Random Saturday - Dubbing

In our daily thread on my jewelry forum, I talked about dubbed movies some time ago and found that my English speaking friends had never really thought about those much because they often have not even seen one themselves.
I, on the other hand, had never been too aware about not all countries having as huge a dubbing industry as Germany, Italy, Spain or others.
Actually, I had never given much thought to the history of dubbing at all before learning about multiple-language movies thanks to one of my favorite films, the 1931 Dracula, which was also filmed in Spanish (more about that here).

Why is it that in Germany allegedly 90 % of consumers watch dubbed versions? I have to admit that the high number really did surprise me.
Is this just a historically grown habit because almost all movies and shows are being dubbed or are there other reasons as well?

Picture via pxhere

Let's start with the history.
In 1929, sound films were still pretty young. The lead actress Anny Ondra in Hitchcock's movie "Blackmail" had a Czech accent when speaking English, but post-dubbing was technically not possible yet. So Ondra lip-synced the lines spoken off-camera by Joan Barry which is said to be the first example of "dubbing".

To market movies to non-English speaking audiences, there were either the above mentioned multiple-language movies meaning a movie was filmed in different languages with native speakers which was understandably the most popular method with audiences.
Another possibility was to have the actors learn the lines in the other languages. It sounds quite cute to hear for example Laurel and Hardy speak German, but it can be difficult to understand.
Then there are the subtitles. I know a lot of people who feel subtitles distract from what's happening on the screen. I've also heard American friends saying they don't want to watch foreign films because of the subtitles, so I find it a bit confusing if they are surprised that Germans (and others) don't want to do that, either. There are countries that are used to it, though, Sweden for example.

Dubbing, which was done in Hollywood first and then in France before the first studios opened in Germany, has always been controversial and heavily criticized especially for the first movies that tried to match the lines closely to the lip movements which ended up in awkward German.

After World War II, movies were shown not only for entertainment, but also for re-education of the Germans. Movies were shown in the original languages - American or British English, Russian, French - with few subtitles which was not popular with the audience, so dubbing became the norm and Germany built up one of the biggest dubbing industries in the world.

Germany wasn't ready yet to deal with her past, though. Do you know the Hitchcock movie "Notorious"? The Nazis from the original turned into international drug smugglers in the German dubbing, therefore the movie title was "Weißes Gift" = "White Poison".
"Casablanca" got a German version in which all Nazis in uniform got cut out.
No worries, we don't have these versions anymore, I don't even remember ever having seen them myself.

That's only one part of the big controversy around dubbing, however.
Can a dubbed film bring a message across just like the original? How is dubbing done without losing impact from the original culture? Without accents, dialects, or country-specific vocabulary?
To be honest, if someone doesn't know British accents - just one example - and would watch those movies/shows with subtitles, I doubt they would analyze the accents or even be able to do it while trying to follow the plot through subtitles.
Sometimes accents have been replaced with German accents. In the movie "Airplane!", the black men from the South speak Bavarian in the German dubbing, and I always thought that was terrible because it didn't transport the joke well for me. Mostly, however, dubbing is in so-called "Hochdeutsch", literally "High German" which is free of any regional accent. That is controversial in itself because "sceptics argue that this Hochdeutsch is a strand of dangerous, homogenising nationalism, erasing the diverse variety of German voices from the silver-screen".
I wonder, however, which accents those sceptics would choose for dubbing then?
Should the actresses and actors just speak in their own original dialect? Should production choose a dialect for them to use, for example have a character from Scotland speak Plattdütsch from Nothern Germany and one from London speak Oberbayerisch?
I can assure you people would have big problems with that. I speak Swabian, not thick, but obviously enough that there are people who can't understand everything, and I couldn't understand my grandmother when she talked in Platt. Where would that get us? I have even seen German programs with heavy dialects which got sutitles.

