Der träumende Mund (1953) User Reviews

Maria SCHELL in the Footsteps of Elisabeth BERGNER

[ZeddaZogenau · 7/10 · 17 December 2023]

In 1953, this film drama by Münchhausen (1943) director Josef von Baky premiered in Stuttgart. The original was a film of the same name by Paul Czinner from 1932, in which the great ACADEMY AWARD nominee Elisabeth Bergner played the leading role. Henri Bernstein provided the literary template with "Melo".

Elisabeth (Maria Schell) is actually happily married to concertmaster Peter (O. W. Fischer, 1915-2004), but falls in love with the star violinist Michael (Frits van Dongen). Torn between two men, good Elisabeth doesn't know who to choose. Then fate intervenes...

It's amazing how many variations of love's suffering were offered to the dream couple Schell / Fischer. There was always something new, and there was really no boredom. And melodramas were simply extremely well received by German-speaking audiences. The rival is the Dutch actor Frits van Dongen (1901-1975), who was briefly involved with TOBIS in the 1930s before moving on to MGM in Hollywood as Philip Dorn. An interesting actor who was also seen in a few films!

The film was shot in the studio in Hamburg-Wandsbek.

The soon-to-be BAFTA AWARD nominee Maria Schell (1926-2005) scores as usual with her freshness and naturalness. No wonder that she was able to become a mega star in German-speaking countries in those years. Even greater successes in France, Italy and the USA were soon to follow.

Glorious Maria Schell

[robert-temple-1 · 8/10 · 20 September 2009]

This is the fourth of five films made of the play MELO by the French playwright Henri Bernstein between 1932 and 1986. The play was filmed twice in 1932, first as MELO (released in the USA as 'The Dreamy Mouth'), and then as DER TRAEUMENDE MUND (literally translated as 'The Dreamy Mouth'), released in the USA as 'Dreaming Lips'. It is not known why the film was made in German twice within a single year by the same director, or whether a print of either version survives. In the second film of the play (made in German), the lead was played by Elizabeth Bergner, who then repeated her performance in English five years later under the title DREAMING LIPS. All three of these films were directed by Paul Czinner, who was born in Budapest in 1890 but whose name is Austrian. He was married to Elizabeth Bergner, hence his obvious enthusiasm to give her the opportunity to star in this film in versions made in two languages. The 1937 film starring Elizabeth Bergner and Raymond Massey was awful, and both of their performances were more awful still (see my review). This film, however, is riveting to watch because of the amazing performance by Maria Schell, and the much higher level of all the performances than in the 1937 film. Schell makes of her character a disturbingly euphoric and ecstatic character, teetering on the edge of madness with her uncontrollable instant infatuation of concert violinist Philip Dorn, who actually plays the violin very convincingly in the film (the recording itself being dubbed). Dorn would only make one more film before being forced to retire from ill health. O. W. Fischer plays the husband of Schell, though this time he does not portray him as a silly brat as Romney Brent did in 1937, but as a more mature and sympathetic character, which greatly adds to the pathos of the story. The radiance and passion of Maria Schell make this film, which could easily have been a failure like its 1937 predecessor, an unsettling study in the excesses of love at first sight. Although it is clear that Schell has experienced all of this because she is unstable, her overwhelming joie de vivre and euphoria, possibly symptoms of bipolar depression, mark her out as irresistibly charming, even when we know she is a self-indulgent idiot who is merely creating an intense psychodrama for herself. Dorn may not be attractive enough to justify all of this passion in a woman, but the stolid and convincing manner in which he portrays the recipient of the unexpected emotional onslaught make him consistent throughout the story, and it holds everything together. The ending is completely different from that of the 1937 film, and much more convincing and appropriate. This is, then, a study in insane and unbridled infatuation and what it does to people's lives when it erupts unexpectedly and dominates everything.