Münchhausen

Plot synopsis:
The film opens at an 18th-century ball, where Baron Hieronymus von Münchhausen is propositioned by a young woman who is engaged to another man. He graciously rejects her advance, and as she leaves, she asks him to turn on the light. The camera follows his hand to a modern light switch, and the young woman drives off in an automobile. The next day, the Baron, out of his costume and in modern dress, regales two of his guests with stories of the famous Baron Münchhausen, to whom his guests think he is distantly related.
He begins in his home town of Bodenwerder, back from an adventure with his trusted servant Christian Kuchenreutter, who has invented a gun that can shoot accurately at a distance of 100 miles. The sorcerer Cagliostro visits, and asks the Baron to join him in a quest to take over the throne of Poland. The Baron declines, explaining that he has no interest in power, just in adventure.
In St. Petersburg, the Baron joins the court of Catherine the Great. She offers to appoint him to be her general aide-de-camp and install him in a room below hers, with a secret elevator between the two so that they can carry on their affair. He agrees to stay until one of them wants more freedom. While in her court, the Baron clashes with Prince Potemkin. The pair fight a "cuckoo duel" in a darkened room, where one party is obliged to call "cuckoo" while the other aims and fires a pistol at the sound of his opponent's voice. The Baron is wounded in the duel and he goes to Cagliostro, who has recently arrived in St. Petersburg, to tend to the wound. While there, the Baron warns Cagliostro of his impending arrest. After healing the Baron, Cagliostro asks him what he desires most of all, since money and power do not interest him. The Baron answers that he wishes to be as young as he is at that moment, for as long as he desires. Cagliostro grants his wish.
On the Turkish front, Potemkin lights a cannon while the Baron sits astride it. The Baron rides the cannonball over to the Turkish palace, where he is enslaved along with an Italian princess. After two months as a slave, the Baron is reunited with Kuchenreutter and his runner, Der Läufer, who can cover hundreds of miles in a matter of minutes. He makes a wager for his freedom and the princess' with the king, wherein his runner must retrieve some Tokay wine from Vienna within an hour. After winning the bet, the king tries to pass off a counterfeit princess on the Baron. Incensed, he slips on a ring that makes him invisible and absconds with the princess.
The pair escape to Venice, where her brother is offended by her dalliance with the Baron. He challenges the Baron to a duel with rapiers. The Baron humiliates the brother, leaving him suicidal. The Baron and Kuchenreutter escape in a hot air balloon, which takes them to the moon. On the moon, they marvel at how time moves so swiftly: while Münchhausen does not change at all, Kuchenreutter ages rapidly. They meet two inhabitants of the moon, one of whom moves about as a disembodied head. She explains to the Baron how no Earthlings can last more than a day on the Moon before they dry up in smoke and blow away. However, before the Baron can leave the moon, Kuchenreutter has a heart attack and dies in his arms, disappearing in a puff of smoke.
As the Baron finishes his tale, his guests correct him on some of its historical inaccuracies, citing the fact that the real Baron died before some of the events took place. This prompts the Baron to confess that he is in fact the same man as the legend, and that he has been married happily to his wife for 40 years. Unnerved by his admission, the guests quickly leave. The Baron's wife begs him to flee, as he usually does when his escapades get out of control, upset that he has confessed the truth. The Baron refuses to go, and instead, he revokes Cagliostro's gift. He immediately ages to match the advanced years of his wife.

Tags: cult, psychedelic

Review:
A much more interesting variation on the Münchhausen theme than Terry Gilliam would offer more than four decades later.It is filmed in colour and - despite being produced during WWII - no expense had been spared on the lavish sets and costumes.
The fabulous exploits of Baron MÜNCHHAUSEN include several wars, numerous plots and beautiful women without number.At the height of World War Two, as the tide was beginning to turn against the Third Reich, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels commissioned this lavish motion picture as a commemoration of the 25th anniversary of Ufa, the government-run German film association.
Remarkably, there is no National Socialist propaganda in the film and the War is never mentioned.In the title role, Hans Albers gives a surprisingly sensitive performance for such a robust production.
Whether riding on a cannonball, ingratiating himself with the Ottoman Sultan, or examining the fantastic flora of the lunar planet, Albers always makes Münchhausen totally believable.All the acting is of a high order, but especially worthy of mention are Ferdinand Marian as the mysterious Count Cagliostro, Brigitte Horney as a flirtatious Catherine the Great, and Gustav Waldau as an aging Casanova.It should be mentioned that this is not a movie for children.