Picture via pxhere

Of course there is good and bad dubbing, just as there are good translations and bad ones - and as there is good acting and bad acting.
We may not always know their names - which really is a shame - but nevertheless we appreciate our voice actors and actresses. They usually don't dub for just one person and sometimes you don't even notice right away unless you start hearing a voice more and more often.
That's the art of dubbing, just like actors slip into different characters, voice actors slip into different actors, and if they are good, it's believable, too.

One of our best known voice actors, Christian Brückner, is Robert de Niro for us, but also Martin Sheen or Harvey Keitel. Cary Grant had several different voices over time. Movies had more than one dubbed version, for example "Arsenic and Old Lace" (or "Notorious" 😉).
Sometimes a new dubbed version gets made for a new DVD or BluRay edition.
We are shocked when the long-term "voice" of a star dies which means we will have to get used to a new one. Will they choose the right one? Or maybe someone gets a new voice because the old one doesn't have time, wants more money or because there has been a fallout. David Duchovny got a new voice and I could never watch the dubbed version again, it just sounded wrong to me.
You also have to keep in mind that before the Internet we might not even have had the chance to see the original.

There can also be censorship, though (see "Notorious" again), but also "censorship". By that I mean that some shows were dubbed in so-called "Schnodderdeutsch" which you could translate as "flippant German", not really censorship, but ... heck if I know what it should be called.
"Such a manifestation of the German language is used for the purpose of humor and satire and is characterized by neologisms, apparent proverbs, atypical metaphors and comparisons, stylistic breaks, violations of norms and breaks in logic".
You could also say they went completely overboard. I was completely flabbergasted when I saw some of the shows of my childhood in the original.
Matching the lines to lip movements can also lead to small (?) changes in the German script, but it also means you don't feel something's off.

As mentioned, however, this is not just a German thing. I have DVDs with multiple languages on them and even more subtitles.
It's also not just controversial here and that doesn't even have to do with the concept of dubbing itself, but with differences of the languages in different countries. Austrians don't speak "Hochdeutsch", why should they? Obviously, Latin Americans don't like the way Spanish is spoken in Spain. French in Québéc isn't the same as in France. I'm sure there is more.

I watch originals and/or their dubbed versions.
Sometimes
- I watch both to compare and like I said, there are good ones and bad ones. I think you can tell how much money has been spent on dubbing - Hallmark Christmas movies don't seem to get the star treatment - or how quickly something has been dubbed. A pet peeve of mine is if names or cities are pronounced incorrectly.
- I watch English originals with English subtitles, for example if the accents are too much for me, if people speak too fast or mumble a lot or if the sound isn't that good or if I watch something late at night and don't want to turn the volume up. Another pet peeve of mine is if the TV channel offers me an English original, not with English subtitles, but only with German or French subtitles that can't be turned off, ARTE, I'm looking at you here).
- I have to get used to a new accent first.
- I even prefer the dubbed version because I don't like the original voice (can you even call it original in case of an animated character, though? 😋), or because that version triggers positive memories for me, like shows or movies from my childhood, especially if we have quoted from them all our lives.

By the way, what I completely forgot to mention how countries like to do their completely own version of popular movies and TV shows even today. Take the BBC show "Ghosts" (which I love) - there is a US American and German version, and when I last looked, they had announced versions for Australia and France.

For the end of this long post I have a short video for you. How do stars react to hearing their foreign voices? 😉




Sources (in random order):

1. Thomas Bräutigam: Deutschland, eine Synchronnation. On: Goethe-Institut USA, January 2017 (in German)
2. Emily Manthei: Film dubbing as high art in Germany. On: DW (Deutsche Welle), May 24, 2019 (in English)
3. Miranda Stephenson: Unanswered Questions of German Culture I - Why are Foreign Films Still Dubbed for the German Viewer? On: The Cambridge Language Collective - Features (in English)
4. Peter Hoffmann: Die ersten Synchronversuche. On: Die vergessenen Filme - Synchronisierte Filme in Deutschland 1930-1945, November 23, 2015 (in German)
5. Damien Pollard: The political history of dubbing in films. On: The Conversation, July 13, 2021 (in English)
6. Christina Focken: Synchronisierte Filme sind super. In: taz - Die steile These, September 5, 2020 (in German)
7. Kevin Tierney: Quebec movies have a dubbing problem. In: The Gazette (Montreal), August 3, 2017 (in English)
8. Article "Schnodderdeutsch" on German Wikipedia (in German)

