kidboots Review of Fräulein Else

Fräulein Else (1929)

Fraulein Elsie

[10/10 · 23 July 2021]

A film you could so easily lose yourself in, direction was by Paul Czinner and his meticulous attention to the beautiful landscape of St. Moritz and the urban street scenes and home life makes you feel as though you are really there. Adding to that is the exquisite ethereal Elisabeth Bergner as Elsie - even though by 1929 she was 30, she really looked and acted like a child of 14. With a plot line similar to "Effie Briest" Bergner's Elsie is having a blissful time just being alive and excited about holidaying in St. Moritz with her cousin Paul and his family. While her parents are lavish with their spending, her father has been speculating heavily on the stock exchange and with Elsie sending letters in rapture of new experiences she happens to mention meeting a business associate of her father's. Her father is ruined and is facing time in prison, he has had a collapse so her mother writes to her begging her to do everything she can to get the funds needed from this associate so her father won't have to face prison.

It's obvious to the viewer that the associate wants a relationship with the child. There are two amazing sequences - the first, a tracking shot as Von Dorsday walks through the casino, Elsie just keeping her distance initially hesitant then eager, lastly realising she doesn't have the confidence to ask. The next one

• when she talks to Von Dorsday all you have to do

is watch her hands. The end scenes are very confrontational. At first having fun with Elsie, Paul then meets a woman of his own age to whom he becomes attracted though at the end he realises how badly he has let Elsie down.

Albert Bassermann plays the father superbly. Sixty by the time "Fraulein Elsie" was made, he later fled to America when he couldn't tolerate the way his wife (who was Jewish) was treated and then was nominated for a Best Supporting Academy Award for his role in "Foreign Correspondent" at age 70.