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La Habanera

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"La Habanera" tells the story of a young girl from Sweden (though Zarah Leander always seems too sophisticated to be regarded as very young)who is travelling through the Puerto Rican islands with her stodgy aunt and falls in love with the country and an autocratic nobleman. The seduction of her longing for a new life far from her roots is embodied in the famous song, "Der Wind hat Mir ein Lied erzählt", which became a standard pop song in Nazi Germany and forever identified with Leander. She marries the nobleman and severs her ties with her country and family.
Obviously, this may only end disastrously since europeans can only truly be happy in aryan society where they belong-- according to the national socialistic doctrine at the time. Flash forward a few years and-sure enough-Leander is unhappily married and her nordic-looking young son is the only bright spot resulting from her rash decision to forsake her homeland. Her jealous husband keeps her on a short leash and she can only dream of Sweden and promise her son that they will one day go there.
When a young medical researcher from Sweden arrives on the island to investigate a fatal and insurgent fever, it would seem he might prove to be the salvation for all in one way or another. But is it too late?
This is the sort of melodrama that Sirk served better than almost anyone. There is always a melancholy and repressed desire to his best work and "La Habanera" is an early harbinger of that.There are plenty of kitschy and hokey moments. Zarah Leander outfitted in a mantilla and singing before guests at her formal dinner party is priceless. Still, even with the insidious european chauvinism, this film has a wistful and entertaining appeal. From the Weimar period through the Nazi regime, many films were being made in Germany to rival Hollywood (probably out of a sense of competition and national pride) and were being done with a great sense of cinema. "La Habanera" certainly stands as a good example of storytelling, fine craftmanship and star power. It is easy to see Zarah Leander as the German Cinema's answer to Greta Garbo. Her beauty and star quality were at their height at the time of "La Habanera" and Sirk exhibits them to good advantage.