Silent movies - The Black Pirate

A little over three months ago, I started my silent movie adventure with Douglas Fairbanks's "The Thief of Bagdad". Nizzy Noodle! Who would have thought I'd actually get that far and haven't tired of it one bit yet?
I think three months have been enough for me to allow myself to come back to another Fairbanks adventure. This time we dive into the world of pirates, arrrr (sorry, but I think I have a legal obligation to say that at least once in a post about pirates).
The Black Pirate from 1926 has not been the first pirate film by far, but I think it's safe to say that it has definitely set standards and inspiration for following films because it had everything you could pack into a swashbuckler.

Public domain via
Wikimedia Commons

Let's get to the plot first (with spoilers as usual).

The film starts with pirates mercilessly looting a captured ship and blowing her up with the travellers and crew on board.
Only two men, father and son, get washed up on an island. The father dies and the son takes his ring and vows to revenge him.
The pirates too come to the island to bury part of the treasure, and the pirate leaders get ready to kill the others to keep the secret.

That's when the son appears asking to join them. To prove himself, he fights the pirate captain and kills him. When the pirate lieutenant says there is more to being a pirate than swordplay, he claims he will be capturing the next ship single-handedly - and he does.

To prevent the passengers and crew getting killed, he suggests holding the ship for ransom. When a lady and her maid are also discovered on the ship and the lady is claimed by the pirate lieutenant, "The Black Pirate" says they will be holding the "princess" as hostage for ransom as well, but she has to be unharmed, not exactly what the lieutenant had in mind as you can tell by his look from the background.

Actually, our hero has fallen in love with at her at first sight and intends to bring her ashore which he also lets the captain of the captured ship know. He also tells him also to send "my best soldiers" and gives him his father's ring. I mean, we have suspected from the start that he's no ordinary guy, right?

The pirate lieutenant, however, has ordered one of his crew to go on the ship and blow her up, so she can't return, therefore "The Black Pirate" won't be made captain, and he'll get the lady for himself.
When the ship doesn't return with the ransom, "The Black Pirate" is forced to walk the plank, but with help of the lady and MacTavish, one of the pirates who has become loyal to him, he survives and goes ashore to get help.

He returns just in time before the lady meets a terrible fate, and his troops overpower the pirates.
The Governor reveals him to be Duke Arnoldo in reality, and he asks the lady, who is in fact a princess, for her hand in marriage.

It is said that Mary Pickford was jealous and that it's her in this kissing scene.
There is archival footage of her in the costume, so it's well possible it's true.
Please also note that "The Black Pirate" had changed from his wide pants
(see first picture) into shorts as soon as he joined the pirates.

First of all, let me say I have never been a big fan of pirate movies. I don't like fight scenes with a lot of people and having all of them on a ship plus cannons, a lot of swords, ropes, and sails doesn't make it any better.

In "The Black Pirate", however, there aren't loads of mass fight scenes. We have one big one at the end although that didn't impress me as much as the "uniforms" of the troops? Not sure that's the right word.
Once again I'm getting ahead of myself, though.

Fairbanks had been wanting to make a pirate film for a while, but he said he "could not imagine piracy without color".
Indeed, this was the first major feature film to be shot completely in Technicolor where before there had only been sequences. If you hear that, you probably think rich and colorful, but at the time they only had "two-strip" Technicolor which captured just the reds and the greens.
As you can imagine, the process wasn't cheap and called for someone who didn't just like to try out new things, but also had the money to do that.

