Underplayed Gems

Tiefland (1954)

Tiefland poster
Directed by
Leni Riefenstahl
Genre
musical film
Country
Germany
Runtime
1h 38m
Rating
6.0 of 10 from 11 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

A woman marries a wealthy older man to escape poverty, but her life gets complicated when the man's true character shows through. Based on an opera, the story follows her love and struggle in a rural mountain village.

slow-burnmelodramaticoperaticdatedvisually lushstagedearnestsomber

What happens

Tiefland ("Lowlands") is a 1954 West German opera drama film directed, produced, co-written, edited by and starring Leni Riefenstahl, and based on the 1903 eponymous opera composed by Eugen d'Albert to a libretto by Rudolph Lothar based on the 1896 Catalan play Terra baixa by Àngel Guimerà. The film co-stars Bernhard Minetti, and is Riefenstahl's last feature film as both director and lead actress. Riefenstahl started to develop the script in 1934, with the movie being shot between 1940 and 1944. However, it was not completed by the end of World War II and was eventually finalized and released on February 11, 1954. It was once listed as the feature film with the longest production time in history by the Guinness Book of World Records. This record was later surpassed by The Thief and the Cobbler (with 29 years of production from 1964 to 1993), and there exist films with production times that are longer still. Riefenstahl's movie is the second Tiefland film that is based on the opera, the first one being a silent film in 1922, directed by Adolf E. Licho, with Lil Dagover as the main actress. The earlier American silent movie Marta of the Lowlands (1914) was based on the English translation of a Spanish translation of Guimerà's play. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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