Directed by:
Filip RenčScreenplay:
Ivan HubačCinematography:
Petr HojdaComposer:
Ondřej SoukupCast:
Táňa Pauhofová, Karl Markovics, Gedeon Burkhard, Zdenka Procházková, Simona Stašová, Martin Huba, Anna Fialová, Jiří Mádl, Lenka Vlasáková, Pavel Kříž (more)Plots(1)
One of the greatest untold love stories of the 20th century, this is the story of Lída Baarová, a beautiful Czech actress, who conquered Germany's silver screen as well as the heart of one of the Third Reich's most powerful men: the Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. How could Hitler's chief ideologist fall in love with a non-Aryan Slavonic beauty whose race had been designated as inferior by the Führer in "Mein Kampf" and whose country was soon to be occupied by the Nazis? How could one of Europe's most glamorous actresses reject offers of stardom from Hollywood in preference to a dangerous romance with the Nazi monster with a deformed leg? The movie will shatter taboos and probe the thin red line between demonic ideology and passions of the heart. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (9)
Lída? Misery. Filip Renč simply doesn't make films for me, although unfortunately every now and then he picks a subject that I would be interested in. His Lída Baarová is only unintentionally funny most of the time. The actors, though well chosen in type, give virtually no performances (perhaps most evident in Hitler's "Do you like Wagner?" Pavel Kříž, who is not funny until he speaks for the first time, and Karl Markovics, who pretends to be a Robert De Niro impersonator most of the time and the dubbing of Viktor Preiss does not go down well with him at all), the script is stupid, either unnecessarily semi-opinionated, or again abbreviated to the point of shame, the viewer has no chance to even understand the main heroine, let alone judge her together with the young student in the finale... And where did that mammoth budget go? I don't really know, because the opening scene looks badly televised, like something out of Cops and Robbers. And it's not the last. The overall miserable impression is only added to by the unusually bizarre scenes like the "love" moment and the faces in flames or the complete ending with the lamp going out - nobody could have taken this seriously! I am only comforted by the fact that I was far from the only one in the cinema who laughed so often.
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The story of Lída Baarová holds the potential for a great historical film, as well as for reflection on the essentially Czech and still unaddressed issue of the moral considerations of life under totalitarianism, or rather the national guilt of ethically ambivalent everyday existence under the past regimes. However, none of that comes across in this highly ridiculous yet soul-crushing mess. In the few scenes where the film touches on the life of Lída Baarová and her career in Nazi Germany, it offers up an insipid illustration in the best case, though it rather relies on superficial exploitation of the audience’s prejudices. The Nazi leaders, the Czech collaborators and finally the unhinged mother and the young journalist are probably intended to be great roles, but they never rise above the level of ridiculously stiff caricature. In addition to the passages with Goebbels, which go far beyond the boundaries of camp thanks to the overwrought acting, writing and directing, the film contains nonsensical sequences that take Baarová’s story into unexpected genre realms. Of these, the one that stands out the most is the etude that seems to have been cut out of a vulgar teen comedy, which is appropriately highlighted by the casting of Jiří Mádl. The narrative is another story. It takes a step toward the concept of an unreliable narrator, but due to its haphazardness, it ends up being a mere pile of nonsensical, impotently literal and boorishly phantasmagorical scenes that reek of paper, cocaine and stupidity. As a result, The Devil’s Mistress is neither a great biographical film nor powerful Nazisploitation, nor an ethical drama, nor just ordinary trash. Rather, it’s just a disarming fiasco whose main constants are poor judgment and incompetence. On the other hand, the project apparently had at least some ambition to show a controversial figure of 20th-century Czech history in a different light than as a demonised collaborator (though the image of a starlet blinded by love and her own fame is barely more flattering). Paradoxically, the film itself became a subject of controversy in modern Czech culture due to the involvement of neo-Nazis, the expenditure of enormous sums, which was definitely not apparent on the screen, and the strange sell-out in the form of a VIP-studded premiere, which in line with the phrase “life imitates art” mirrored the scene of a premiere with Goebbels in attendance. But perhaps in a few decades, the case of Renč, Hubač and Landa will serve as a preview for a similarly disorderly film that will show them as tragic greats blinded by their love for tyrants and themselves.
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I can't help but like this film. It's not a clear statement about the fate of Lída Baarová; overall, it's conceived more as something that could have happened, but it could be distorted in itself. The Nazis are portrayed excellently here, and so the only thing that bothered me was that Táňa didn't fit with Lída Baarová at all.
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Seriously? How is it even possible that Filip Renč dared to release this? A question for him to ponder. The audience might, in turn, wonder if supporting such dreck by visiting the cinema even makes sense. The scene with the faces in flames perfectly highlights the direction in which Czech cinema is heading. Terrible.
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Let's leave aside the fact that the name "Lída Baarová" is no longer the name of an actress who lived from 1914 to 2000 and worked in Czechoslovakian, German, Austrian, Italian, and Spanish cinema, lived through all sorts of things, and then kept only theater at the end of her career. "Lída Baarová" has been an affair since Standa Motl entered her life and a social event since Filip Renč entered her fate. Renč's The Devil's Mistress is something of an intersection between Requiem for a Maiden and Guard No. 47, two moments in his career when Renč realized the power of film as a social event and the power of the period piece. This film amounts to cellophane tinsel that doesn't work, unfortunately. The artistic license is beyond believability and one searches in vain for qualities in certain aspects. On the other hand, personally, I don't really care. Films have been made about the likes of Anny Ondra since the 1970s, and thankfully no such hysteria has developed around either.
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