Fairbanks didn't want the novelty of color to distract the audience from the plot itself, though. So they settled for a muted color palette and all items would be dyed to show the proper color on screen if necessary. Lighting affected color as well and there was a dual set of costumes for artificial and (mostly) natural light.
You may not get the feeling of a real color film off it, but actually I thought it works well with the atmosphere.

The plot was quite straightforward. I said it had everything, but this time there were no huge effects or sets, also due to the costs of Technicolor, it was all in the story.
You had the sword fights, the damsel in distress, betrayal and intrigue, loyalty, humor, and of course the acrobatic stunts Fairbanks was known for.
The biggest stunt which has been replicated more than once was of course The Black Pirate riding down the sail by plunging in his knife into it and slicing it during the ride. There have been different theories on how this stunt was made (see the sources), but who needs to know? It's just amazing to see him do it, we don't have to analyze everything.

The plot was perfect for the length and I was neither bored nor did I get overwhelmed by fight scenes.
The chemistry between The Black Pirate, his loyal companion MacTavish (who also added a bit of comic relief), and the evil pirate lieutenant worked really well.
I can't necessarily say the same for the romance, but that didn't surprise me. The typical damsel in distress is just that - distressed. She doesn't get to do much more than feel faint or desperate until she gets to be happily in love in the end.
At least our princess quite cleverly managed to slip The Black Pirate a knife when he was about to walk the plank with his hands tied up.
So yes, I enjoyed myself much more than I had expected from a pirate movie and I would really recommend watching it.


Sources:

1. Fritzi Kramer: The Black Pirate (1926) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, July 16, 2017
2. Jeffrey Vance: The Black Pirate - Essay. On: San Francisco Silent Film Festival (A Day of Silents 2015)
3. The Black Pirate (1926). On: The Chasbah, February 3, 2024
4. Carl Bennett: The Black Pirate (1926). On: Silent Era
5. Tracey Goessel: The Black Pirate. On: Library of Congress, National Film Preservation Board

From my children's book cabinet - Ida Bohatta

When I wrote a post in connection with a children's book author which will be published in a few days, I looked at my little children's book collection and thought it could be fun to pick an author or just one book every, now and then and talk about it a bit.
My collection consists of books that have been mine since I was a child, but mostly of books I had borrowed from our city library as a kid and wanted to own myself - some of them I had to hunt for many years, it was a lot more difficult before the Internet and even then it wasn't always easy - or books I had found at fleamarkets.
It's the best feeling to find a book after you have been looking for it forever, and it's even better if it still manages to hold the same magic for you.

Sometimes, however, books sneak(ed) into my collection I hadn't heard of before.
The ex found the first one of these little picture books with poems by Ida Bohatta (Ida Bohatta-Morpurgo after she got married), "Der verkannte Bimpfi" (published in English as "The misjudged mushroom".

Ida Bohatta was an Austrian children's book illustrator and author. She was born in 1900 and began drawing as a child.
After studying at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, she started illustrating children's books and write her first own texts.

At the age of 27, she met the Austrian Josef Müller who had founded Ars sacra in Munich, a Catholic-oriented publishing house for religious prints, prayer books, holy cards, and theological books. Thanks to Müller's wife Maximiliane, who initiated contact to children's book authors and illustrators, they expanded into children's books at the end of the 20s and made an exclusive contract with Bohatta who was a faithful Catholic herself. Another known illustrator they took on was Sister Hummel.
At first Bohatta made illustrations for so-called "Fleißbildchen", pictures given as a reward for hard work in school. They have not disappeared completely, but today there are also stickers or gold stars given for a reward for example.
In 1929, Ars sacra published the first one of more than 70 picture books with watercolor illustrations and poems by Bohatta like the ones in my picture.
She got inspired by nature and created a world of magical little creatures. Some might think those to be kitschy, but on the other hand a lot of people are drawn in by the innocence of those illustrations.
Are they always that innocent, though? Let's have a look at Bimpfi.

