Miss Doctor
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Miss Doctor |
| Original title | Miss Doctor |
| Country of production |
Italy Yugoslavia |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1969 |
| length | 101 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Alberto Lattuada |
| script |
Vittoriano Petrilli Alberto Lattuada |
| production | Dino De Laurentiis |
| music | Ennio Morricone |
| camera | Luigi Kuveiller |
| cut | Nino Baragli |
| occupation | |
| |
Fräulein Doktor is an Italian - Yugoslav spy film drama by Alberto Lattuada with Suzy Kendall as the eponymous German master spy in the First World War .
action
The story of Miss Doctor takes place on several front lines during World War I and tells of the unremitting efforts of a young German spy to serve for the good of the fatherland, for the emperor and the empire. "Fräulein Doktor" is a young German woman who is not named in detail and who experienced the horrors of the war on the Western Front between 1916 and 1918. But what hardly anyone, apart from her employers, suspects that she works as a spy for the imperial intelligence service and is supposed to spy on British, French and Belgian plans on its behalf and thereby torpedo the enemy's intentions. Miss Doktor delivers her masterpiece with a daring preemptive strike against the British Navy in front of Scapa Flow and, as you can see in a flashback, the theft of one of the French scientist Dr. Saforet developed mustard gas formula to be used on the battlefield against its inventors, the British and French. As in this case, she even works with full physical effort: In order to get into possession of the enormously important formula, Miss Doctor sexually surrenders herself to this lesbian scientist ...
At the beginning of the film in 1916, the German carries out an important assignment alongside two fellow soldiers in a submarine to the British naval base in Scapa Flow. But the British, led by the "old hand" Colonel Foreman, are already waiting for the Germans to receive them properly. While the two men get into Foreman's hands, Miss Doctor is able to get away from him. Foreman fakes the execution of one German in order to increase the pressure on the other prisoner, Meyer. Foreman said he would suffer the same fate if he did not collaborate with the British. Foreman hopes to get hold of the escaped Germans. Meyer only knows her code name: "Fräulein Doktor". Meanwhile, she charms a British laundry worker to find out which ship the British sea lord Herbert Kitchener wants to use to join the war ally Russia. With the information obtained, which she can pass on to a German submarine, the ship HMS Hampshire, which is sailing with Kitchener on board, is sunk shortly after leaving Scapa Flow. Miss Doctor receives the Pour le Mérite for this information .
Meanwhile, Meyer returns to Berlin and ensnares his colleague who has arrived there to fulfill his mission on behalf of the British enemy. But the German Abwehr distrusts its own agent, whose escape from English custody they cannot quite believe. In order to "feed" Meyer with false information, the German side lets the morphine-addicted agent "poison" him and presents him with her corpse. Then he is allowed to "escape" to England so that he can report a report to his employer, Colonel Foreman. The faked death of Miss Doctor enables the top German agent to embark on a new secret mission that takes her to the middle of the war zone in Belgium. On site, equipped with a new identity as a Spanish countess, she should find out allied defense plans that were developed in view of an upcoming German military offensive. For this purpose, Miss Doctor is now recruiting as a neutral Spaniard on site in Spain some local women who want to do their service in a hospital near the German-Allied front. With her Spanish nurses and some German officers posing as Belgians, she crossed enemy France from Spain. The fake Belgians are said to infiltrate the Belgian army headquarters in order to investigate the strategic plans of the war opponents on the spot.
Meanwhile, Col. Foreman has doubts as to whether the "Miss Doctor" is really dead. He travels the Belgian-French-German front lines with their endless trench systems, where even dogs and horses wear gas masks, and one day turns up, with Meyer at his side, at the same army headquarters where the German agents are also staying. When these men manage to steal the Allied plans, there is an exchange of fire with Allied guards. However, one of the Germans managed to escape, after which the German attack on the enemy was a complete success. Foreman is now face to face with Miss Doctor, identified by Meyer, for the first time. But his triumph did not last long when Meyer remembers his patriotic duty and shoots Foreman. German units are already attacking and overrun the Allied headquarters. Meyer also dies in the process. Miss Doctor, who is now for the first time getting to feel all the horrors of war first hand and also sees how the poison gas used by her own soldiers causes soldiers to perish miserably on both sides, stumbles as if in a trance at the side of her people from this place of horror and the mass extinction continues. The otherwise hardened German spy master suffers a nervous breakdown for the first time. Then it disappears just as suddenly into the fog of history as it once emerged from it.
Production notes
Miss Doctor was filmed in English in Yugoslavia in 1967/68 and was released in Italian cinemas on January 24, 1969. The German premiere was on April 3, 1969. On September 30, 1992 this film was first broadcast on German television.
The film structures were designed by Mario Chiari , the musical director was Bruno Nicolai .
Historical background
The “Fräulein Doktor” in the film actually meant Elsbeth Schragmüller (1887–1940); she had completed her academic degree in political science and had been the head of the German espionage department against France in the intelligence service of the Supreme Army Command during the First World War . The film, not a biography in the true sense of the word, freely touches passages of her life, but, unlike the romanticising adaptation of the same film material over 30 years earlier by GW Pabst , Mademoiselle Docteur , does not leave aside the horrors of war.
Further film versions of this material
- Stamboul Quest , US-American film from 1934 with Myrna Loy as "Miss Doctor"
- Mademoiselle Docteur , French feature film from 1937 with Dita Parlo
- Mademoiselle Docteur , also known as Under Secret Orders , the British version of the French film, with Dita Parlo again
Reviews
“The strange but generally fascinating story of ' Miss Doctor '… will surprise you. (...) Based on a real espionage chapter from the First World War, the film develops a confusing cat-and-mouse thriller about espionage and counter-espionage. (...) Its climax is a nightmarish war spectacle - a poison gas attack in no man's land - which leaves you bolt upright in your cinema seat. The central character of this film is a German super agent played by Suzy Kendall, who remains a mystery until the end. Who is this young woman and what were her motivations and real feelings? This is the movie's weak point and a particularly large one. Otherwise ... the film is clever entertainment and a compelling evocation of war as the deadliest of games. "
“A cleverly constructed agent thriller that convinces with solid craftsmanship, but otherwise entertains rather undemanding. Staged by the former neorealist Alberto Lattuada. "
"Pretty depressing, international action melodrama."
“Big cast and budget in a little-seen European anti-war film that explores the career of a true double agent [sic!] During World War I. Some of the battle pictures are impressive. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ In the original: “The strange but generally fascinating ' Fraulein Doktor '… will surprise you. Based on an actual espionage chapter of World War I, it spins out a dazzling cat-and-mouse thriller of spying and counterspying ... Its climax is a nightmarish antiwar spectacle - a poison-gas slaughter in no man's land - that will bring you straight up in your seat. (...) The central figure of the picture, a German super-agent played by Suzy Kendall, remains an enigma to the end. Who was this young woman, and what were her motives and real feelings? This is the one weakness of the film, and it is a major one. Otherwise ... the movie is cunning entertainment and a gripping evocation of war as the deadliest of all games. "
- ^ Miss Doctor in the Lexicon of International Films
Web links
- Miss Doctor in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- extensive film review in the New York Times