PhilPaine.com

In 1943, Germany’s UFA stu­dios spent a gigan­tic amount of mon­ey to cre­ate a film ver­sion of the absurd fan­tasy, Adven­tures of Mun­chaussen, which is loose­ly based on the extrav­a­gant “whop­pers” attrib­uted to the real life Karl Friedrich Hierony­mus, Frei­herr von Münch­hausen (1720 –1797). The film was in colour (at that time a very expen­sive process) and the spe­cial effects where the best pos­si­ble at the time. Read­ers of this site are prob­a­bly famil­iar with the fair­ly recent Ter­ry Gilliam ver­sion of the sto­ry. The von Báky film is very good. The scenes that take place on the Moon are par­tic­u­larly charm­ing. One of the odd­est things about the film is that there were sev­eral Black actors in it. What on earth was it like to be a Black actor in Berlin in 1943? What became of them? Sure­ly there is a fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­men­tary that could be made on this subject.