Clear the stage for Marika

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Movie
Original title Clear the stage for Marika
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1958
length 92 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Georg Jacoby
script Helmuth M. Backhaus
production Walter Koppel
for real film
music Franz Grothe
camera Willy Winterstein
cut Klaus Dudenhöfer
occupation

Clear the stage for Marika is a German revue film by Georg Jacoby from 1958. Jacoby's wife Marika Rökk took on the leading role in the film.

action

Two years ago, the former dancer Marion Müller divorced her husband, the well-known composer Michael Norman, in Reno, America. She could no longer bear the fact that she always had to lead an insignificant life in the shadow of her husband, since she had given up her dance career for him. After the divorce, she founded an artist agency , but it is hardly successful. In Mümmelmann, the house agent of the local palace theater, she has a supporter who occasionally brings a client over to her, but he turns away from her when a band highly praised by Marion turns out to be an amateur troupe. Only one person still stands by her - her ex-husband Michael asks her, just like last year, just in time for the divorce day this year, if she wants to marry him again because he still loves her. Again she refuses, she wants to be successful before she says I do again.

When Michael hears that Frank Flemming, the friend of Marion's secretary Inge, has recently been a gossip reporter for the local newspaper, he has a plan. Frank is supposed to keep reporting about Marion in the gossip column over the next few weeks, creating an artificial popularity that leads to bookings and actually makes Marion famous. This would not only benefit the entire artist agency, but also Michael, who could marry Marion again. In order not to let the dizziness blow up, Marion should appear under the stage name "Marika Karoly". Marion doesn't know that everything is Michael's plan. He in turn wants Marion to dance to his music and finds in Walter Brand a man who pretends to be the composer of his pieces to Marion. Michael, in turn, blackmails Marion to make the truth about her identity fraud public if she does not pass him off as Marika Karoly's husband. She agrees, but now she can show him what it is like to be the insignificant spouse of a star.

Because in fact the big houses are tearing themselves around the mysterious Marika, who has not yet seen dance, but everyone is talking about. She signs a contract with the Palast Theater, Frank's newspaper stages a big reception at the train station and everyone is enthusiastic about “Marika's” Hungarian accent , her wit and charm - and that she keeps putting her husband in his place.

Rehearsals are in progress, but house agent Mümmelmann soon notices that he has no other than Marion in front of him in Marika. He reveals her true identity to the theater director out of hurt vanity because Schühlein had hired Marika behind his back. A scandal looms, but it does not materialize: Above all, Frank Flemming can convince the theater management that the sold-out premiere will take place, after all it is not so much the name that matters, but the performance. Since Michael Norman admits to having written the music for the revue himself , the management can now even have another big name printed on their posters. Shortly before the premiere, Marion is kidnapped by the ex-revue dancer and now frustrated director's wife Elvira Schühlein, but freed by Mümmelmann, who finally gets his long-awaited percentage of the Marika profit. The revue is a great success and Marika finally agrees to marry Michael again. In the end, however, this turns out to be superfluous, the divorce in Reno never became final due to a mistake. They will get married anyway, because Frank Flemming also made a successful marriage proposal to his girlfriend Inge.

production

The stage for Marika was made in the Real Film Studio in Hamburg . The first performance took place on August 14, 1958 in the Turm-Palast in Frankfurt am Main .

Marika Rökk sings the titles The most beautiful day of the whole year in the film , I'm so bored , This is the swing , opera parody and If you want, if you can, if you want . Roberto Blanco sings echo blues and you can also hear “Die Starlets”. Willy Dehmel wrote the lyrics and the music was played by the German Film Orchestra.

In addition to Marika Rökk, Helmut Ketels, Claus Cristofolini, Archie Savage and Romerito as well as “The Archie Savage Dancers”, the “ Hiller Girls ” and “The Resina Girls” dance in the film .

criticism

Leading actress Marika Rökk wrote in retrospect in her memoir that she and Jacoby had had a great success with a revue film in 1957 with Nacht im Grünen Kakadu : “Then we did it wrong. We rode the winning streak to death. We turned the stage for Marika! - with Johannes Heesters - and The night before the premiere - with Wolfgang Lukschy . Always the same theme with variations. "

Der Spiegel wrote that the film reveals two things: "Just as without a trace as the years have passed, the leading actress and director [...] have also made progress in international music films."

The lexicon of international films criticized the "clichéd framework for a revue comedy that provides Marika Rökk with the key words for her still brilliant dance acrobatics."

Cinema found the film to be “a somewhat flimsy vehicle for the former Ufa star Marika Rökk. Conclusion: cinematic counterpart to the kidney-shaped table ”.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marika Rökk: Heart with paprika. Memories . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 239.
  2. ↑ New in Germany: Clear the stage for Marika (Germany) . In: Der Spiegel , No. 39, September 24, 1958, p. 58.
  3. ↑ Klaus Brüne (Ed.): Lexicon of International Films . Volume 1. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1990, p. 464.
  4. ↑ Clear the stage for Marika. In: Cinema , Hubert Burda Media , accessed on August 6, 2018.