Entertainment Weekly: Part I - Alles auf Deutsch

Between finals week, saying goodbye to friends from our Deutsch Kompakt course, and just life in general, I haven't had much time to travel.  Fortunately, there is always some sort of event or show going on in Tübingen or Stuttgart! There is really nothing like the stress of finals week to be an incentive to procrastinate! So here's the first part of a  round-up of the shows and movies I've gotten to see in the past month.

Rebecca: The Musical

Now as some of you may know, I love a good murder.  A good murder story, that is!  One of my favorite murder mysteries is not really a murder mystery at all, but the romantic suspense novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.  Even if you haven't read the book (and you should, because it's good), you probably know the opening line: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again".  The novel was released in 1938 and became an instant bestseller.  

Weirdly enough, the novel was used in WWII by the Germans as code source - the whole numbers refer to single words on the page thing. Thanks Wikipedia!

Anyway, it was recently adapted in 2006 into a German musical (okay it premiered in Austria, but the whole thing is sung/spoken in German).  I find this weird for many reasons: a) because it's a novel about British people, b) I don't even know how popular the novel is in English, let alone in German, and c) it's a pretty crazy idea to make a musical out of it.   

Yes, it's true that that in 1940 Alfred Hitchcock made the Oscar winning movie version out of it with Laurence Olivier.  (Actually, Hitchcock made 3 movies from her stories: Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, and The Birds)

This trailer makes it look so tame.

Look at that face.
I mean just look at that face.

But here's the thing, the plot of the book is way better suited for a movie than a musical.  Movies are allowed to be scary.  Musicals require singing and dancing a level of camp that is really not suited for a gothic story.  Okay, yes, Phantom of the Opera (my favorite musical of all time) is all creepy and gothic, but it has a central love story that keeps the plot going...And some people really hate it and think it's campy (to each their own, I suppose).

Making Rebecca into a musical is almost like taking a episode of Law and Order and putting musical numbers to it.  For those of you playing along at home, here's a basic run-down of the plot:  (If you don't want to be spoiled, just skip this giant paragraph)

An unnamed narrator "I" works at the paid companion (read: personal slave) for an American lady.  They're vacationing in the French Rivera when they run into Maxim de Winter (awesome name, no?), a newly widowed wealthy Englishman. There are all kinds of rumors swirling around about his late wife, Rebecca, who drowned at sea. "I" falls in love with Maxim, even though he's much older than she is and broods a lot.  Faced with the choice of being this annoying lady's footstool for the rest of her life or the rich wife of an English guy, "I" makes a logical choice and marries Maxim.  They moved to his sea-side estate Manderley in Cornwall and "I" tries to be a good wife. Unfortunately, the creepy housekeeper Mrs. Danvers is constantly reminding the narrator of how much more awesome the late Mrs. Rebecca de Winter was.  "I" feels insecure and creeped out by everyone there.  She also discovers that her new husband has a lot of issues - mostly angst (the American idea of the word, not the German one).  Trying to feel less useless, "I" decides to throw a costume ball at Manderley and Mrs. Danvers tricks her into a classic fashion faux pas - "I" ends up wearing the same gown Rebecca wore before she died. GASP!  Maxim freaks out and the narrator worries that he doesn't love her, but is instead still in love with Rebecca.  Mrs. Danvers, being a sneaky bitch, tries to convince the narrator to commit suicide off the balcony in Rebecca's room.  Right before the narrator is about to jump, flares go off and it turns out that Rebecca's boat and her body has turned up because of a massive storm.  Enter: court room drama! It turns out that Maxim hated Rebecca, who was a manipulative psychopath who also apparently liked to get it on with her cousin (eww).  He had confronted her about her affairs and general evilness one night on her boat - she revealed that she might be pregnant and taunted him about it being not his child - and he shot her.  And then covered up the murder by sinking her boat in the middle of the ocean. Hurray for the good guy!  The law is about to come down on Maxim for murder, since he did, well shoot her, when it is revealed that Rebecca played Maxim and framed him for murder beyond the grave, what with her being evil and all.  Rebecca actually had cancer, but she had a fear of dying weak so she got Maxim to kill her while also framing him. Nice. Absolved of the murder, Maxim and "I" celebrate their new life together in Mander - oh wait, no. The crazy Mrs. Danvers kills herself by burning their house down.  THE END!


