Amphitryon

Just like the Roman comedy Amphitruo by Plautus, on which the movie is loosely based, Schünzl's musical film-version is a very funny doppelganger comedy.

The romance between Amphitryon (then famous heart-throb Willy Fritsch) and Alkmene (Käthe Gold) is portrayed in rather conventional ways, but the real stars are the minor characters, then well-known comedians Paul Kemp (playing both Mercury on roller skates and Amphityon's drunkard slave Sosia) and Fita Benkhoff as Sosia's wife Andria. Their antics make this movie still worth watching. Similarly, Fritsch in his other role as aged Jupiter, bald and with beer- belly, and his tyrannical wife, truly ancient Adele Sandrock, then the grand old dame of German cinema, are very funny. Both Sandrock and Benkhoff were nominated for the 1935 Oscars, the only foreign actors thus honored that year.

Maybe the best part of the movie, though, is the way director Reinhold Schünzl, a half-Jew who had to emigrate to the United States not much later, slyly parodies German militarism, and that under Nazi-censorship and with SS men as extras (playing Theban soldiers in the mass scenes). I guess Hitler and Goebbels, who both visited the shooting of the movie, were fooled by the National Socialist realism of parts of the set (especially when the Theban army triumphally returns from war), and I guess they also liked the traditional way gender roles are portrayed in the movie (in the end, Andria becomes an obedient wife full of newly gained respect for her husband, the new Sosia (a.k.a. Mercury), and is rewarded with a fashionable hat).

In brief, this is a really funny movie, and I only wish it had already been re- issued with English subtitles so that Schünzl could receive the fame and admiration he deserves.

This is one of the last productions in the UFA style at the beginning of the 30s, originally planned as an Erich Pommer production. The productions values are still here, but Pommer had already left for the U.S.A. The sets are fabulous, the dialogue is great (and very funny) and the cast is outstanding (note e.g. Willi Fritsch, showing that he can do more than just smile; and Adele Sandrock). This is Schuenzel's masterpiece: his direction is elegance itself. [Of course Schunzel is also know for the very fine VIKTOR UND VIKTORIA, source for VICTOR/VICTORIA by Blake Edwards.] Many sources claim that contemporary German audience recognized the - concealed - Goering parody and other references to the present situation. After some hesitation the showing of the film was allowed by the ProMi (=Goebbels): it also recognized the Goering parody. The film became a great success. This film should be an international classic; and Schunzel a more known director.

Perhaps musicals were part of Dr. Goebbels' propaganda plan, and perhaps the Olympian gods and goddesses did not look like Aryan übermenschen, but here we do have an entertaining, high-gloss, musical comedy about the ancient Greeks and there are few enough films about them as it is. (Even if the Nazis were attempting to buy legitimacy by co-opting the wellspring of Western civilization.)

When I saw this film a couple of years ago, I actually thought I heard a couple of topical jokes slyly directed at the Nazis and assumed I was seeing the last gasp of some still independent liberal Weimar tradition. Maybe I was mistaken, and such a thing was no longer possible two years into the thousand-year Reich.

I'm an American collector of Ancient World movies, so I was delighted to find this movie on German DVD. I do wish it had English subtitles...but between my knowledge of the plot (based on the play by Plautus) and the addable German subtitles, I had no difficulty following this wonderful romp set in ancient Thebes, as the god Jupiter (assisted by Mercury) descends to earth to woo the lovely Alcmeme by taking the guise of her absent husband, Amphrityon. When the real Amphitryon returns triumphant from the wars, the comic plot thickens. (But unlike the Plautus original, here the interrupted affair between Alcmene and Jupiter does NOT result in the birth of Hercules; how then was the demigod born?)

The music is delightful, the comic confusions are rendered with a light touch, and the elegant sets, costumes, and special effects are pure eye-candy.

A bonus on the German DVD is a half-hour doc giving some background to the story, as well as production stills and footage. Curiously, director Reinhold Schünzel shot a simultaneous version of Amphityron in French with different actors, and some clips show how the two versions look and sound side by side.

Amphitryon is not well known outside Germany but is nonetheless a world cinematic treasure.

You can order a subtitled, high quality DVD with no extras from a site specializing in old foreign films: germanwarfilms.com. I've watched this charming film twice and it gets better with each viewing. Production values and performances are first rate. The special effects rival Hollywood's best. Much of the dialog is in rhyming couplets giving the film an almost musical quality before building up to the final musical number that's almost a parody of a crowd scene from 'Triumph of the Will.' In fact this film is equal to any Hollywood musical of that era.

Not all Germam films of this era were propaganda pieces. However the plot cuts both ways. At one point it stresses National Socialist views of wives subordinate to their husbands while it pokes fun of militaristic pomp & ceremony.