The Beautiful Spy (2013 TV Movie) User Reviews

Completely messed up

[Horst_In_Translation · 2/10 · 7 May 2019]

"Die schöne Spionin" or just "Die Spionin" or "The Spy" is a German television movie from 2013, so this one is already over 5 years old. Usually small screen releases here run for pretty much exactly 1.5 hours, so this one is uncommonly longer at 105 minutes. I will not give you any details about the cast really, but let me say that the main character is played by Valerie Niehaus. The rest you can check for yourself, there are some actors included in here that have big names. Niehaus has been a really prolific actress here in Germany for over 2 decades already and sadly I cannot say a lot positive about her here. I don't think she is lead actress material. She belongs to a group of actresses who rose to popularity in daily soap operas here in Germany and somehow managed to keep their fam up despite having very little range and acting talent. Admittedly, for this film we have here, it also needs to be said that the material is not really doing her any favors with how her character was written and it is pretty embarrassing at times. But still no reason to go easy on her, she still makes the whole thing worse with her performance that is as try-hard as uninspired and lacking attention to detail. This description can also be used for the film as a a whole. It is a mess. There are many cringeworthy scenes. Many of them are related to how they really want to make sure we don't forget how desirable and attractive the protagonist is. The long title is the best example already. Another example would be the scene when one guy lets his coffee cup fall down when he stares at Niehaus' character. Then there is the randomly sensual kissing scene outside. Why is Germany having such a hard time when it comes to writing nice romance? I have no idea, but it has been going on for a long time. There are other scenes painful to watch like when Niehaus' character screams at her son after he says her (in hope of admiration) that he helped in getting a Jewish boy ejected from school. Man that scene was particularly painful to watch. And don't even get me started on the scene when she jumps from an airplane almost like an action hero. So ridiculous how she runs around the seaside with her gun on her own like an elite soldier. She is no such thing. Or how she gets of course saved seconds before her execution as a spy and immediately gets picked to be a counter spy. So unrealistic. Also as always with these films here in Germany, there is zero idea of comedy. The film takes itself completely seriously. But maybe that is a good thing because otherwise they probably would have failed from another perspective here. I did laugh out loud once though, namely when she all of a sudden again like an action hero shoots another woman in the head with her desperate longing for a son. And shoots another guy afterwards too. Do not by any means mistake this film for a strong female-driven character study. It is the exact opposite. Feels not realistic, is very shallow with almost nothing below the surface, the dialogues feel forced (especially by the child actors) and also from a history perspective it is extremely flawed with very inaccurate attention to detail. With that statement, it is not really important if they depicted actual events. Even if they jumping from the plane mission on the coast happened, it did not happen as unrealistically as they show it to us here. Can I say something positive about anything? Perhaps, the sets weren't too shabby, even if they got steadily worse too the longer the film went. Worse in the sense of pompous, but yeah it fit in pretty nicely with the film being way too much over-the-top in all departmenst pretty much. Subtlety is not known on any occasion. Another good thing is that the authorities here were not depicted as complete idiots all the time at least and I guess we can be grateful for that and with that I am talking for example about how the Brits knew she was lying when trying to keep her son out of the talk. And last but not least, you could see on some occasions how good of an actor Fritz Karl can be, even if the script also was not doing him any favors. So yeah, with all their efforts to make it all about Niehaus and that we perceive her as string, desorable, caring, emancipated etc. this film feels very fake and very shallow and very try-hard. After the first half, I still thought it was just a weak film, but the longer it went the worse it became, so it is definitely a failure. I don't think director Alexandre is the problem here as I have seen other stuff from him and enjoyed the watch at times. The problem is probably screen writer Annette Hess. It would have been better, had this movie never been made. Finally, as for the ending, I did not hate it when I saw it, a bit of a cliffhanger going along with the real fate of von Schalburg, but the more I think about it the more stupid it feels too. Stay far far away from this movie. It has no right to take itself only a bit seriously and yet it takes itself 100% seriously. Highly not recommended. Another prime example of botched small screen filmmaking from my country.

Convincing reconstruction of an eventful life

[hof-4 · 8/10 · 25 October 2023]

As her photographs show, Vera von Schalburg was a strikingly beautiful woman. We only have partial information about her life. She was born in Russia in 1914 but the circumstances of her childhood and youth are murky or missing. She lived in Paris before WWII, was highly educated and fluent in many languages including English, French, German, Polish and Russian. She was the sister of Christian von Schalburg, a prominent Danish Nazi, who served in the Danish army, joined the Waffen SS in 1940 and was instrumental in the creation of a Danish SS unit. In her beginnings as a spy Vera may have been a Soviet agent. Shortly before the war she was recruited by the Abwehr, one of the Nazi intelligence agencies under the direction of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. For some time after France's defeat a German invasion of the British Isles seemed imminent, and she was sent to Scotland on a related mission. She was captured, switched sides and worked for the British services. Her life after the war and the circumstances of her death are somewhat murky as well.

Scriptwriter Annette Hess has taken what is known about von Schalburg and joined the dots with fictional (but highly plausible) material. The result is a coherent and powerful story. Acting is first rate all around with special mention for Valerie Niehaus playing the protagonist. Portuguese director Miguel Alexandre tells the tale at a brisk pace, and there are directorial touches here and there that make one feel he is hitting all the right notes, as in the masterful final scene. On the negative side, some details are sketchy (time constraints?). High production values: unobtrusive music and flawless reconstruction of time and place.

I also liked this movie as a unpretentious, unpreachy history lesson with relevance to the present, We are reminded, among other things of the Gleiwitz radio station false flag attack that was planned and used as a pretext by the Nazis to invade Poland and thus start WWII, and that the objectives of the German occupation of Poland were not only the murder of all Polish Jews but the decimation of all Polish intelligentsia: intellectuals, politicians, priests. We also witness the edgy, equivocal interaction between the Abwehr and Hitler's inner circle of sycophants. I suppose that these facts are known to German viewers but maybe no so much to us.