Bimpfi is a good student which annoys his classmate Knolli. Now you've got to know that Bimpfi is a button mushroom while the name Knolli is short for Knollenblätterpilz as in death cap. Do you get an idea of what's going to happen?
A woman dies and Bimpfi gets accused for it and sent to prison, but his good friend, the gnome Heinzel, breaks him out and together they try to get the truth out of Knolli.

You'll forgive me for not trying to put this in poem form. "First a question, then a demand, pleading, begging, wild imploring - Knolli won't admit anything. Then appealing to the stubborn mushroom conscience for hours - but Knolli remains determinedly silent, finally their questions become quieter because they are both hoarse already. Knolli can't be persuaded to make a confession."

Bimpfi is getting his happy ending. When they grow up, it's obvious that he can't be the murderer because he's obviously not a death cap.
Knolli gets taken to prison ...

... and Bimpfi, being too big to fit in a school bench, gets his graduation without having to do more classes.

The other books I have are much more innocent and praise nature in cute little poems with very cute pictures, but I have to admit I find Bimpfi's story quite fascinating.

Beine unpolitical, Bohatta's books were never forbidden during the Nazi regime, actually she joined the "Reichsschrifttumskammer" which aimed at controlling all aspects of literature.
There is no evidence of Bohatta showing any National Socialist engagement whatsoever, though.

I don't get to fleamarkets anymore, but actually we didn't see that many Bohatta books there. I would prefer the old ones to the new editions - I have two of each kind - just because I like the vintage feel, but I would probably to stick to the edgier ones anyway if there are more out there.

Had you ever heard of Bohatta before?


Selected sources:

1. The Whimsical World of Ida Bohatta-Morpurgo: A Celebration of Nature and Innocence in Children's Illustrations. On: MFLibra, November 10, 2024
2. Peter Lukasch: Bohatta-Morpurgo, Ida; Buchillustrationen. On: Kinder- und Jugendliteratur zwischen 1900 und 1960 (in German)
3. "Frau B.": Von Wichteln, Blumenkindern und heiler Welt: die Kinderbücher von Ida Bohatta. On: Kinderbuch-Blog: Die Kinderbibliothek, February 22, 2023 (in German)

Random Saturday - It's a small world ...

We all have our stories, I'm sure.
Meeting someone in a foreign country and they are from your hometown.
Meeting someone and learning you are somehow related.
Meeting someone away from home and finding out you have the same friends.
Stories like that.

Just recently, my sister and I added a new one to our repertoire.

Of course, our town has changed quite a bit since we were kids and keeps changing. Old houses get torn down, new ones built, there's construction, shops close down, new ones open up, a shop building gets transformed into flats, etc.
Sometimes I will walk somewhere and try to remember what a shop was called that used to be here or what the building looked like that used to be where there's a big hole all of a sudden.
Even as a child I have been a fan of old photos, and in these moments I think it's a pity we don't have more photos from around town.
There have always been people taking pictures, though, and there have been postcards, and some of these turn up on social media, on websites selling postcards for collectors, and on eBay.

Every, now and then we go through them and in very rare cases, we even get one - like the one I'm going to tell you about now.

My sister called to say I should have a look at that one postcard of our "Stadthalle" (which literally translates to "town hall", but your "town hall/city hall" is called "Rathaus" here, it's a place for plays, concerts, talks, antique fairs, balls, which can also be rented for big weddings) and its park.
As kids we were in the park a lot because we lived almost next to it, playing, reading, looking for tadpoles.
It was interesting to see how small the trees to the right still were back then, how different the paths looked, the flowers around the little springs were missing, the building still had the clock and the old logo ...

The seller also had a picture of the back. I edited private information out even though the card is from 1976.

