Barcarole (1935) review: Beautiful, damp, and delightfully silly

If you are looking for a fast-paced thriller, stay far away from Barcarole. But if you have a soft spot for dusty, melodramatic 1930s European cinema set in a very fake-looking Venice, you might actually have a decent night with this. 🛶

The plot is loosely stolen from Tales of Hoffman. We get a handsome gambler who makes a dumb bet that he can seduce the wife of a very angry, very jealous Mexican man.

Of course, this leads to an old-fashioned duel. Because back then, you couldn't just write an angry text; you had to actually go stand in the cold fog and shoot at each other.

The first thing that hits you is how damp everything looks. I swear you can almost smell the canal water through the screen.

Gustav Fröhlich plays the lead gambler, and he has this face that is constantly trying to look intensely romantic. Mostly he just looks like he's trying to remember where he parked his gondola. 😅

And the hats! My god, the hats in this movie are absolutely gigantic.

One lady has a feather on her head that is so big it almost hits the top of the frame during a serious conversation. I spent five minutes just watching that feather wobble instead of listening to what she was saying.

It reminded me a bit of the silly high-society drama in The Lure of Luxury, where everyone is also dressed way too fancy for their own good.

The duel scene at the end goes on for what feels like three days. They walk, they look at the sky, they sigh, and then they walk some more.

One guy takes so long to raise his pistol that I thought the video had paused. It is supposed to be tense, but it just made me want to go make a sandwich.

But there is a weird charm to it all. The music is very pretty, even when it gets too loud and drowns out the actors talking.

Small things I noticed:

• The "Mexican" husband looks about as Mexican as a bowl of hot sauerkraut.
• There is a dog in one background shot that looks deeply confused about why it is on a boat.
• The lighting during the night scenes is actually really nice, even if the water looks like gray soup.

Lída Baarová plays the wife, and she is fine, I guess. She mostly just has to look worried and wear a lot of expensive lace.

It is definitely not a masterpiece, and some parts are incredibly boring. Still, if you want something slow to watch on a rainy Sunday, you could do a lot worse than this weird little relic.