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Very disappointing...

One of my all time favorites.

Did you people see the same film I saw?

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

"Die Frau meiner Träume" or "The Woman of My Dreams" is a German movie from 1944 and if you see this year, you maybe already realize that this was made in Nazi Germany. But the Nazi impact here was not too big really, even if a similarity with many propaganda films is that this is also a film in color and that's pretty impressive as there are many German films from 2 decades later that are still in black-and-white. The director and one of the writer of this 95-minute movie is Georg Jacoby and this is possibly his most known work. The lead actress is Marika Rökk, still fairly famous in Germany today despite all the time that has passed and she is also not associated with Nazi Germany really. Rökk and Jacoby also collaborated on other occasions. Maybe big film buffs will recognize other names in this film as well, especially if they are German, but Rökk is without a doubt the biggest star here and if there is any memorable aspect about the movie than it is her performance, and especially her musical numbers. Yes there is a lot of music in here too besides the somewhat unsuccessful attempts at comedy and the not too memorable romance aspects. The movie dragged on several occasions in my opinion and I personally cannot say I found it relevant whatsoever. It is an award-winning film yes, but not a good one at all in my opinion and even for its time it is nothing special apart from the use of color and Rökk perhaps. It's fine that it is not a propaganda film, but this cannot be the main factor in considering it a quality movie. A film also needs to deliver in terms of acting, directing and story most of all and especially in terms of the latter, it is underwhelming and just not good enough. I give it a thumbs-down. watch something else instead.

In January 2005, New York City went through "Third Reich Movie Madness" when the Film Forum on Houston St. unspooled HITLER'S HIT PARADE (03), a pastiche of Nazi pop culture film clips.The critics rave: "The looking-glass world of German jazz and popular culture of the Third Reich. A remarkable collage of sounds and images!" "Monstrous & fascinating!" "Macabre & engrossing!" "Like watching people pirouette gaily off a cliff." Presented with the support of the Joan S. Constantiner Fund for Jewish and Holocaust Film.The Anthology Films Archive (2nd St. & 32nd Ave) also had a campy German film festival the same month featuring HEIMAT and "7 (other) colorful kitschy melodramas!" Released in November 1944, DIE FRAU MEINER TRAUME (The Woman Of My Dreams) was one of Nazi cinema's biggest moneymakers. The public, wading through rubble, and the conscripted, retreating military escaped for a few hours to dream with their eyes open. Hollywood is as much a state of mind as it is as a place, and it's brethren the world over churned out product almost as good as America's. This escapist musical comedy/romance is no exception, adhering closely to the Hollywood formula. I saw this film without dubbing or subtitles, and frankly didn't need them. The slim "rocky road to love" plot took a back seat to the songs and extravagant production numbers. The fact that it basically remakes Mae West's 1936 GO WEST YOUNG MAN makes the tale easy to follow.Blonde goddess Marika Rökk plays Julia Koster, a ravishing red-headed musical revue star and her opening number, "At Night It Isn't Right To Be Alone", playing to a packed theater, is both an eye-popper and a jaw-dropper. Julia's a waterfront floozy in black satin skirt, red-roses and boa feathers who gets thrown around adaggio-style by dock-side thugs. It's not hard to see why these Teutonic gays, er guys, weren't serving in Hitler's SS as you watch them prance down stone steps in unison. They all hop in a taxi as Julia, on the roof, jumps in a hat-box and comes out a Gay Nineties belle a la Mae West. In an opulent saloon setting they finish with a flourish as Julia and chorus girls do a risqué can-can. In desperate need of a vacation, Julia and her maid (rubber-faced comedienne Grethe Weiser) duck out on her demanding musical director ...with Julia wearing only a lacy satin teddie, high-heels and a sable coat. They board a train with the director in hot pursuit, and when it stops in the middle of a snowy nowhere Julia steps out for some air. When the train pulls away she's stranded and while making her way to the top of an icy Bavarian peak she's caught in an explosion. An avalanche knocks her unconscious and she's found by Peter, an engineer (Wolfgang Lukschy), and his friend who carry her back to their chalet. Peter and his crew have been dynamiting the surrounding ice-caps and they have no idea the lovely young lady they found is Julia Koster, the pin-up dream girl of every red-blooded German male. A screwball battle of the sexes erupts between the diva and the engineer with the friend making "three's company". The story gets surprisingly sexy as Julia goes from teddie to men's pajamas and makes a seductive sarong from a shower curtain. She also smokes, drinks champagne, warbles sweet nothings to Peter and takes a rain-barrel bath. The jig is up when the radio plays Julia Koster's big musical hit and she grabs an accordion to sing it live for the all-male audience. Found by her maid and musical director, Julia goes back to the city to star in the revue "The Woman Of My Dreams" when Peter makes it clear no wife of his will be a music-hall revue star. The film's finale is a 15 minute knock-out rivaling MGM in recreating Florenz Ziegfeld. A lavish extravaganza that couldn't possibly fit on a theater's stage, it takes us all around the Axis world at that time. In white tie and tails, a male dreamer sits among columns and stairs as Julia appears as an apparition in diaphanous Greek gown doing a Sally Rand bubble dance for him. When she throws the bubble at him, he's transported to Imperial Japan with Julia as an Oriental Princess doing an ersatz Javanese ballet. The dreamer follows his phantom though Palace portals and comes out in sunny Spain. In a daring flamenco dress cut well below the navel, Julia dances seductively until the dreamer jumps from the parapets back to the columns and stairs. During intermission Julia and Peter's love dilemma begins to resolve itself and for the revues end's the musical continues with the dreamer envisioning a wedding with his dream goddess. In black tie and tails, with his bride in a low cut wedding gown, the dreamer waltzes into a surreal heaven through sunshine, clouds and chorus girls playing celestial harps. Wow.Ravishing blonde musical sensation Marika Rökk (The Third Reich's Betty Grable) will take your breath away in garish Agfa-color. The propaganda in the film is minimal and isn't there at all if one prefers to believe it's not only an Aryan but an Alpha-male fantasy to possess a gorgeous hausfrau who gives up all for love. DIE FRAU MEINER FRAU can be summed up as rosy optimism for an evil regime with no future.Goebbels must have loved it.UFA film studios, Germany's largest and finest, spanned the years 1918 -1945. "The Woman Of My Dreams"DIE FRAU MEINER TRAUME was followed in 1945 by the color spectacle KOLBERG, an epic film made to urge the German people to fight to the death. With the military in shambles, Goebbels requisitioned over 185,000 soldiers from the Eastern front as extras. When KOLBERG had it's Berlin premiere on January 30, 1945, Hitler's thousand year Reich was exactly 12 years old and already in it's final days.

