A good heartwarming tale of an old widowed immigrant who has retired back to his home country. Malden plays the role excellently - I consider it his best role - as Marko Sekulovic - which is play on his own birth last name. Set in his own father's Yugoslavia, Malden seems to play his father or grandfather who returns to his home town after a life in America. His role is genuine. Jodie Thelen, who had the looks to be a sex symbol, plays a proper full of wisdom school teacher, who understands their world and respects Marko in his old age as other scoff at him. Marko raises his two grandchildren whose mother has fled to Germany for better fortune and love. The children are strong and stoic - and very mature (unlike American children). They take on the responsibilities of operating the farm they and Marko live on. Thelen takes a shine to them because of their dilemma. Good Friday night video.
3 Reviews
Starring: Karl Malden
Petey-105 March 2009
Warning: Spoilers
Marko Sekulovic has spent 20 years in America.Now he is a widowed old man living at his home country in Yugoslavia.He takes care of his two grandchildren, Ivan and Ana who have their parents working in Germany.Then a pretty new school teacher called Lena comes to village.I would have a crush on this teacher if I was in her class! Goran Paskaljevic is the director of Twilight Time (1982).The movie is full of sympathetic characters.And it has just the right actors to portray them.Karl Malden has not often been the leading man in movies.Here he is and he's fantastic! Malden, who was born Mladen Sekulovich in 1912 saw his role in this film to honor his Yugoslavian heritage.Jodi Thelen gives a real sweet performance as Lena.Mia Roth plays the younger grandchild Ana and Damien Nash is the serious and hardworking Ivan.It's a beautiful scene where Malden's character dances while the gramophone plays Twilight Time.First he dances solo and then Lena comes to dance with him and then...he dies.Twilight Time is Karl Malden's personal favorite of his films.He's aware that not too many people have seen the movie.I found the VHS on library and just watched it yesterday.I'm happy to say I saw the film and liked it very much.
Mild family film
lor_23 January 2023
Warning: Spoilers
My review was written in February 1983 after a showing at MGM screening room in Midtown Manhattan.
"Twilight Time" is an old-fashioned family picture lensed in Yugoslavia. Topliner Karl Malden gives an engaging performance as the grandpa caring for two cute kids, but thin writing and a combination of slow pacing and sentimentality make this entry an unlikely candidate to score in the domestic marketplace.
Slight story, burdened with flat, strictly functional English-language dialog, concerns Marko (Karl Malden), a septuagenarian farmer known locally as Americano for his 20-year stay in the U. S. before returning home to a tiny Yugoslav village. He is looking after his grandchildren Ivan (Damien Nash) and Ana (Mia Roth), whose parents are in Germany as immigrant workers. Marko befriends an attractive new schoolteacher Lena (Jodi Thelen), whose main problem is getting Ivan to come to class, as the pre-teenage boy is increasingly taking over the duty of running Marko's farm and household.
With Marko predictably dying, uneventful picture ends with the two children working the farm and evidently standing up for traditional values in defiance of their parents' modern "materialistic" abandonment of family and homeland. Theme will appeal to nostalgic audiences, but lacks the dramatics and story development required for more demanding venues.
Malden earns his star billing with an earthy, at times moving portrayal of an old man living with his memories (signified by frequent playing of his favorite old standard, the 1944 "Twilight Time" hit), but weak material and an inadequate supporting cast let him down. Thelen, very attractively photographed by top-ranked European lenser Tomislav Pinter, reprises her perpetual smile from her pic debut in "Four Friends", and her sincere but goody-goody performance is irritating.
The kids are merely okay, and the Yugoslav minor actors have been dubbed disconcertingly into English, spoiling the otherwise adequate use of direct-sound recording of the principal players. An unrealized romantic interlude between Thelen and Dragon Maksimovic is particularly pointless.
Credit producer Dan Tana (a famous L. A. restaurateur) and his team of filmmakers with attempting to bring back the family entertainment (with which MGM was synonymous in the Golden Age) of yore, but failing to develop adequate story material. Helmer Goran Paskaljevic, for his first English-language entry, directs as if walking on eggshells. The technical side is okay, especially Pinter's laudable still-life landscape shots, but "Twilgiht Time" is a lifeless film.
"Twilight Time" is an old-fashioned family picture lensed in Yugoslavia. Topliner Karl Malden gives an engaging performance as the grandpa caring for two cute kids, but thin writing and a combination of slow pacing and sentimentality make this entry an unlikely candidate to score in the domestic marketplace.
Slight story, burdened with flat, strictly functional English-language dialog, concerns Marko (Karl Malden), a septuagenarian farmer known locally as Americano for his 20-year stay in the U. S. before returning home to a tiny Yugoslav village. He is looking after his grandchildren Ivan (Damien Nash) and Ana (Mia Roth), whose parents are in Germany as immigrant workers. Marko befriends an attractive new schoolteacher Lena (Jodi Thelen), whose main problem is getting Ivan to come to class, as the pre-teenage boy is increasingly taking over the duty of running Marko's farm and household.
With Marko predictably dying, uneventful picture ends with the two children working the farm and evidently standing up for traditional values in defiance of their parents' modern "materialistic" abandonment of family and homeland. Theme will appeal to nostalgic audiences, but lacks the dramatics and story development required for more demanding venues.
Malden earns his star billing with an earthy, at times moving portrayal of an old man living with his memories (signified by frequent playing of his favorite old standard, the 1944 "Twilight Time" hit), but weak material and an inadequate supporting cast let him down. Thelen, very attractively photographed by top-ranked European lenser Tomislav Pinter, reprises her perpetual smile from her pic debut in "Four Friends", and her sincere but goody-goody performance is irritating.
The kids are merely okay, and the Yugoslav minor actors have been dubbed disconcertingly into English, spoiling the otherwise adequate use of direct-sound recording of the principal players. An unrealized romantic interlude between Thelen and Dragon Maksimovic is particularly pointless.
Credit producer Dan Tana (a famous L. A. restaurateur) and his team of filmmakers with attempting to bring back the family entertainment (with which MGM was synonymous in the Golden Age) of yore, but failing to develop adequate story material. Helmer Goran Paskaljevic, for his first English-language entry, directs as if walking on eggshells. The technical side is okay, especially Pinter's laudable still-life landscape shots, but "Twilgiht Time" is a lifeless film.
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