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Possible spoilers. Recently I read an article about Hedy Lamarr, not specifically about her acting career but about her side job as an inventor (member of the National Inventor Hall of Fame) who, along with composer George Antheil developed a radio guidance system for Allied Forces against Hitler’s Germany.
Early in her film career, the Austrian beauty wasn’t getting much traction until she signed up for this film from Czechoslovakia under the guidance of director Gustav Machaty. Essentially it tells the story of Eva Herman (19 year old Lamarr then known as Hedy Kiesler) who marries an older man, Emile (46-year old Zvonimir Rogoz). The movie opens appropriately with Emile clumsily and humorously carrying his young bride across the threshold of their new home. Eva appears anxious to consummate the marriage but Emile goes about his business of organizing items in his home office.
As time goes on, Eva becomes more and more frustrated with her husband. She cozies up to him, makes all the right moves, but he seems intent on having her just as a companion. Red flags there wouldn’t you think. In what is reported to be the first film featuring a female orgasm (self-induced), it is pretty lame by today’s standards but still unmistakable and leads to the most controversial section of the movie.
Eva has divorced Emile and has moved back in with her father (Leopold Kramer) who has an opulent rural estate. Feeling frisky one morning, Eva decides to take a horseback ride down to a small lake, the local swimming hole. There she parks the horse takes off her clothes, putting them on the horse and hits the water…with the camera rolling. While she frolics in the lake, the horse, hearing the romantic calls of another horse, decides to find a new girlfriend.
This is just one of many scenes Machaty utilizes to show the affection between 2 people or animals which dangles the missing component of poor Eva’s life. When Eva comes out of the lake in all her glory, she freaks out when she finds her horse gone. The horse ends up at a nearby worksite, where a crew is laying railroad tracks. The engineer on site is Adam, a handsome bloke played by 29-year old Aribert Mog. He corrals the steed and heads back toward the lake where he discovers Eva cowering behind the brush. He returns her clothes and they eventually strike up a relationship.
When Eva returns home she discovers Emile had dropped by. With encouragement from dear old dad, Emile wants to rekindle the relationship, one that never kindled in the first place. Eva bluntly tells him to take a hike which he does, forlorn and depressed. Emile’s road out of the country is blocked by the aforementioned construction, but Adam conveniently ushers him through the mess with a promise that Emile will take him into town. Of course Adam doesn’t know of Emile’s previous relationship with Eva.
Emile seems destructive, hurtling down the narrow road in his MG roadster. I kept wondering why their flapping hats don’t fly off. They must have been glued down. Adam has planned a romantic dinner at the local inn with Eva, the same one where Emile is staying. Eventually putting 2 and 2 together, Emile can’t go on and pulls the trigger…of a pistol to his head. When the lovers go up to the room to see what’s what, Eva seizes up trying not to let on that she was once married to the dead man. In what is a surprising ending, Eva leaves Adam behind but in the film’s final scene is finally smiling and holding a baby in her arms.
The film does have some unique elements to it besides the nudity. Machaty uses some elements first utilized by Alfred Hitchcock in his early films. Using shadows and interesting lighting the film often has a soft shooting perspective. For example in one scene the sunlight comes in through a crack in the shutters, perfectly hitting the eyes of Eva in a horizontal fashion. Other scenes are shot with the camera shooting up from the floor. Of course like the dating horses, the birds and the bees and other structured scenes go on too long. One can forgive those featuring Lamarr (a surname give to her by Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM). Her face is mesmerizing. The film has very little dialog and when it occurs it had been dubbed in German by other actors. English subtitles in the version I watched on Amazon Prime. The film was banned by many countries including Germany and the United States, finally arriving here in 1936 in an edited version. Lamarr went on to have a successful career well into the late ‘50’s but perhaps should be better known as a force to win WW II for the Allies.
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anton
Brilliant film. So unconventional
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 18, 2018Ex R.A.F .S.N.C.O. Jim K.
Very poor quality presentation
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 17, 2018