Given its European origins it should come as no surprise that MÜNCHHAUSEN is a good deal more libidinous than the standard Hollywood fare of the time.**************************There was a real Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Münchhausen (1720-1797), a German adventurer and teller of tall tales, but he had nothing to do with the book of fictional exploits which borrowed his name, written by Rudolf Erich Raspe (1737-1794), upon which this film was based..
When I look at how many people have rated this film, and I think of all the movie lovers out there who have never seen, or even heard of this delightful gem; It saddens me.
Especially when you consider that Münchhausen is a Nazi era 1943 German film; It really is hard to believe that this is true.Acclaimed director Terry Gilliam of Monty Python and 12 Monkey's fame, obviously tried to draw more attention to this striking wonder when he made his own version of this tale 'The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen' in 1988.
Anyway, I remember the film with affection and I thoroughly enjoyed rewatching it on DVD (even if this version is still several minutes shy of its 134-minute original length!).For being made right in the middle of WWII, this is an obscenely expensive - circa $35 million in today's currency - spectacle (given pretty much carte blanche, the producers went overschedule and overbudget) commissioned by the Nazis - but scripted, ironically, by a Jew - on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Germany's foremost film unit, UFA, it was also seen as a direct response to such foreign-made extravaganzas as Hollywood's THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) and Britain's THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940)!
The character of the tale-spinning Baron Munchausen originated in a book by 18th century author Gottfried August Burger which, along the years, has inspired 4 feature-film adaptations (as well as a Silent short by pioneering wizard Georges Melies and an animated short that was thankfully included on the Kino DVD and which will be discussed separately).
Despite the stature accorded the 1988 Terry Gilliam version THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN (which I watched only once several years ago and recall being a somewhat hit-or-miss affair), the 1943 film emerges as perhaps the most satisfying cinematic rendition overall.The film is book-ended by scenes with a contemporary i.e. 1940s setting, in which the Baron (played as a dashing yet cunning womanizer rather than the Quixotic fool envisioned by Terry Gilliam) recounts some of his adventures - in the third person - to a naïve young couple (the female member of which had fallen under his spell at a fancy-dress ball).
The rest is an episodic fantasia in which Munchausen - usually driven by the promise of a romance and accompanied by his faithful sidekick - journeys from one country to the other (meeting along the way historical historical figures like Czarina Catherine The Great, Giacomo Casanova and the magician Cagliostro, who endows him with both immortality and the power of invisibility, as well as purely invented characters such as the self-proclaimed "world's fastest runner") until he ends up on the moon itself.
Quality varies but the end result, as a whole, is a delight and a veritable feast for the eyes (thanks, in no small measure to the highly pleasing Agfacolor, the splendid production design and the charmingly primitive special effects).Still, one thing that bothered me about the DVD was the fact that the subtitles barely allowed one time to read them (in all fairness, this had a lot to do with the virtually uninterrupted flurry of the film's dialogue itself - hence, something other than a thin white font should have been adopted)!
The extras were more extensive than I had anticipated and up to Kino's standards for a "Special Edition" release - the best, however, was the 17-minute interview with the head of the German archival company that handled the current restoration, which goes into some detail about this as well as the production of the film itself.DIE ABENTEUER DES BARON MUNCHHAUSEN - EINE WINTERREISE (Hans Held, 1944) **1/2 {6/10}: A pleasant animated short from Germany about the popular title character, made in color but containing no dialogue; it came hot on the heels of the 1943 epic film version - though the latter, apparently, left no recognizable impression on it (as the Baron here looked and acted nothing like the part as played by Hans Albers, nor was the plot 'lifted' from some particular sketch in the episodic film).
In fact, the short presents only a couple of incidents (presumably taken from the book which inspired the film version in the first place, and several others made before and after it): one in which the Baron's horse ends up dangling in the air from the façade of a building (seen in the front-cover illustration of the book from which Albers reads during the modern sequences in the film, though the episode itself is not re-enacted) and then when the two of them are chased by a hungry wolf in the snow, with the latter proceeding to swallow the horse in one gulp and replaces it in leading the Baron's sled!.
The color cinematography and special effects definitely equal the quality of anything Hollywood could do.The Munchhausen Stories in German culture are akin to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.
In fact the protagonist became a synonym, Munchhausen's syndrome is a diagnosis for one who tells exaggerated stories or outright lies the better to ingratiate themselves with another individual or a group.In fact at the same time that German romantic cinema star Hans Albers was doing Munchhausen over in Germany, a different kind of Munchhausen was popular in America.
