"Rot ist die Liebe" or "Love is red" is an almost 60-year-old film from West Germany. The director and writer is Austrian Karl Hartl and he adapted an autobiographical novel for these slightly under 1.5 hours. It was one of Hartls last project, even if he lived a long time after this and had only been nominated in Cannes the year before. He made movies already before the Nazis gained power in Germany. A similarly abrupt ending applies to Lithuanian-born lead actress Cornell Borchers who seemed to have a great career coming up starring next to the likes of Hollywood stars like Flynn and Clift and winning a BAFTA not too long ago and yet this was one of her last movies. She died almost exactly a year ago. The rest of the cast I am not really familiar with although i believe I heard of Borsche already.
This film has all the ingredients you would expect, some drinking, some nature, some Heimat, several love stories including one with a married man, some music, some drama about a disappearance and so on. It's all very generic and not too different compared to other German films from the 1950s. If you like these, you will probably like this one too. The only difference that came for me was that it's almost entirely drama, not much comedy in this film and that, in the same tone, the ending was not really a positive one (but one that improved the movie considerably over a 100% harmonic last scene) which we owe Löns' life and novel I guess as this movie ends exactly when World War I is about to begin. The male central character leaves for War and this is where he died as well.
This film has all the ingredients you would expect, some drinking, some nature, some Heimat, several love stories including one with a married man, some music, some drama about a disappearance and so on. It's all very generic and not too different compared to other German films from the 1950s. If you like these, you will probably like this one too. The only difference that came for me was that it's almost entirely drama, not much comedy in this film and that, in the same tone, the ending was not really a positive one (but one that improved the movie considerably over a 100% harmonic last scene) which we owe Löns' life and novel I guess as this movie ends exactly when World War I is about to begin. The male central character leaves for War and this is where he died as well.