In translation, the text reads:
"Dear Mrs. ...!
Thank you very much for your kind Christmas and New Year wishes which I warmly return. I live right next to the Stadthalle ^xx now. It's really nice! How are you? Are you all well? Kind regards! ..."

I read out the signature to my sister and still wondered why that name sounded so familiar to me when she said "What??".
The name had been familiar because she had had a neighbor with the same name ... living next to the Stadthalle ... in the same house as her ...
That's when I noticed. The card had been written in red, but there were those two black x next to the word Stadthalle, and there was a black x on the vertical line with the postcard printer's name and what we both had missed before, there was ... no kidding ... my sister's address!
Her neighbor had sent this card!

That means the postcard went to Austria in January 1976 and almost 50 years later it came back to Göppingen via a postcard dealer in Berlin, back to the same house where it was probably written ... in the flat where another family member of mine is living now!
I have to admit I got goosebumps a little and yes, of course we bought it.
Seriously now, what are the odds?

Do you have a story about the "small world"?
If so, I'd love to hear it!

P.S. See the number I circled in? Our zip code, you would think ... wrong, it's a typo, our zip code was 732 then!

Tackle that stash - A handful of hearts

This is just a short post.
Hearts are probably boring you by now, but I offered to make a bunch of simple ones as gift for children.
The bonus for me is that I can use some leftovers and try out patterns.
Mostly I'm showing you these, though, as an addition to the Tuesday post because that is just what I meant when I said I needed to make it work for me.

I hope these tiny hearts will make children smile a bit when they get them as a surprise, and while making a small piece  which can be finished rather quickly every, now and then - although there have been moments when I seriously doubted my counting skills (up to 8 beads in some rows! 😂) - may not be super creative, it's something. Sometimes a little something just has to be enough.

No worries, though, it will not be all hearts from now on. Even if I plan to move along the color wheel some more, I'm not going to make look at all of them, promise.

Silent movies - Modern Times

It's obvious we had to get to this point eventually.
A silent movie project without Charlie Chaplin wouldn't be complete and "Modern Times" practically jumped at me when I was checking what was new in the ARTE Mediathek (the TV channels keep a video library of their content for a certain time) and found they had a Charlie Chaplin event.
Again, I knew parts of it, such as the Tramp getting caught in the cogs of the factory, but wasn't sure if I had ever seen the whole movie.
Also, ARTE didn't just have the movie itself, but also a documentary on it.

After "City Lights", which had been a huge success in 1931 even as a silent film among talkies, Chaplin had been burnt out and went into depression. His PR tour turned into a trip around the world to help him find himself again. After 17 months, he came back to Hollywood ready to do another movie. At his side was Paulette Goddard.

Public domain

"Modern Times" is a little special in this project of mine as it's not a completely silent film.
Actually, Chaplin had already written a complete dialog for it until September 1934, rehearsals started in October. In December, however, after three days of shooting, Chaplin stopped. He just couldn't make himself to have his famous character talk, he didn't know what voice to give him and what to make him say.
As mentioned, however, "Modern Times" isn't completely silent. People may not speak to one another, but they speak through the machines, the intercom through which the factory boss gives his orders even during break time, the radio, the "mechanical salesman". There's only one scene in which you hear the Tramp's voice, not speaking, but singing, not in understandable words either, but in gibberish because he has forgotten the lyrics to the song. What could be better to show Chaplin's position towards talkies?
Shooting ended in August 1935 and the movie came out in 1936 - "A story of industry, of individual enterprise - humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness."

Ready for some plot (with spoilers)?
The Tramp works on an assembly line. Due to the stress - the scene with the feeding machine designed to feed workers to make breaks obsolete and thus increase profits really stressed me out - he suffers a nervous breakdown which ends in chaos and ends him up in hospital.
After his release he stumbles into a demonstration and gets arrested being mistaken for the leader because he happens to pick up a lost red flag.
In jail he prevents a jailbreak by knocking down the convicts which gets him special treatment. Being told that he will be released soon, he says he'd rather stay in jail.

