Of the classic Swiss "Gotthelf movies", this is the only one in color. It is, as usual, oversimplifying Gotthelf's novel, the acting as well as the whole movie's development are of a rather wooden quality, and the end is a somewhat cheap (but still working!) Hollywood-style attempt to get a weeping audience; but nonetheless, it could have been a lot worse - the people and their environment have a quite authentic Swiss (resp. Bernese) "look and feel", all being Swiss actors and (in the original version) speaking their native Swiss German; their "woodenness" also is surely not entirely inappropriate for the depiction of Bernese farmers. It is *not* an authentic representation of Gotthelf's novel, and only partly of Gotthelf's time, still this movie (very successful in Switzerland at its time) is a distinctly Swiss effort and not boring to watch.
Review of Geld und Geist
