Mazurka (film)

Mazurka
Mazurka
Directed by	Willi Forst
Written by	Willi Forst; Hans Rameau;
Produced by	Arnold Pressburger; Gregor Rabinovitch;
Starring	Pola Negri; Albrecht Schoenhals; Ingeborg Theek;
Cinematography	Konstantin Irmen-Tschet
Edited by	Hans Wolff
Music by	Peter Kreuder
Production; company	Cine-Allianz
Distributed by	Rota-Film
Release date	14 November 1935;
Running time	91 minutes
Country	Germany
Language	German

Mazurka is a 1935 German drama film directed by Willi Forst and starring Pola Negri, Albrecht Schoenhals, and Ingeborg Theek.^[1] A woman is put on trial for murdering a predatory musician. It takes its name from the Mazurka, a Polish folk dance.

Warner Brothers Studios acquired the U.S. distribution rights but shelved the film in favor of its own scene-by-scene 1937 English language remake, Confession, which starred Kay Francis. Mazurka's sets were designed by the art director Hermann Warm. It was partly shot on location in Warsaw. The film was made by Cine-Allianz whose Jewish owners Arnold Pressburger and Gregor Rabinovitch were dispossessed during pre-production of the film.

Plot summary

Cast

Pola Negri as Vera, a singer
Albrecht Schoenhals as Grigorij Michailow
Ingeborg Theek as Lisa
Franziska Kinz as Mother
Paul Hartmann as Boris Kierow
Hans Hermann Schaufuss as Defense lawyer
Inge List as Hilde
Friedrich Kayßler as Judge
Georg Georgi
Antonie Jaeckel

Reception

Writing for The Spectator in 1937, Graham Greene gave the film a reserved middling review, praising the first twenty minutes as "admirable", but expressed his view that Pola Negri's performance for the remainder of the film was "deliberately [...] guy[ed]" by director Forst. Greene complained that "Negri may be unwise to return to the films, but it is a cruel idea of fun to guy [her] for the pleasure of audiences who have forgotten [her]". Unusually for Greene, he also provided a second opinion from Sydney Carroll's The Sunday Times review which lavished praise on Negri's performance and advised "every pert little miss who fancies herself an embryo star" to pay close attention to the authentic vividness Negri brought to the role.^[2]

References

^ Kotowski p. 173–176
^ Greene, Graham (5 February 1937). "Sensation/Mazurka". The Spectator. (reprinted in: Taylor, John Russell, ed. (1980). The Pleasure Dome. Oxford University Press. pp. 130-131. ISBN 0192812866.)

Bibliography

Kotowski, Mariusz (2014). Pola Negri: Hollywood's First Femme Fatale. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-4489-4.

External links

Mazurka at IMDb
Mazurka at AllMovie

This article related to a German film of the 1930s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

[1] Kotowski p. 173–176

[2] Greene, Graham (5 February 1937). "Sensation/Mazurka". The Spectator. (reprinted in: Taylor, John Russell, ed. (1980). The Pleasure Dome. Oxford University Press. pp. 130-131. ISBN 0192812866.)

[1]

[2]