"Der Stern von Santa Clara" from 1958 is a romance/crime/drama/family movie starring Swiss-Italian Vico Torriani. I guess Torriani must have been a huge star back then. At least, his character is one in this movie. He plays a famous singer in the USA and returns back to his roots to Italy to relax a bit far away from all the fame. There he gets involved with a decade-lasting struggle between two hostile families. And of course Torriani sings for a large part of the film. Unfortunately, the songs are equally forgettable as the rest of the film. Singing/Humming a song that rhymes avanti with chianti on at least three occasions just does not cut the cake, even for the 1950s.
The director of this 80-minute movie is Werner Jacobs. He worked on the pretty successful Lümmel films as well. There is more than one love interest to Torriani's character, so some embarrassing jealousy and cheesy love story scenes are unavoidable. Sometimes this was a truly strange film. The overacting way way too much during several scenes and occasionally reminded of the silent film actors from the 1910s and 1920, but not the gifted ones. Also, it does not help that I found Torriani's character never particularly likable with a permanent arrogant smile on his lips, even in life-threatening situations. Now about these, this is also one of the biggest flaws of the film. It never decides if it is comedy or drama and that is exactly why the more tense scenes (including a staged shooting) appear as a complete joke. In one scene, he starts joking around with the guys who intended to kill him in cold blood minutes ago and even sings with them (yes, the notorious chianti song). The love story part was pretty schmaltzy. Admittedly, that could be said about most German films from the 1950s. There was one character, a young groupie following the central character to Italy, who was just included for the sake of it with no real purpose. I guess we should always be remembered what a star the main character was and how millions of women admired him.
Sometimes with all the slapstick humor (and fake drama) this film had, it reminded me a bit of The Three Stooges, but really not a good version of them. So yeah, I do not really recommend watching it, unless one of the cast is a great favorite of yours. I myself was delighted to see Brigitte Mira here. But her role was too small and insignificant to save this film from being a failure in the grand picture.
The director of this 80-minute movie is Werner Jacobs. He worked on the pretty successful Lümmel films as well. There is more than one love interest to Torriani's character, so some embarrassing jealousy and cheesy love story scenes are unavoidable. Sometimes this was a truly strange film. The overacting way way too much during several scenes and occasionally reminded of the silent film actors from the 1910s and 1920, but not the gifted ones. Also, it does not help that I found Torriani's character never particularly likable with a permanent arrogant smile on his lips, even in life-threatening situations. Now about these, this is also one of the biggest flaws of the film. It never decides if it is comedy or drama and that is exactly why the more tense scenes (including a staged shooting) appear as a complete joke. In one scene, he starts joking around with the guys who intended to kill him in cold blood minutes ago and even sings with them (yes, the notorious chianti song). The love story part was pretty schmaltzy. Admittedly, that could be said about most German films from the 1950s. There was one character, a young groupie following the central character to Italy, who was just included for the sake of it with no real purpose. I guess we should always be remembered what a star the main character was and how millions of women admired him.
Sometimes with all the slapstick humor (and fake drama) this film had, it reminded me a bit of The Three Stooges, but really not a good version of them. So yeah, I do not really recommend watching it, unless one of the cast is a great favorite of yours. I myself was delighted to see Brigitte Mira here. But her role was too small and insignificant to save this film from being a failure in the grand picture.