Up until 1933, German studios retained a preeminent position both in European and in world film production. Pictures such as Josef Von Sternberg's The Blue Angel, Fritz Lang's M, and Leontine Sagan's Maedchen in Uniform were spectacular successes both critically and at the box office. After the rise to power of the Nazis, the story changed drastically. Apart from the possible exception of Leni Refienstahl's Triumph of the Will and Olympiade, it is difficult to come up with significant examples of German film art made during the Nazi period. But no one should imagine that the reconstituted movie industry-basically under the control of Goebbels-simply went over to making propaganda vehicles. As Jan-Christopher Horak explains in his useful liner notes to this excellent Kino Video DVD of Detlef Sierck's 1937 soap opera La Habanera, "Much more successful [than propaganda pieces like SA Mann Brand] were star studded historical epics, spy and adventure films, and comedies that transported Gesinnung (ideology) in the subtext."
Among the popular genres was the kitschy romantic melodrama, which had antecedents in pre-Nazi hits such as The Wonderful Lies of Nina Petrovna (1929) and Dreaming Lips (1932). La Habanera, which has similarities to Pola Negri's intended comeback picture, Tango Notturno (1937), is very much in this vein, telling the story of a Swedish visitor to Puerto Rico, Astree Sternhjelm (Zarah Leander), who runs away from the ship that is supposed to take her home and unwisely marries a local aristocratic landowner, Don Pedro de Avila (Ferdinand Marian). After ten years of unhappy conjugal union, Astree only wants to flee the steamy tropics back to the snowy wastes of her homeland, taking her son along with her. At this point, an old flame of hers conveniently appears, a Swedish doctor who has come to the island to study the mysterious "Puerto Rico fever," a fatal epidemic whose existence local officials as well as Don Pedro want to cover up.
La Habanera may well be indebted to two older American films. The most evident parallel is with John Ford's adaptation of Sinclair Lewis's novel Arrowsmith (1931), whose last third depicts the protagonist's attempt to subdue an outbreak of the plague on a Caribbean isle. However, a less obvious but more tantalizing debt could be owing to Josef Von Sternberg's The Devil Is a Woman, apparent both in details of the mise en scene and in La Habanera's thinly veiled attempt to pass off Zarah Leander as a successor to Marlene Dietrich. Even the vainly proud Don Pedro, a rather improbable denizen of Puerto Rico in 1937, seems cut from the same cloth as Lionel Atwill's Don Pasqual in the earlier movie.
The Devil Is a Woman was based on a novel by Pierre Louys dating back to 1898, and the action of La Habanera-its up to date setting notwithstanding-clearly harks back to the same era. The film's saga of a woman who stakes all in the pursuit of passion as much as the scenes of picturesque natives at play in the fields and of colorful local customs like bullfighting are clichés of etiolated fin de siecle exoticism. Yet was not the current of aestheticism that plays so conspicuous a role in the films of Douglas Sirk-as the director was called after his emigration to the United States-itself a prominent feature of the same era? Moreover, it would not be hard to find evidences of aestheticism in the sense of a fascination with beautiful appearances and of a desire to create a work of purely artistic value in the earlier films of both Lang and F. W. Murnau, not to mention in the work of lesser directors like G.W. Pabst.
This association with the past may explain the virtual allergy to anything tainted with aestheticism on the part of émigré directors like Billy Wilder and Otto Preminger. Indeed, Walter Benjamin, probably thinking of the sinister example of Stefan George, characterized Nazism itself as "the aestheticization of politics." However, Sierck's aestheticism in La Habanera like that of the later Sirk in Written on the Wind represents an anachronistic Schlussakkord and not a plangent Fascist overture. But if Sierck/Sirk's conscientious dedication to aestheticism may have itself immunized him to seductions that figures of the caliber of Gottfried Benn or Emil Nolde found themselves unable to resist, it also marked a limit to his artistic development.
Here the comparison with The Devil Is a Woman, which still possesses some of the efficacy of a gesture of defiance against the hypocrisy and repression of bourgeois society, is revelatory. It, like the director's other collaborations with Dietrich, opens up an essentially tragic perspective. Life is an ongoing disaster for Von Sternberg just as it was for the author of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but a movie director could not so easily fall back on Joyce's modernist faith in art. Even if the blind rush of life can be momentarily suspended in a moment of artistic vision, what happens when the artist preserves that moment in an intrinsically ephemeral medium? It can hardly have escaped Von Sternberg's attention that he was raising no "monument more lasting than brass" but one made of silver nitrate.
Nothing of Von Sternberg's ironic consciousness penetrates the closed world of La Habanera. At the end of the film, Astree-her Puerto Rican adventure hermetically closed off with the death of Don Pedro-departs the island for Sweden, just as the audience will soon leave the theater, having finished off its own night in the tropics courtesy of Ufa. In many of the scenes-for example, Leander's rendition of the title song-Sierck achieves a polish any director might well envy. Nonetheless, his triumph culminates in perfectly executing this wretched material, not in transcending it. The paradise that becomes a hell for the heroine was no doubt intended to be one of art for the spectator, but it remains a museum recreation of the Golden Age.

RATHER a Fun romp of the 'forbidden senses' during the latter part of the 1930ties seen through the eyes of the stunning Zarah Leander as the love-torn fraulein defying covention and 'somewhat' eloping with the flasing-eyed, handsome foreigner, only to become somewhat a bird in a gilded cage ... with little son [in lederhosen?] intow.

BEAUTIFULLY restored this is a superb example of Doug Sirk's story telling artistry. The costumes are of special note - period perfect - 1936 - 37ish, and paintakingly executed [although in black and white - the fabrics are especially interesting....]

[So are the kitchy hairstyles for Miss Zarah - kind of a mix of Princess Leia meets Carmen - but all in all just perfect!]

A must for the serious student and collector.