Back in a world of unemployment, uproar, and poverty, the Tramp is determined to go to jail again after messing up at another job.
He meets Ellen, "The Gamin", who just lost her father and whose sisters were taken away by juvenile services (never to be mentioned again in the movie) from which she could escape. She has stolen a bread from a van, and both to help her and to get arrested himself, he claims he did it, but a witness tells the police it was Ellen, so she gets taken away.
He meets her again in a police wagon after he gets arrested for eating a huge amount of food at a restaurant without paying. The wagon breaks down and they escape together.

Next he gets a job as a night watchman in a department store and brings Ellen with him imagining how it would be to live in a nice house with her.
During the night, three burglars come in one of whom he knows from work. They say they are just hungry, so they eat and drink, and the Tramp wakes up when the department store has already opened.
When he gets out of jail this time, Ellen surprises him by showing him a very rundown shack where they can live. He gets a new job, but the workers go on strike and during that he inadvertently hits a policeman with a brick.

While he's in jail, Ellen has found a job as a café dancer and secures a job for him as well, as a waiter and entertainer.
Unfortunately the police arrives and wants to arrest Ellen for running away from juvenile services. They both escape, but Ellen has lost all hope and wonders why you should even bother trying.
The Tramp tells her never to lose hope and together they go down the road into an uncertain life.

"Modern Lights" was the last appearance of the Tramp on screen, and despite coming out almost ten years after the first talkie (The Jazz Singer), it was a very successful send-off.
While the movie has very funny scenes, there is a lot more to it, though.

Its opening scene is a flock of sheep pushing along - one black one among them - and next a crowd of workers coming out of a subway station. You see a few crowds in the film and often the Tramp is getting caught up in them without wanting it and without being able to escape - for example in the demonstration, during the strike, and a scene in the café where people dance while he's trying to get an order to a guest.
Chaplin had been to Ford's factory, he had seen how hard and exhausting work on an assembly line was for the young men working there, so it's not surprising that his Tramp can't take the stress he's exposed to by the ever increasing speed of the line. If one worker falls behind, it has a direct effect on all the others, too.

After the Tramp is released from hospital, the movie is one attempt after the other to find a place for himself and Ellen in this merciless system, and just when they think they have found it, the dream gets destroyed by that system once again.
It's what makes the Tramp so universal, a lot of people could identify with that feeling, especially during the Great Depression. And yet he never gives up and keeps that childlike hope that there will be something good in the future.
Originally, a different ending had been filmed with the Tramp finding out that Ellen has joined a convent, but then Chaplin found that the film had to end on a hopeful note.

Given Chaplin's own history of a hard childhood in the slums of London and bouts of depression throughout his life, the Tramp's relentless pursuit of his little happiness - because he isn't asking for much - is quite amazing (also for me, a terrible pessimist).

In Germany, "Modern Times" was prohibited, just as Chaplin's other movies were not shown anymore. That doesn't mean it wasn't criticized in the USA for showing "communist tendencies". Not everyone was happy with Chaplin getting political, even more so with his later films. Eventually he even had to leave the USA because of that.

I enjoyed the movie much more than I had expected although I can't really tell you what exactly I had expected. I laughed, I was touched, and I suffered with those two just doing their best to survive in difficult times.
Again, there would be so much more to say about the movie, but as always I'm going to list some sources for you if you are interested (quite randomly picked, as you can imagine, there is a lot available!).
"Modern Times" has been called one of the greatest films not just of Chaplin, but ever. I would definitely recommend watching it and I'm quite sure I will be watching it again myself, too.


