5 Raske Piger: Old school charm or just a headache?

Is it worth your time?

Look, if you are looking for a gritty, modern drama, keep walking. 5 Raske Piger is strictly for the crowd that wants their cinema sweet, slightly dated, and packed with people who break into song for no reason. If you have zero patience for 1930s sentimentality, you are going to hate this. It’s a bit of a relic, but there’s a weird energy here that’s hard to just turn off.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of 5 raske piger (1933) through its definitive frames.

The story follows five sisters who are orphans but somehow stay super perky. They decide to hunt down their uncle because of some dying wish their mom had. It’s classic stuff. They go from being penniless to suddenly navigating a world of fancy houses and people who talk way too fast.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of 5 raske piger (1933) through its definitive frames.

Wait, why is everyone singing?

Every time the plot starts to actually get somewhere, someone stops the conversation to perform a musical number. It’s very jarring. At one point, I thought the movie had glitched. It’s like watching College Lovers, but with more family baggage and less focus on actual school.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of 5 raske piger (1933) through its definitive frames.

The sisters are all distinct, I guess? Though honestly, after the first twenty minutes, they start blending together. One of them is the 'tough' one, one is the 'sweet' one, and so on. It’s archetypes all the way down. The uncle character is just a grump who melts the second he hears a melody. Real believable, right? 🙄

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of 5 raske piger (1933) through its definitive frames.

Specific bits that stuck with me

• There is this one scene where they enter the uncle's office and the camera lingers on a desk ornament for way too long. Why? Nobody knows.
• The lighting in the living room scenes looks like they were trying to hide the fact that there was only one lamp in the entire studio.
• I swear the background actors in the ballroom scene are just wandering in circles.

It’s funny to compare this to something like The Wolverine. Both involve people trying to deal with complicated family legacies, but here, the stakes are just 'who gets the guy' instead of, you know, being an immortal mutant. It’s a totally different flavor of frustration.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of 5 raske piger (1933) through its definitive frames.

The movie gets noticeably better once the sisters stop trying to be 'respectable' and just start causing chaos in the uncle's mansion. The pacing is all over the place, though. It feels like the editor was working on a deadline and just started cutting chunks out at random. Sometimes a scene ends before a character even finishes their sentence. It's sloppy, but it’s kind of endearing in a weird, messy way.

Honestly, I can't tell if this is a classic or just a really long commercial for 1930s fashion. Probably a bit of both. Don't go in expecting a life-changing experience. Just take it for what it is—a noisy, glittery distraction from a time when movies were still trying to figure out if they wanted to be plays or actual films.