''Mazurka'' is a 1935 German

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

directed by

Willi Forst Willi Forst, born Wilhelm Anton Frohs (7 April 1903 – 11 August 1980) was an Austrian actor, screenwriter, film director, film producer and singer. As a debonair actor he was a darling of the German-speaking film audiences, as a director, one o ...

and starring

Pola Negri Pola Negri (; born Apolonia Chalupec ; 3 January 1897 – 1 August 1987) was a Polish stage and film actress and singer. She achieved worldwide fame during the silent and golden eras of Hollywood and European film for her tragedienne and femme ...

Albrecht Schoenhals Albrecht Moritz James Karl Schoenhals (7 March 1888 – 4 December 1978) was a German film actor. Life Born Moritz James Karl, Albrecht Schoenhals was the son of the German General upper physician Gustav Schoenhals (1855-1930) and an English ...

, and Ingeborg Theek. A woman is put on trial for murdering a predatory musician. It takes its name from the

Mazurka The mazurka (Polish: ''mazur'' Polish ball dance, one of the five Polish national dances and ''mazurek'' Polish folk dance') is a Polish musical form based on stylised folk dances in triple meter, usually at a lively tempo, with character de ...

, a

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

folk dance.

Warner Brothers Studios Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...

acquired the U.S. distribution rights but shelved the film in favor of its own scene-by-scene 1937 English language remake, ''

Confession A confession is a statement – made by a person or by a group of persons – acknowledging some personal fact that the person (or the group) would ostensibly prefer to keep hidden. The term presumes that the speaker is providing information th ...

'', which starred

Kay Francis Kay Francis (born Katharine Edwina Gibbs; January 13, 1905 – August 26, 1968) was an American stage and film actress. After a brief period on Broadway in the late 1920s, she moved to film and achieved her greatest success between 1930 an ...

. Mazurka's sets were designed by the

art director Art director is the title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, film industry, film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and ...

Hermann Warm Hermann Warm was a German art director for films. Born in 1889 (died 1976) in Berlin, Germany, Warm was an important figure in the expressionist movement of the 1920s. Warm entered the German film industry in 1912 after working on-stage for a whil ...

. It was partly shot on location in

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

. The film was made by Cine-Allianz whose

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

owners

Arnold Pressburger Arnold Pressburger (27 August 1885 – 17 February 1951) was an Austrian Jewish film producer who produced more than 70 films between 1913 and 1951. Pressburger was born in Pressburg, Austria-Hungary (now Bratislava, Slovakia) and died in Ha ...

and

Gregor Rabinovitch Gregor Rabinovitch (2 April 1889–12 November 1953) was a Ukrainian-born film producer who worked for many years in the German film industry. He emigrated to France from the Soviet Union in the early 1920s. After working for a time in Germany, ...

were dispossessed during pre-production of the film.

Plot summary

Cast

as Vera, a singer *

as Grigorij Michailow * Ingeborg Theek as Lisa *

Franziska Kinz Franziska Kinz (21 February 1897, Kufstein, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) – 26 April 1980, Meran, Italy) was an Austrian film actress An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the fl ...

as Mother * Paul Hartmann as Boris Kierow * Hans Hermann Schaufuss as Defense lawyer * Inge List as Hilde *

Friedrich Kayßler Friedrich Martin Adalbert Kayssler, also spelled Kayßler (7 April 1874 – 30 April 1945), was a German theatre and film actor. He appeared in 56 films between 1913 and 1945. Biography Kayssler was born in Neurode in the Silesia Province o ...

as Judge * Georg Georgi *

Antonie Jaeckel Antonie Jaeckel (5 September 1876 – 26 December 1960) was a German actress. Selected filmography * ''Madeleine (1919 film), Madeleine'' (1919) * ''Fridericus Rex'' (1922) * ''The Unknown Tomorrow'' (1923) * ''Cock of the Roost'' (1925) * ''If On ...

Reception

Writing for ''

The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world. It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''The ...

'' in 1937,

Graham Greene Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquir ...

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 d 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 erfor the pleasure of audiences who have forgotten er. Unusually for Greene, he also provided a second opinion from Sydney Carroll's ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

'' 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. (reprinted in: )

References

Bibliography

External links

* * 1935 films Films of Nazi Germany 1935 drama films 1930s German-language films Films directed by Willi Forst Cine-Allianz films Tobis Film films German black-and-white films German drama films 1930s German films {{1930s-Germany-film-stub