Sources:
1. R.K.: Chaplin : Modern Times. Originally in: The Manchester Guardian, July 14, 1936
2. Chaplins "Moderne Zeiten" - Der Abschied vom Stummfilm (France 2024, German dubbing/subtitles). On: ARTE TV (currently available until November 30, 2025)
3. Matt ?: Modern Times (1936). On: I Draw On My Wall, September 4, 2017
4. David A. Punch: Modern Times: Aversion to Innovation. On: The Twin Geeks, February 4, 2019
5. Josh Matthews: Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times - - What Makes This Movie Great (Episode 7). On the YouTube channel "Learning about Movies"

What's happening here?

Today I want to talk about something that's kind of personal.
If you have been following me for a longer period of time, you know I don't share much from my personal life.
You do get a glimpse into my brain weirdly jumping between randomly selected topics which also says something about me, but you don't really know what I'm doing between those brain jumps.

Do I like cooking (no), what books am I reading (mostly vintage crime at the moment), what am I watching (okay, you do know about the silent movies, but there is more), do I have hobbies beside crafting (movies and TV shows), how do I feel (all over the place), what do I play (this and that), what do I look like (very long hair and glasses)?
Of course there's much more.

This blog has been mostly about crafty things for many years. I showed you what I made, I showed you what others made, I told one or the other story and for a while I shared movie quotes, but all in all this has been a blog showing my creative side and that's what it has always been supposed to be.

When I got back into blogging more again, however, this changed, and if you have been around before you may wonder why that is.
There are several reasons and not wanting to be creative is definitely not one of them.
My brain is still coming up with more ideas than I can realize in general and especially at the moment, and that has to do with both ability and motivation.

There are more days now when my hands just won't play nicely. If I don't think of taking a break at the right moment, I start messing things up because of that, then I start ripping up, but instead of stopping there, I get stubborn and try again which usually doesn't work out well. It's amazing how angry you can get over tiny beads (and yourself).
My problem is that it seems my head doesn't want to acknowledge those new limitations and adapt to them ... or maybe my muse doesn't.
I used to fiddle for hours without a break, but as much as I tell others it's okay to take breaks, I have a hard time accepting it for myself.
Having to rip up a WIP, however small it may be, because of a stupid mistake - oh, so stupid sometimes! - can get very frustrating which isn't good for motivation. Having no motivation means I sometimes don't even start.

Another hit for my motivation was that my sales have dried up. I'm not talking trickling, but dried up.
Don't get me wrong now, I'm not begging for sales here. I get it, times are getting harder and harder, postage is high (my customer base was overseas), jewelry is not a necessity, but the web still abounds with it and I'm just a tiny fish in that sea.

It has changed my view on my personal crafting, though.
I'm hardly ever wearing my own jewelry for lack of occasion. I don't get out often enough to and that's not going to change. I know there are people who say you should wear jewelry and clothes for yourself, but I never felt like dressing up at home and wear much jewelry.
So why make more just to stack it in a drawer? Or rather, where is the line between making something to feed my creative urges and making something just to - well, having made it?
For me, there really is a difference which is one reason why I could never have done this full time.

The same goes for embroidery. How many embroidery hoops can you put on a wall, especially if the walls are full already? 😆 My favorite pieces - Nadine on her island, Foxy, the cat inspired by dem Dekan, and the Guardian of the Woods - are set up between my Steiffs now.

I'm definitely not saying that I'm going to stop making things, not even jewelry. I have to find a way, however, to make it work for me, my muse, and especially my body (and my available space).
For years, I had been filling a lot of my time with making stuff, though, and now I needed to find something for the times when I won't be able to do that.
And that's the reason for my blog having changed. Something I can always do and actually love to do is diving into rabbit holes. I've always done that more or less, but haven't shared it as much before and I try to stick with certain topics now.

Valerie Hinojosa from Washington DC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0,
via Wikimedia Commons
"Down the Rabbit Hole"

So this might not be as much of a crafty blog as it used to be, but it will definitely be more of a trip into my weird brain. Often I don't know myself why a certain rabbit hole looks tempting to me.
Anyhow, you are most welcome to visit and I hope you will be finding something interesting and maybe surprising 😉