Stalking as Romance? A Look at Ich kenn' dich nicht und liebe dich

Is it worth your time?

If you like black-and-white comedies where people have too much time on their hands and wear suits on the beach, you’ll probably get a kick out of this. If the idea of a guy getting a job just to stalk a woman he saw in a magazine makes your skin crawl, stay far away. It’s definitely a product of its time, let's put it that way.

The whole premise is honestly a bit unhinged. Our hero is a composer who sees a photo and just decides, 'Yeah, I'm gonna go be their butler.' It’s the kind of logic you only find in movies from the 30s, like My Wife, the Movie Star, where life is just a series of silly games.

Willi Forst is doing his best with the charm, but man, the way he looks at her is intense. Sometimes it feels like he’s playing a character from a completely different movie. There's this one moment in the villa where he’s just standing in the background, and I swear he looks more like a ghost than a butler.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Ich kenn' dich nicht und liebe dich (1934) through its definitive frames.

The Riviera setting is gorgeous, even in black and white. You can almost smell the sea air, which helps distract from the fact that the plot is thinner than a piece of paper. It reminded me a bit of the lightness in Rival Romeos, just with less slapstick and more stiff collars.

Theo Lingen shows up and, as usual, he’s the only one who seems to know what kind of movie he’s in. He brings this weird, sharp energy that almost wakes the whole thing up. Whenever he isn't on screen, the movie kind of drifts off to sleep.

Odd little things I noticed:

• The dining room scenes have this weird echo. It sounds like they recorded the dialogue in a giant empty water tank.
• The outfits are immaculate. Nobody looks like they’ve ever done a day of actual work, least of all the 'butler.'
• There’s a scene involving a piano that goes on for way too long. It’s like the director just wanted to show off the set.
• The way people drink tea in this movie is suspiciously dramatic.

It’s not a masterpiece, and it doesn't try to be. It’s just a breezy, slightly creepy little story about a guy who really, really likes a magazine photo. Sometimes that’s enough, I guess. It’s not as deep as Arrowsmith, but then again, not everything needs to be, right? ☕