This german classic is one of the few that are officially been released in the usa , on dvd ntsc,that focuses on the hollywood side of the third reich.Most of the third reich film classics that are distributed in the usa are mostly the negative propaganda type only. Conterversy sells a fast buck, The hollywood side of goebels isn't important cause it's no different than american film. So this side of the third reich cinema is sold less in usa cause it would make a dollar in the long run.Very few ,except like me , know Zarah leander in the U. S. A, Kineo on video has distributed this classic not to promote Zarah but to promote Douglas Sirk only, who direct it. The plot, Astree is with her stuffy aunt in Puerto Rico for a vacation. She meets Don Pedro De Avila. She sees him as a escapes from her mean aunt. She ends up marrying him. Years after bliss they both hate each other . She wants to go back home. There's an epidemic.Don controls the whole island and denies it.A doctor comes from sweden ,played by Karl Martel who was in a later Zarah Leander pic Damals and her Austrian hit Premiere , whome was a friend to Alstree. With help of Dr Goemez they find a cure. But don tries to stop it . This is a good movie. The only Zarah flick on dvd thats been relased in the usa on ntsc. the other Zarah are only in unrestored vhs prints in usa at other websites like German video language center although german video dot net has a good zarah leander vhs and dvd if you request it , Song of the dessert 1939

I recently watched Veit Harlan's 1940 Nazi propaganda "Jud Suss," "the most hateful" film ever made. I had to see more of its star, the actor Ferdinand Marian.

The first eighteen minutes of "La Habanera" constitute one of the most beautiful, economical sequences in film. The camera glides like the most sinuous and powerful of ballroom dancers; shots and sound accumulate artistic power like the carefully placed words in a sonnet. On the dramatic seaside cliff of a tropical isle, Astree (Zarah Leander), a sheltered Swedish tourist, watches Flamenco. The camera caresses everything it sees: sea, foam, rock face, palm fronds, the costume of the Flamenco dancer, her pride in her skill, Spanish and Indian physiognomies. With variations that make your heart ache, like the notes of a fugue, the same visual motifs replay throughout the film: exotically costumed women performing for audiences, caged birds, men saying goodbye, water, both wild and domesticated, fruits, flowers, and light filtered and fractured by venetian blinds, mosquito nets, ceiling fans, and snow. The ear as well as the eye is invited to participate in the dream: the shrill call of a bigoted aunt, "Astree, Astree!" frosts the most tender of moments, the bullfight crowd roars. "La Habanera" engulfs you; you're on vacation. Director Douglas Sirk's artistry never lets up till the final frame; symmetry serves as the strands of his web. "La Habanera," the title song, is insistently seductive as a toreador - you want to sway with his hips and let him dictate movement - and then it is grating and cruelly taunting - you want to slam shut the window and silence the singers - and, finally, it is heartbreakingly poignant - you want to follow, but realize that you no longer can.

A jeep driver with one flower behind his ear, another in his teeth, and a song in his heart picks up Astree and her overbearing, very chesty dowager aunt. They encounter Don Pedro de Avila, the island's padrone, astride a black horse. His face is framed by a wide-brimmed black hat and embroidered lapels. This romance-novel hero escorts the Swedish ladies to a bullfight. Don Pedro communicates his masterful inhabitation of his body. His steps spring; his arm, greeting spectators, sweeps with the majesty of inherited noblesse oblige; his hand nonchalantly tosses a handkerchief into a deferential peon's proffered hat, thus releasing a raging bull. When Don Pedro smiles his warm, crinkly-eyed smile at Astree, it is as if the sun is rising in the east. He is manly; when the bullfighter fails, it is he, at Astree's command, who dispatches the bull "with one thrust to the heart." He is attentive; Astree drops her fan in the bullring, and Pedro retrieves it, snaps it open, and returns it to Astree with a gesture that Nijinski could not perform with more seductive grace. Don Pedro accompanies Astree and Aunt Anna to their ship; he walks backward, away from the ship; there is a tension in his step as if he were a mime imitating a man saying goodbye to his love who is leaving aboard a ship. He pauses behind dockside exports to light a cigarette; even that casual, mundane move conveys erotic power. Within seconds, Astree has jumped ship; she's in his arms and her fate is sealed.