Yep, it's crazy.


Needless to say, I was skeptical of seeing a musical version of the story.  But it actually turned out to be really awesome!  The music wasn't spectacular - I was really distracted by the fact they kept saying Mander-lay when it's pronounced Mander-leigh - but the actors were fantastic. The costumes were wonderfully 1930/40s.  The lead actress looked a lot like Romola Garai (yeah, I don't know how to pronounce it either) who is one of my favorite actresses. She was Emma in the newest miniseries of Emma and it was perfection.

This is a still from the movie Glorious 39
(which I haven't seen yet) but it's set around
the same time period as Rebecca.

The lead actor was styled after Laurence Olivier's controlled performance of Maxim, sans mustache.

He could brood like no one's business

Undoubtedly, the musical was influenced by Hitchcock's film. This was most evident in the role of Mrs. Danvers.  In book, she's just creepy.  Hitchcock ramped up the creepiness by including this vibe of sycophantic attraction between Mrs. Danvers and the late Rebecca. I mean, just look at the still from the scene where Mrs. Danvers tries to get the narrator to jump. It's the stuff of nightmares.

EEEK.

Here's a clip from the musical with Mrs. Danvers.  And because the internet is a wonderful place, someone put English subtitles on the song so you can get the full gist of the creepiness.

The musical used these amazing rotating sets, including a massive staircase, as well as projection technology which allowed for really cool 3D and fog effects.  By the far, the best scene was the epic ending where Mrs. Danvers burns down Manderley.  The set rotates as the character of Mrs. Danvers goes up the staircase lighting each step behind her on fire.  And I mean, real fire! In the end, there is smoke and a huge chandelier crash. 

Sweet, sweet destruction.

It was a pretty amazing experience, but English speakers don't hold your breath.  Apparently, both British and American Broadway producers have qualms about investing in giant rotating sets that light themselves on fire. The funding for two Broadway shows have fallen through already.  I guess if you want to see it, you'll have to come to Germany!  If you're feeling cheap, pop a copy of the movie into your Dvd player.  Or if you're really ambitious, snuggle down for a creepy read.

Rubbeldiekatz

Rachel, Emily, and I were feeling down and we all wanted to see a German movie. Of course, long experience with foreign movies (Rachel, remember Die Krieger und die Kaiserin?!) has taught us that their dramas are completely confusing and occasionally mentally scarring and their comedies are not necessarily funny.  It might have something to do with how humor translates or it just might be a bad movie.  The jury is still out on that one.  We went into the movie Rubbeldiekatz (which roughly translate into "Scratch the Cat") with some serious reservations and we weren't holding our breath.

Rubbeldiekatz is a little like the German version of Tootsie - Actor Alex Honk (played by Matthias Schweighöfer) can't find a job so he dresses as a woman to land a role in American movie set in Nazi Germany (the movie pokes fun at how Americans only come to Germany to film Nazi movies).  Meanwhile, the lead actress (played by Alexandra Maria Lara) is depressed after her boyfriend cheats on her and has a distrust of men. I WONDER WHAT HAPPENS?!

Matthias, Matthias as a woman, Alexandra (from left to right)

The movie features some really funny jokes and occasionally some very crude sexual humor, but overall, it was actually pretty cute.  The German was easy enough to understand (no one spoke in a dialect!) and we understood 98% of the movie! Go us! Even some German word-play puns were understandable.

I vastly preferred it to Keinohrhasen ("The Rabbit Without Ears") which I thought was really terrible and not romantic at all.  Also apparently, the Germans have a predilection with cramming words together to make titles. Weird.

Next up in Part II: It's Oscar Season! The Help and The Artist