Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe

F Watchlist

This film adaptation of the famous novella by Gottfried Keller - who in turn adapted Shakespeare's romantic drama to 19th century rural Switzerland - is considered one of the most unusual and poetic old Swiss films and for a long time could only be seen in tattered film prints. After five years of work, the restored and digitised version is now finally available and proves to be a revelation that nevertheless also makes you smile: how timidly Margrit Winter and Erwin Kohlund act as the title couple, how theatrically the ruinous conflict between their fathers, who fall out over a field boundary, is staged, not to mention the wooden acting of a symbolic tramp who makes dark prophecies. Nevertheless, the old film and its new visual splendour burn themselves into the memory: It is enchanting how Romeo & Juliet, alias Sali & Vreneli, set off to a distant forest festival, where no one is bothered by their love, and drift along with the simple folk and travelling musicians. What a magnificant nocturnal polonaise of the revellers across country and meadow! At the end of it the couple suddenly finds themselves alone again and have no choice but to take one last river trip on a hay-laden weidling. Finally, it is unforgettable how this boat of love and death drifts down the river and into the morning. The poetic realism of French cinema of those years was the unmistakable inspiration for the captivating silver shimmer of these first great night scenes in the history of Swiss film. Finally, the elegiac fatalism of the story is also captivating: did Vreneli and Sali really have to end like this? The fact that it happens speaks volumes about the pressure to conform that weighed on the young people of the time.