Glückskinder is considered a free remake of Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night, whose German release was a great success in 1935. Ufa envisioned a comedy, which would be clearly recognizable as a national product. Hence, their press material stated: “The American journalism scene is not represented through situation comedy but with enthralling environment and dialogues. Thus, typical German as we do not love movies where humour is based on stair stumbling. A large scale production that is based on dialogue – this is the very venture the film aims to persist!” Director Paul Martin’s recent experiences in Hollywood made him probably an interesting candidate for the German experiment of a screwball comedy. Nothing is left to chance: the successful author Robert Stemmle wrote the screenplay for the tenth film of Ufa’s dream couple Lilian Harvey and Willy Fritsch. Responsible for the dialogue was playwright Curt Götz, famous for elegance and subtle mockery. Glückskinder follows the tradition of the early sound film operetta. The unique song and dance number Ich wollt’ ich wär’ein Huhn is developed in the best sense of the musical out of the plot. The song serves as a climax of the film’s carefree attitude towards current social problems, such as unemployment and poverty – an interesting aspect in the National Socialist Germany of 1936, when the rearmament boom feigned economic stability. For decades Glückskinder had only been known in a poor duplication with parts of the image destroyed by decomposition and heavily compressed and distorted sound. Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung restored the film in cooperation with CinePost Production, Munich on base of a nitrate print from the Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin. The nitrate print contained numerous jumps from splices. These gaps were filled by a safety print of the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin. 3D stereoscopic workflows were employed to achieve a seamless transition between the different sources, followed by advanced automatic and manual digital image restoration.

Anke Wilkening