Fast forward ten years. Don Pedro, much aged, addresses Astree, nowhere to be seen. In her place, across an elegant armchair, drapes a lovely, lacey cloud, reminiscent of a brides' wedding gown. With a riding crop, Don Pedro tentatively taps, then seductively strokes, this white dress. His aggression rising, again, using the riding crop, he lifts the dress, as if lasciviously lifting a woman's hem. He then grabs the dress, manhandles it, rips it viciously, and throws it down. Only then does a very changed Astree enter. Her youth is gone. She, who had been so wild, gay, and impetuous, is now sober and resigned. Sirk has conveyed the previous ten years in Don Pedro's treatment of Astree's dress. Worship and passion morphed into obsession and then descended into oppression and contempt. Astree tells Don Pedro that she's come to despise the island, and him; she deeply regrets ever leaving cold, blond, superior Sweden.

Later, in a climactic scene, before hurting Don Pedro badly, Astree performs a profoundly sentimental gesture. She dons a traditional Caribbean costume Pedro had given her. By wearing this dress at a key moment, Astree gives Don Pedro a gift. Similarly, director Douglas Sirk, who was the husband of a Jewish wife, gives the audience, a gift. This scene undercuts the "Swede = superior; Caribbean = inferior" message. As Astree sings, Don Pedro watches her; he becomes ecstatic; it is clear that no matter how Nazi ideology or melodramatic convention dictate that this movie end, no one will ever love Astree as her racially "inferior," dark lover has. Pedro breathes her in like air; she moves him as his drug of choice. You know from watching her watching him that Don Pedro has given Astree the most unforgettable nights of her life.

There's so much else to talk about in this film, from the goofy font used in the opening title sequence to Astree's emotionally incestuous interactions with her strikingly cold, blond son. There's "Rosita," the male cross-dresser and Frieda-Kahlo imitator who plays Pedro's housekeeper. Rosita dresses like a nun, part of the film's anti-Catholic, pro-science, as well as anti-Caribbean, pro-Swedish, subtext. There's Dr. Gomez, a Simon-Abkarian lookalike, who, in a very funny scene, is regaled by a gallbladder-obsessed hypochondriac. There's Puerto Rico fever, perfidious islanders and the heroic Swedish doctor who fights both. There's the breathtakingly beautiful Zarah Leander, marketed as Nazi Germany's substitute for Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. But what this film amply demonstrates is that Ferdinand Marian was a compelling actor worthy of remembrance for so much more than having been coerced to appear in "Jud Suss," the "most hateful" film ever made.

This odd pastiche of medical drama, political thriller and romantic melodrama is of curio value for two reasons. Fans of director Douglas Sirk (here still working in Germany under the name Detlef Sierck) will enjoy the chance to see him plying his trade 'way back during the Depression, and it's also an interesting example of pre-War, post-Weimar German cinema. Still, it's also quite cluttered and muddled in the plot department, and filmically its main strength is in the crisp black-and-white cinematography; the acting and the script are a little sketchy. Sirk is moderately successful trying to stir the romantic angle up into his usual hysterical fever pitch, but there isn't all that much to work with. The plot -- about an impulsive, romantic-minded Swedish gal who gives up her safe European home to live in the passionate, but ultimately grimy and dispiriting island nation of Puerto Rico -- can be seen as allegorical and topical, particularly with an awkward medical subplot showing science being distorted and bent to the will of political power, but it's still not very compelling or fun to watch. It's also hard to tell exactly where the filmmakers are coming down on the commentary about the relationship between developed nations and the Third World -- Latin America seems pretty uniformly looked down on by the "good guys" in this flick, and it certainly is funny how everyone on the island speaks German so fluently. Deutshe starlet Zarah Leander, who sings several stilted musical numbers, also doesn't do much for me; most of the acting seems hurried and unsubtle. I'd tag this as more of a treat for film scholars, rather than movie fans.

I adore Zarah Leander and her transvestite looks and manners. The western love and hate for far away cultures is divinely pictured here. For romantics, conosseurs and dilettantes. Refined kitsch at its best