Miracles still happen

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Movie
Original title Miracles still happen
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1951
length 105 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Willi Forst
script Johannes Mario Simmel
Willi Forst
production Rolf Meyer
music Theo Mackeben
camera Václav Vich
cut Rudolf Schaad
occupation

Miracles still happen is a German romance comedy from 1951 by and with Willi Forst . At his side, Hildegard Knef took on the female lead.

action

A sunny spring day in Hamburg. The music artist Anita Weidner drives along Ballindamm in an open car . She has to stop at the intersection with Jungfernstieg , a police officer controls the traffic there. Then something strange happens: all the noises disappear at once, and instead a melody nests in her head that she likes very much but that no one else hears. Suddenly she whistles along, and suddenly a young man named Bobby Sanders pulls up to the level with his car. He too hears this catchy melody and whistles along. When the police officer clears the way for the onward journey and both drive off and lose sight of each other, this enigmatic melody also disappears and the daytime noise can be heard again. A few hours later, Anita is sitting in an ice cream parlor. The young man from the car next door was obviously looking for her and found her, the melody brought him to her. Again only the two hear that mysterious way; a phenomenon that they cannot explain. Enchanted and irritated by this event, Anita, who earns her living as a pianist and singer, tells her teacher Professor Nibius about this strange occurrence. Its mysterious explanation is almost of religious-philosophical depth: "A miracle is an event that creates faith".

Bobby Sanders, the man who, like Anita, has heard this miracle of an enchanting melody, composes - willy-nilly, since his serious work does not find a buyer - hits. He hasn't written a hit in a while, and his music publisher is on his neck. The enchanting melody begins to magically connect the only serious compositions accepted artist Anita and Bobby, who is turned towards the light muse - much to the displeasure of his singing partner and ex-girlfriend Doris, who reacts to this approach with fits of jealousy. Anita and Bobby fall in love and finally get married, and it is his wife who now leads him back to serious composition. When Bobby and Anita's harmonic relationship is disturbed by Doris and his publisher, the melody is temporarily silent. But, as the title says, miracles still happen, and their melody, the way of a great love, brings them together again. In the end, even Bobby's serious composition premieres in a concert hall, and he and his wife sit in the audience.

Production notes

Miracles still happen in the film studio in Bendestorf as well as in Bad Reichenhall and the surrounding area, in St. Wolfgang on Lake Wolfgang, in Hamburg and in Munich (exterior shots). The film premiered on October 18, 1951 in the Tower Palace in Frankfurt.

The film was made immediately after the melodrama Die Sünderin , the first collaboration between Forst and Knef, which was jazzed up because of a short nude scene related to the “film scandal” .

Karl Junge took over the production management, Franz Schroedter designed the film structures, which were implemented by Karl Weber . Hans Fritz Beckmann wrote the music texts for Theo Mackebens' composition .

The serious failure of this film meant that producer Rolf Meyer had to stop film production in the same year 1951 in view of the high costs for the time (820,000 DM, i.e. around 415,000 €) and the low income. Miracles still happen soon disappeared from the cinemas.

For a long time miracles still happening were thought to be lost. Only in the 2010s was a Dutch subtitled version discovered in the Amsterdam film archive.

Reviews

The Hamburger Abendblatt summed up in the fall of 1951 under the heading “A miracle went wrong”: “The visitors to the premiere seemed quite stunned; some left, some whistled, and at the end there was an awkward silence. (…) The book, chatty, indecisive and tough, no longer has the charm of the idea ”. Die Zeit spoke of “a poisonous mixture of touching kitsch and exaggerated irony”. The film distribution reported that numerous cinema owners had called him and had vented their anger over miracles . The Neue Zeitung , which in its October 20, 1951 issue dared to compare it with Forst's greatest film success, Bel Ami , found, in the opinion of Miracles still happening, disillusioned: "Willi Forst rarely remembers his Bel Ami".

In its October 24, 1951 edition, Der Spiegel wrote: “A film game about a pretty Mackeben love melody. Pop composer (Willi Forst) and allegedly serious pianist (Hildegard Knef) wrestle through dialogue platitudes and out of bland aberrations to the self-symphonically underscored I-love-you-end. "

The lexicon of the international film says: "A flirtatious romantic comedy that Forst shot in a kind of defiant reaction to the failure of his" sinner ", but which lacks the lightness and elegance of his earlier comedies."

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ There are still miracles happening on filmmuseum-hamburg.de
  2. ↑ Der Spiegel , Issue No. 43/1951
  3. ↑ Miracles still happen. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 1, 2019 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 

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