One of the most expensive projects of its time - between the 5 million RM of "Münchhausen" and 8,5 million RM of "Kolberg" - this film is worth its reputation. I do understand that it can be watched without subtitles, but having translated this film recently I urge you to find a subtitled version, or you'll miss most of its fun. The dialog is very snappy and sometimes even funny. But it's the musical numbers that really are the piece de resistance here, building an enormous Agfacolor alternative reality to the world that was devastated by the War. It's reported that the orderly Germans occasionally stampeded the fellow citizens trying to get a ticket - such was the enthusiasm as the film opened in the late summer of 1944. Rökk is not only a brilliant, acrobatic dancer and a passable comedienne, but also a good singer, starting the film in low cabaret-like voice and showing off her soubrette soprano towards the end. She always was on the stout side (she probably needed strong muscles to perform her acrobatics), but in this film she really looks good and elegant. Highly enjoyable piece of Nazi film-making without a trace of propaganda.After the war this film (along with many other German musicals) was screened as a "trophy picture" in Moscow and the whole Soviet Union. Ironically, the words of Herr Göbbels became true: German film would march with the German army anywhere in the World. The army didn't make it, the film did. Even more: the grand finale, really a beautiful piece of film-making, made it to the syllabus of the course in the Soviet Film Institute, where it remained for a long time. In the greatest of all the Russian cult TV serials - The 17 Moments of Spring - there's a lengthy scene where the protagonist, the Soviet spy in the Nazi Germany, sits his way through this film for the 13th time. The voice over explains that he hated the film but was waiting for the appearance of a secret courier; nevertheless the fact that about 3 minutes of the screen time (eagerly watched in 1971 by about 200 million people) is used, to show one of the dance numbers in the finale, proves that The Girl Of My Dreams had been firmly established in the collective knowledge of the Soviet citizen one way or another.

This revue-film starts (appr. 9 minutes) and finishes (appr. 15 minutes) with entertaining revue-numbers, but between these the viewer has to deal with an extremely nondescript and tendentious love story (the woman dancer can only be acceptable to the engineer if she becomes the simple German Hausfrau). Moreover, Jacoby's direction is nondescript as well, as usual. Seeing the difference in style between the revue scenes and other scenes (in all his films) I always wondered whether he was helped with the revue scenes.Here Marika Rökk dances better and livelier than in her other films; she is sometimes really good here, not only in the revue scenes, but also as the comedienne. The rest of the cast is boring and probably not helped by Jacoby's direction; even Grethe Weiser's contribution is poor. Jacob Tiedtke, however, as the recalcitrant theater visitor has a hilarious bit part.Is already the story tendentious, the last revue number is not only of attractive design and with ditto choreography and music, but also a political message to top the tendency of the story: the revue moves from Germany via Japan, Italy and Spain back to Germany! A clear statement, indeed.Further the film is noteworthy for its sexual hints, of which the most clear one is the reference made to blowing up by the engineer of hill number C. Both the dancer and the engineer study the map on which hill C is situated at the bottom. This is also the film that allegedly outraged Goebbels: one of the dresses of Rökk has a décolleté until her navel. Combined with sensual dancing, it was too much: the dress stayed, but the dancing was redone and toned down.