During the part of the film concerning Munchhausen's visit to Imperial Russia, the German background of Catherine the Great played by a fetching Brigitte Horney is emphasized.
The caricature was definitely in keeping with the Nazi ideas to depict Slavic people as some kind of subhumans, almost as bad as Jews.Throughout the film as Munchhausen travels from St. Petersburg, to Istanbul, to Venice and even the moon, Albers's faithful sidekick is Herman Speelmans who is like Sancho Panza or even Gabby Hayes if you will.
Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Munchhausen was a historic German nobleman, who became famous for throwing lavish parties at his home in Bodenwerder, where he told the most fantastic tall tales about his adventures.
It's not surprising that the wonderful stories of this man were eventually made into a movie, and interestingly enough it was the one that celebrated the 25 year anniversary of the German UFA film studios.
Even more interesting though, is the fact that it was made in Nazi Germany during World War II, and yet doesn't contain one single anti-Semitic reference or propaganda for the cause of the National Socialist Party.
Out of gratitude, Cagliostro gives Munchausen a ring that makes him invisible and the ultimate gift of eternal youth, as long as Munchhausen wants it.Baron Munchhausen was never very complex in the original stories, as they mostly focused on his fairy tales, rather than the vast and interesting personality.
For this movie the basic concept of the Munchhausen stories was changed a bit, with the film being somewhat of a life story, even though there is no real linear plot, with the narrative reminding more of episodes.
While a lot of the film is actually more of a historical drama than fantasy, many scenes will bring you into the wonderful world of Baron Munchhausen, including the cream that makes your hair grow in a matter of seconds, the rifle that can shoot accurately for hundreds of miles and the ride to the moon in an air balloon.
An exemplary tale of imagination and creative adventures, Munchhausen's visual effects can't measure up the ones of today, of course, but in perspective to the times, they are absolutely stunning.Some of the acting in this movie really stands out, even though it mostly centers around the colorful sets.
Hans Albers makes the perfect Baron Munchhausen, a witty, intelligent, charismatic and very deep character, who is not the perfect hero, but a man who goes through life trying to have it as exciting as possible.
Whether he's deeply philosophical, in the middle of one of his fun adventures, or once again seducing a beautiful woman, Albers is extremely convincing as the flawed, but good-hearted Munchhausen, who learns a lot during his life, enough to choose mortality over eternal life at the end.
Another performer who really stands out is Ferdinand Marian, as the mysterious Count Cagliostro, who is very power-hungry, self-serving, but in the end a thankful and appreciative man, who rewards Munchhausen for warning him by giving him the eternal youth.
Therefore, "Munchhausen" really is a fairy tale for adults and not necessarily for children.What's left to say, is that "Munchhausen" is a beautiful tale of adventures and imagination, that is an impressive document of what Germany's film industry was able to conjure in the 1940s already.
And when Hans Albers rides on the cannon ball, turns his head to the audience, and takes off his hat in greeting, you will completely be captured by his charismatic and smart personality that brings the magic to this outstanding movie..
The film is very rich and vibrant in its cinematography and color, this is very much appreciated when one sees the work that went into the Moon set.Hans Albers plays an arrogant but lovable rogue who takes many, many years to learn the lesson of what is truly important in a mans life.I am in agreement with one reviewer in that this film is not at all for children and should be screened carefully, this is a European film and the Hayes Act didn't exist in Germany..
I first saw "Münchhausen" in my native Romania as a child during the war (I mean WWII) and the scene of the baron's landing on the moon and having a conversation with the head, lying on the ground, of a woman who left the rest of her body in her lunar home, made such a powerful impression on me that to this day I remember it in all its funny details.
It amuses, it surprises, it is well acted, the dialog is clever, written after all by the famous novelist Erich Kästner under a pseudonym to cover up the fact that the Nazis saw themselves forced to employ him after burning his books.
Was it an attempt to sustain both at home and abroad the far-fetched illusion that the war was going so well that all the German people cared about was laughing at the Baron Münchhausen's lies?
Take the Baron himself, played in this movie by Hans Albers, the greatest star, the Clark Gable of German movies in those years, yet by the time of this movie a man in his fifties pretending to be irresistible to females.
Ilse Werner, as Princess Isabella d'Este, is as beautiful as ever, and as Count Cagliostro we get to see Ferdinand Marian, the actor who just a few years earlier had disgraced himself by playing the lead in "Jud Süss," the most disgusting anti-Semitic propaganda film ever made, a fact that ultimately led Marian to alcoholism and a DUI death at war's end, considered a suicide by many.
