SKU 1189
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MARTHA – LETZTE ROSE (Mädchenmarkt) (1936)

Hanna Ralph, Georg Alexander and Helge Roswaenge
$9.99

Modestly advertised as based on Flotow's popular opera "Martha," this is a delightful film filled with melody, romance and humor. Called "Letzte Rose," presumably because of the frequent singing of the "Last Rose of Summer," it preserves most of the merry and kindly spirit of the opera (which had its premieère in Vienna in 1847).  As the lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne, in love with Lionel, a handsome young farmer to whom she has engaged herself as a maid for a year in jest at the Richmond Fair, Miss Spletter is the very personification of girlish charm. Mr. Roswaenge, a member of the Berlin State Opera Company, is equally effective in the rôle of the farmer. The duets and quartets are done in a manner worthy of the solo numbers.  While the action in general follows that of the opera, there are several deviations, most of them improvements upon the original. There are more comic complications and less sentimentality than in "Martha." On the other hand, a somewhat serious note is injected by making Queen Anne a defender of the British farming class against the lords without much historical justification.  On the whole, this "made-in-Germany" motion picture of British life in city and country in the first decade of the eighteenth century strikes one as being as accurate as most efforts of that kind and much more entertaining than the average.

 

DVD-R IS IN GERMAN WITH NO SUBTITLES. APPROX. 81 MINS. COMBINED TOTAL. WELL-USED, VHS-LIKE QUALITY OVERALL WITH SOME SOUND PROBLEMS.  THOUGH IN GERMAN, THE FILM WAS DISTRIBUTED IN THE BALTIC STATES, WHICH WILL BE OBVIOUS BY THE OPENING CREDITS.

 


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