Anna and Elizabeth


Anna and Elizabeth is a 1933 German drama film directed by Frank Wisbar and starring Dorothea Wieck, Hertha Thiele and Mathias Wieman. The film reunited Wieck and Thiele who had starred in Mädchen in Uniform together two years earlier, "in yet another tragic story with a lesbian subtext."
The film's sets were designed by Heinrich Beisenherz and Fritz Maurischat.

Synopsis

Elisabeth, a wealthy young aristocratic woman who uses a wheelchair, hears of Anna, a young peasant girl who is apparently able to work miracles, believed to be through supernatural powers. She brings the reluctant village girl to live with her, and appears to have been cured simply through her sheer belief in Anna's powers, but it is Elisabeth's own will that makes her walk, but so firm is her belief in Anna, she desires her constant companionship.
However, an attempt to demonstrate Anna's skills to the public fails, and in her despair Elisabeth throws herself off a cliff while Anna returns to her simple village life.

Cast

Lesbian theme

British queer theorist and film critic Richard Dyer explains:
Thiele was forced to leave Germany when Adolf Hitler came into power, because of her association with gay/lesbian films.

Reception

The New York Times praised the acting of Wieck, but was less impressed with that of Thiele. While admitting that the director had a natural flair for tragedy, the reviewer thought that the film was sometimes so slow-moving that it lapsed into ponderousness.
Wanda Hale from The New York Daily News wrote "Hertha Thiele's work as the victimized and unhappy Anna is as fine and restrained piece of acting this reviewer has seen in many a day, but Miss Wieck, as the susceptible and bad-mannered Elisabeth, acts more like a maniac than a physically sick person; with less thought and time on unimportant details the film would have been considerably bettered."
C. A. Lejeune of The Observer stated "this story of village life with Thiele and Wieck is a slightly erotic reversal of their relations in Mädchen in Uniform; the film is a study in hysteria, with morbid camera work, and tense direction; it's virtue is intensity, its fault the too complete departure from a normal view of life."