Die Grosse Liebe (1942)

The Great Love

Directed by: Rolf Hansen

Produced by: Walter Bolz

Written by: Peter Groll, Rolf Hansen and Alexander Lernet-Holenia

Music by: Michael Jary

Cinematography: Franz Weihmayr

Gerhard Huttula (special effects)

Edited by: Anna Höllering

Production company: UFA

Distributed by: Deutsche Filmvertriebs

Release date: 12 June 1942

Running time: 100 minutes

Country: National-Socialist Germany

Language: German

Budget: 3 million RM (equivalent to 11 million 2009 euros)

Box office: 8 million RM (equivalent to 28 million 2009 euros)

Starring:

Zarah Leander: Hanna Holberg

Viktor Staal: Paul Wendlandt

Grethe Weiser: Käthe, Hanna’s dresser

Paul Hörbiger: Alexander Rudnitzky, composer

Wolfgang Preiss: Oberleutnant von Etzdorf

Hans Schwarz jr.: Alfred Vanloo, artist

Leopold von Ledebur: Herr von Westphal

Julia Serda: Jenny von Westphal

Victor Janson: Mocelli, theatre director

Agnes Windeck: Hann’s mother

Paul Bildt: Head waiter

Erich Dunskus: man with dog

Olga Engl: old lady in block of flats

Karl Etlinger: man with admission tickets

Ilse Fürstenberg: air raid shelter attendant

Grete Reinwald: mother in air raid shelter

Ewald Wenck: Berlin taxi driver

Just Scheu: Alfred Vanloo’s brother

Erna Sellmer: ticket collector

Plot:

The attractive Oberleutnant Paul Wendlandt is stationed in North Africa as a fighter pilot. While in Berlin to deliver a report he is given a day’s leave, and on the stage of the cabaret theatre „Skala“ sees the popular Danish singer Hanna Holberg. For Paul it is love at first sight. When Hanna visits friends after the end of the performance, he follows her, and speaks to her in the U-Bahn. After the party in her friends’ flat he accompanies her home, and chance throws them further together when an air raid warning forces them to take cover in the air raid shelter. Hanna reciprocates Paul’s feelings, but after a night spent together Paul has to return immediately to the front.

There now follows a whole series of misunderstandings, and one missed opportunity after another. While Hanna waits in vain for some sign of life from Paul, he is flying on missions in North Africa. When he tries to visit her in her Berlin flat, she is giving a Christmas concert in Paris. Nevertheless, their bond grows in strength and arouses the jealousy of the composer Rudnitzky, who is also in love with the singer. Paul asks Hanna in a letter to marry him. However, when he is finally able to visit her, he is called away again on the night before the wedding. Hanna, disappointed, leaves for Rome, where she has to make a guest appearance. Even when Paul manages to get three weeks’ leave and follows Hanna to Rome, the wedding has still to be postponed: Paul feels so strongly that he is needed at the front that he goes back even though he has not been ordered to do so. Hanna does not understand this, and there is an argument, after which Paul thinks he has lost her forever.

The war against the Soviet Union breaks out (1941) and Paul and his friend Etzdorf are sent to the Eastern Front. When Etzdorf is killed, Paul writes a farewell letter to Hanna, to make the dangers of his missions easier to bear. Only when he himself has been shot down and wounded and is sent to a military hospital in the mountains does he see Hanna again, who is still prepared to marry him. The last shots of the film show the happy couple, confident in the future, looking skywards where squadrons of German bombers fly past.

Production and reception

The interior scenes for „Die große Liebe“ were filmed from 23 September 1941 to early October 1941 in the Tobis-Sascha-Studio in Vienna - better known as the Rosenhügel Film Studios - and in the Carl Froelich sound studio in Berlin-Tempelhof. The exterior scenes had been filmed in Berlin and Rome by the middle of March 1942. The film was submitted to the Film Censor’s Office on 10 June 1942 (Prüf-Nr. B. 57295) when it had a length of 2,738 metres or 100 minutes and was classified as suitable for minors and for public holiday viewing. It was distributed by the UFA-owned Deutsche Filmvertriebs GmbH (DFV). On 18 April 1944 it was re-submitted, now with a length of 2,732 metres (B. 60163), and was re-classified as before.

The premiere took place on 12 June 1942 in Berlin, in the Germania-Palast cinema on the Frankfurter Allee and the UFA-Palast am Zoo cinema. Die große Liebe became the greatest commercial film success of the Third Reich. It was seen by 27 million spectators and took 8 million Reichsmarks, having cost 3 million to produce (equivalent to 28 and 11 million 2009 euros). The Film Censor’s Office pronounced it „politically valuable“, ‘„artistically valuable“ and „valuable for the people“ - a combination of accolades also granted, for example, to Gerhard Lamprecht’s nationalist hero biography „Diesel“ (also 1942).

After the end of World War II the Allied Control Commission forbade the film to be screened. In 1963 however it was submitted to the FSK, who approved its re-release subject to cuts, which were however disregarded by the distributors: the film was shown with a preliminary warning but with no cuts. Further cuts were made in 1980 for release on home video, approved by the FSK for audiences age 6 and up.

The original version of „Die große Liebe“ was submitted to the FSK in 1997 and approved for release to audiences over the age of 18. This completely uncut version, running 100 minutes (approximately 97 mins in the PAL video format) is commercially available as a video and DVD in Germany. Distribution rights are now the property of Transit-Film GmbH.