Watch I Don't Want to Be a Man For Free

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Powerful

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Short (45mins) early silent movie from Ernst Lubitsch made a few years before he left Germany for Hollywood. Young (19) Ossi Oswalda plays a seemingly wayward young lady who is becoming quite a handful. Indeed, unlike UK and US films of the time we see this young lady drinking, playing cards flirting with older gentlemen and smoking furiously. A new guardian is employed to keep her in check but she finds if she dresses as a boy everyone is fooled and she can go off to the dance and flirt with that very same guardian. He is almost twice her age but the drunken evening is treated as a joke and they even kiss. Now, one he is twice her age and two, on the face of it these are two gentlemen kissing away. Ossi is not pretty in the conventional sense but we do consider that German gents like their ladies on the butch side so maybe this would have worked even more sensationally at the time. Curious, slightly worrying but a good start in my exploration of the early films of Mr Lubitsch.

With a poll coming up on IMDbs Classic Film board for the best titles from the 1915-1919 period,I started to search around for DVDs that I owned of movies from this time,and I spotted a Masters of Cinema box set containing 6 films by Ernst Lubitsch that I've been meaning to view for 3 years!,which led to me getting ready to find out what it would be like to be a man…The plot:Playing poker and smoking whilst hanging out with older men on the streets, Ossi Oswalda gets set to celebrate her uncle leaving town for a while by attending an upcoming ball.As the shadow of the uncle looms,Oswalda's new guardian Dr. Kersten appears,and announces that he will not put up with Oswalda's amoral behaviour.Unhappy with Kersten's demands,Oswalda sneaks out of the house,and goes to a fashion store,where she gets clothes that disguise her as a man.Arriving at the ball,Oswalda is shocked to find that along with her having left the household for the event,that Kersten has also secretly decided to attend the event.View on the film:Lighting up the screen,the cute Ossi Oswalda gives an excellent performance as herself,thanks to Oswalda's juggling the characters playful rebellion edge with an underlying hint of masculinity,which begins increasingly prominent as Oswalda charms Kersten off his feet. Attempting to stop Oswalda in her tracks, Curt Goetz gives a great slippery performance as Dr. Kersten,with Goetz delicately softening Kersten's hard stare,as he starts (unknowingly) trying to get Oswalda to fall for him.Opening with Oswalda smoking & playing cards,the screenplay by co- writer/(along with Hanns Kräly) director Ernst Lubitsch takes an extremely bold approach in going against the "traditional" route for female characters,with Oswalda being shown as a determined, independent women who can run circles round any guy who tries to get in her way from hitting the jackpot at cards,to being "the man" of the ball.Along with Oswalda outwitting all the men,the writers also take a very ahead of their time approach to the cross-dressing and homosexual aspects of the title,thanks to the writers holding Oswalda's head high (at a time when women in Germany could not vote) and revealing that Oswalda can wear a suit at the ball better than any of the guys can,whilst the increasingly intimate relationship between Oswalda & Kersten is given a perfect light touch which covers the film in a sweet atmosphere,as Oswalda discovers what it is like to be a man.

I DON'T WANT TO BE A MAN is less visually extravagant than The Oyster Princess (the film on which it is paired on Kino's DVD in the US), but a little more realistic and solid. Ossi Oswalda, the so-called German Mary Pickford, is a bored and petulant teen; a very strict tutor has been sent to watch her, she dresses like a man to escape and go on the town, and winds up spending the evening at a jazz club with her tutor. SPOILER AHOY: There's a germ of a Victor/Victoria-type comedy here, but it's somewhat flubbed by the fact that it's so hard to read the sexual politics-- Ossi dressed as a man and the tutor wind up cuddling and kissing, yet the movie doesn't seem to be saying that he's homosexual (since they wind up together-- female Ossi and the tutor) at the fade out. So was that normal behavior of two guys hanging out in 1918 Germany? (Try to imagine, say, Mabuse and one of his underlings cuddling.) Did he see her as a person for the first time because he didn't see her as a girl and his pupil? No particular evidence of that dramatic situation on screen. I Don't Want To Be a Man shows Lubitsch coming closer to the real world, but as would have been the case if Keystone had tried to adapt Edith Wharton, say, he doesn't yet know what to do with it. And, most crucially, he doesn't yet have the actress capable of being more, dramatically and sexually, than a hyperactive tomboy. With his next film, the preposterous and Count Floyd-worthy Eyes of the Mummy ("What do you mean there's no mummy in it?"), he would meet that actress-- Pola Negri.

Very entertaining silent film about cute, lively young Ossi, a tomboy full of a fun-loving spirit, she likes to smoke, drink booze, stick out her tongue, and play poker with her male chums - but her guardian and governess want her to behave like a "proper young lady". Wishing she were "born a boy" she heads to a local men's store and has herself fitted for an evening suit. Soon she's out on the streets in top hat, white tie, and tails, her hair groomed like a boy's, she rides the street car, and goes to a ballroom where she's soon drinking champagne and smoking cigars, flirting with (and even kissing) her own guardian - and he think's she's a fellow!This film is full of charm and loads of fun, in many ways due to the delightful and well done performance given by Ossi Oswalda, a very likable young actress, totally tops in cute and charming! The DVD of this has a nice looking black and white print and includes an extremely appealing, lively piano score by Neil Brand that is the perfect accompaniment to this film.