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6.6/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6.6/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Fridericus remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you are the kind of person who enjoys watching 18th-century military strategy played out with a lot of stern faces and stiff uniforms, sure, give it a go. But if you need a movie that moves faster than a slow walk through a library, you’ll probably find yourself checking your phone within twenty minutes.
It’s very serious. Like, uncomfortably serious.
Otto Gebühr really leans into the King Friedrich role. He has this look in his eyes—you know the one—like he’s constantly smelling something slightly burnt. It’s a very committed performance, even if the movie around him feels a bit like a dusty textbook.
The battle scenes are… well, they’re there. They don’t have that modern grit you’d see in something like St. Helena and Its 'Man of Destiny'. Instead, it feels more like watching a giant game of chess where the pieces occasionally bump into each other. It’s all very polite, even when people are supposedly dying.
There’s a weird, detached quality to the whole thing. It’s like the film is trying so hard to be important that it forgets to actually be a movie. It reminded me a bit of the stuffiness in The Affairs of Cellini, but without the wink and nudge. It’s just straight-faced history.
Is it bad? No. It’s just… very much a product of its own time. You can feel the weight of the production design, even if the stakes don’t feel quite as high as the script insists they are. I spent more time looking at the buttons on the uniforms than following the actual war strategy. That’s probably on me, but the movie didn’t give me much of a reason to do otherwise.
If you’re into the niche of old European war dramas, you’ll find some charm here. For everyone else, it’s a bit of a museum piece. 🏛️