hour. It's so terrible that it's a severe case of a film that don't have salvation, no, I won't try to see it again. Ever!

"Aleluia, Gretchen" ("Hallelujah, Gretchen") promises a lot with a plot about the rise of a Nazist group in the south of Brazil, initiated by Germans who transfered themselves in the 1930's and decided to put Hitler's ideals in the South America. Director Sylvio Back isn't failing with the truth in choosing the South as the scenery for such plot since there were initiatives like those and still are predominant there; the problem with the script is of a higher order, or better the lack of order. Nothing makes sense, the characters aren't involving, they don't talk one single quote that makes sense, everything is so useless. Plenty of conversations that go nowhere ruin the movie just as much as presenting the Hitler Youth training and praising the man but you never watch them making anything, no attacks, no persecutions, preaching the desire of battling on a war but never doing anything similar. OK, one can argue that I didn't wait to see the whole thing but that's no excuse, the movie didn't go nowhere, confused me, bored me and it was completely worthless. Mr. Back can open his film showing all the minor awards the film got but that didn't impressed me, I bet all those critics and juror were laughing at him for making one of the worst films ever made.

I shouldn't put my expectations high for a Brazilian picture made in the 1970's (with no doubt, the worst decade for those movies, I haven't found one 10 star from that period) but there's so much more this could have been. The only admirable thing about it is its small challenge to the dictatorship current at the time, and it makes me wonder how a plot about a subversive group in Brazil was approved by the censors (the regime wouldn't allow something like that), who also didn't cut the first sequence involving the Youth's training with all the boys playing soccer, running and swimming, and in all of those scenes they were completely naked. I've never quite understood the censors criteria for cutting nude scenes from some films and allowing others like this go on without any problem.

With some social denounce and a few good ideas to present and this would be a decent film. Insetad all we have is a poor mess that doesn't deserve to be seen in its totality. 1/10