The nudity (which was, of course, surprising for the era) was mild and provided additional insight into the mores, as well as aesthetic tastes in beauty, of the place and time.With the frivolity of this fantasy farce as the backdrop for a real educational opportunity, I would highly recommend it.
In film history class we were usually shown a silent era German movie followed by Triumph of the Will.
Even when compared to a US technicolor film of the period, this had a few advantages like real European locations, access to the Venice canals (a movie in colour first?).
A good movie produced in Nazi Germany (no kidding!).
Although "Münchhausen" was produced in Nazi Germany during World War 2, it is a good movie that many people have enjoyed.
The German film industry didn't begin to recover from the Nazis until the 1970's.Terry Gilliam's recent remake is neither better nor worse, just different..
But also the sets and costumes are fine looking, though obviously deliberately fake looking as well at times.A movie that tries really very hard but in the end just isn't good and entertaining enough.5/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/.
Hans Albers, (Baron Munchhausen),"Carl Peters",'41 played an outstanding role and was a good actor.
Hans Albers is wonderful as the ageless Baron, wandering through the wacky adventures in this film without taking it seriously for one moment.
In some respects the acting is ahead of its time, as the actors almost seem to be making fun of themselves, for example when the princess earnestly utters the line "fate bestows us luck, but the interest is very high." The goofy special effects only add to the fun, for instance when the cannonball-riding Baron crash-lands in the Sultan's palace and greets him with a hearty "Salaam!", or when the balloon drifts all the way up to the moon, which is populated by people who can remove their heads at will.
I find it astonishing that there are so many sexual references in this movie, the one-liners fly pretty fast in the sultan's palace, especially the scenes between the Baron and the eunuch, who speaks in a comically high-pitched squeak, like a mouse.
We all know, but remember the time and place when this movie was filmed.Some facts before the 2nd scene, 4 years before the German army invaded Poland and now (1943) it is still war.
(I still can't imagine how this got in the movie)These two subversive scenes make this film so humane and special..
The film begins with a gala 18th century ball at the Bodenwerder castle by the jovial Baron Muenchhausen and his wife.
He tells them of the adventures of his "ancestor", the fabulous Baron Muenchhausen, and the film goes into flashback, this time to the real 18th century.
If this clever, intelligent and visually stunning 1943 German version of the Baron Munchausen story was made elsewhere, and not under Nazi rule, it would surely rank as one of the great classic fantasy films.
Kino Video, with the assistance of the F.W Murnau Foundation (who helped preserve Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS) has released a handsomely restored version of this colorful, dreamlike fantasy treat.MUNCHAUSEN begins with a great visual gag regarding an elaborate 18th century costume ball attended by the charming but constantly fibbing Baron Munchausen (Hans Albers, whom film fans will recognize as the strong-man who steals Marlene Dietrich away in THE BLUE ANGEL) Munchausen tells of his wild adventures.
MUNCHAUSEN was filmed in Agfacolor, a bright and stunning color process developed in Germany.
So my advice is try to forget when it was made and just sit back and enjoy.Baron Munchausen was, despite the weirdness of the film, was a real adventurer and war hero.
In real life, he tended to greatly exaggerate his exploits and this was the basis for later stories of his life.In this film, the movie starts in the present day (1943), but it was brilliant how the writer and director made it look like it was in the 17th or 18th century.
This is a wonderful way to both introduce and conclude the film and makes this aspect of the film better than the 1988 version of Baron Munchausen.
...I just can't get it out of my mind that this film, while an annversary picture for UFA, also was a way for Reichpropagandaminister Goebbles to get the German movie-goer to forget the war.
Gilliam followed this picture very closely with his 1980's version, but this one has far more charm because of the primitive silent-movie effects used, and the sly moral ambiguity of the title character, who is a combination of rake, vagabond, and ace story-teller, though he a German patriot nonetheless.
This is Josef von Báky's "Münchhausen", a German film from 1943, so this one is almost 75 years old.
Münchhausen is a character that is still very well known today, at least here in Germany and here we find out about his adventures that lead him as far as to the moon.
This 110-minute movie is possibly the defining career role for lead actor Hans Albers, one of the biggest (if not the biggest) stars in German film from his era.
If you see the year 1943, you will realize that this film came out during World War II, when the Nazis were still in charge.
Nonetheless, compared to the despicable propaganda films that came out at the same time, this movie is pretty much entirely apolitical, which I find positive and surprising.