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Lída Baarová (Arch.), Lída Baarová, Helena Třeštíková, Alena Šislerová (Erzähler), Vladimír Borský (Arch.), Gustav Fröhlich (Arch.) (mehr)Inhalte(1)
Lída Baarová: an actress whose beauty was her greatest gift as well as her curse. As a young, attractive girl she quickly became the leading Czechoslovak movie star and was able to captivate the most feared men of her era. But her affair with the Minister of Propaganda of the Third Reich, Joseph Goebbels, transformed her into an enemy of her own country and a symbol of collaboration. Documentary filmmaker Helena Třeštíková met with Lída Baarová during the actress' exile abroad and filmed Lída's open confession in the final years of her life, using unique material from several European film archives and excerpts from this once beloved, later reviled actress' most famous film roles. This self-destructive love story, as monumental as an ancient Greek tragedy, is fatally linked to European history and provides an exceptionally honest portrait of a woman who had the world at her feet at the height of her career – which made her subsequent fall into oblivion and loneliness all the more staggering. (Aerofilms)
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It’s great when a documentary isn’t prejudiced and shows you both the good and the bad sides of people. At the same time, it doesn’t lean towards one opinion or the other and lets the viewer decide what they think about Lída Baarová. Well, this one failed to do so. Lída Baarová was surely very talented, but also very inconsiderate to others. However, when she would talk about the time she’d met Goebbles or Hitler and even dared to oppose them, I was on pins and needles and I ate up her every word. I don’t mean to hold anything against her. She didn’t have an easy life, but she might have played into those cards with her own naivety. And as she said herself, she’s had her fair share of fun and happiness. But life is not a bed of roses and every bad experience teaches us something and makes us stronger. By the end of the documentary, I wasn’t quite sure whether she’d handled everything blamelessly. I wouldn’t say so.
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In vain I ask myself who Lída Baarová - Doomed Beauty is for. If the viewer has taken part in the Baarová phenomenon, he suffers. If he hasn't, he becomes an uncomprehending laughing beast. Třeštíková's factual inaccuracies are striking (Wanka or Kopecký, Lamač or Slavínský, her team obviously doesn't care). The imbalance of reported facts is extreme (not only was Goebbels married, but so was Fröhlich). What is missing is a reflection on Baarová's career before her international success, and her work alongside other domestic stars (when Nový is shown, where is Haas?). Was it necessary to use Eva Braun's private archive in the context of Baarová? Important milestones are swept under the carpet (the tragedy of her family sounds like a farce), her career in Spain is not mentioned at all, and I could go on for a very long time. If she’s a Doomed Beauty, where is the transformation of the actress in Prague and Berlin? Where are the differences in the styles of work in Austria, Italy, and Spain shown before and after the war? I am exhausted because this is really not the result of a work that could and should have taken a good twenty years.
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"Wir lieben das, was wir verlieren…“ Ein sehr trauriger Dokumentarfilm, der vor allem das ausnutzt, dass über Lída Baarová Lída Baarová selbst erzählt. Es ist sowohl ein Vorzug (z. B. wenn die alte einsame Dame, der einst die ganze Welt zu Füßen lag, mit einer Zigarette über Goebbels und Hitler erzählt und darüber spricht, wie lustig es mir Goebbels zuging) als auch ein Nachteil (der Film bräuchte manchmal einen Erzähler, der eingreifen und einiges erklären würde – z. B. den Tod von Zorka Janů). Die Geschichte von Lída Baarová habe ich nur in groben Zügen gekannt und ich war gespannt, was mir der Film Doomed Beauty zeigen wird. Leider war es aber nicht viel. Am meisten haben mich die Shots von den Wochenschauen beeindruckt – Schauspieler*innen wie Korbelář, Marvan, Černý, Vítová, Gollová und natürlich die Taschen herstellende Baarová, die Ode an kaputte Filmrollen, aus denen Nagellack oder Schuhcreme gemacht wird… Das war geradezu perfekt ekelhaft.
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In this film, you won't find the truth, just like you won't find it in the fictional portrayal of her life. There are facts presented through archival footage, but it's primarily Lída's own words that are presented here by herself. Can the actress be trusted? This is also something that comes to mind. Yet you don't get the sense from the ending that she's happy with her performance, the reconciliation is almost painful.
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