"Liebesschule" is a German movie from 1940, so this one has its 80th anniversary this year, which does not only mean sadly that everybody who worked on this is long gone, but also that it was made during the days of Nazi Germany. However, these 85 minutes are as unpolitical as it gets. There are some aspects that make it easy to see that this is a German movie like the language obviously, but also the mountains in the South, but there is no implication that it wants to showw us some kind of superiority, which is maybe a bit surprising because it is even from the days of World War II. But maybe the intention here was to make the Germans feel good, especially those who lost children or other beloved ines in World War II. Anyway, as for the technical side: This is of course a black-and-white film and don't worry if you are neither familiar with writer and direcor Karl Georg Külb nor with lead actress Luise Ullrich. They were both really prolific back in the day, but nothing extremely famous among their bodies of work, for which they are still remembered today. Same is probably true about Viktor Staal, who plays the central male character. Or one of the two that fit the description. The one who is really known is Dutch actor Johannes Heesters though. It is up to you to decide if he deserves it for his body of work or if it is only because of the really really old age he reached before dying now also a pretty long time ago. However, he is still sort of considered the Methuselah from the German film industry and certainly will be for quite a while. And because of his really dark hair, he also somehow gets away with playing a Spaniard(?), at least a Latino.
Now you see I am speaking a lot about the side aspects from this movie and this is really because there is not too much positive to tell about the film here. I think it is definitely dated, but I am not even sure I would have liked it back in the day. Neither the comedy nor the romance came even close to winning me over and these Bavarian landscapes also would have looked much better in color, even if black and WHITE actually should be enough judging from the description. It is not. As for the lighter moments and the entire film is basically light: Okay maybe the worst example of what simply isn't funny, was when two people pick a time for a date and one says something like "2 o'clock in the afternoon" and the other responds with "Okay 3 o'clock." Now this was really just a very brief moment, but still I have no idea how people could laugh about that to be honest. Today or 80 years ago. Because the female needs another hour for looking desirable? Oh well, also the jokes about the two suitors being her boys in the sense of she is taking of care of them or babysitting them, quickly do get old and are also only mildly funny initially. The entire plot idea was stupid. Two men, at the exact same time, want to marry a woman for practical reason. And not just any woman, but the one who works for them taking care of the office-related tasks. So if there was anything interesting to this film, then who gets her, but even this not so much. And when they even bring in a third guy eventually, it just gets completely out of hand and it shows that the writer here was simply not able to deliver quality material for the already enough characters. For me, this movie iss definitely closer to one star out of five instead of two, but it is not entirely failure level honestly and there is some okay innocence to it occasionally. I have seen many worse German films, so I shall stick with two out of five now. It's definitely a negative recommendation for me though, so you wanna skip the watch here.. I give it a thumbs-down. Also the music (mostly by Heesters) is far from good enough. Watch something else instead.
Now you see I am speaking a lot about the side aspects from this movie and this is really because there is not too much positive to tell about the film here. I think it is definitely dated, but I am not even sure I would have liked it back in the day. Neither the comedy nor the romance came even close to winning me over and these Bavarian landscapes also would have looked much better in color, even if black and WHITE actually should be enough judging from the description. It is not. As for the lighter moments and the entire film is basically light: Okay maybe the worst example of what simply isn't funny, was when two people pick a time for a date and one says something like "2 o'clock in the afternoon" and the other responds with "Okay 3 o'clock." Now this was really just a very brief moment, but still I have no idea how people could laugh about that to be honest. Today or 80 years ago. Because the female needs another hour for looking desirable? Oh well, also the jokes about the two suitors being her boys in the sense of she is taking of care of them or babysitting them, quickly do get old and are also only mildly funny initially. The entire plot idea was stupid. Two men, at the exact same time, want to marry a woman for practical reason. And not just any woman, but the one who works for them taking care of the office-related tasks. So if there was anything interesting to this film, then who gets her, but even this not so much. And when they even bring in a third guy eventually, it just gets completely out of hand and it shows that the writer here was simply not able to deliver quality material for the already enough characters. For me, this movie iss definitely closer to one star out of five instead of two, but it is not entirely failure level honestly and there is some okay innocence to it occasionally. I have seen many worse German films, so I shall stick with two out of five now. It's definitely a negative recommendation for me though, so you wanna skip the watch here.. I give it a thumbs-down. Also the music (mostly by Heesters) is far from good enough. Watch something else instead.
