I saw 'The Lady with the Small Foot' in the summer of 1996 at the Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna. They screened a print with the original Czech intertitles, loaned by the Narodni Filmovy Archiv.
The original story is by one Jan S. Kolár, of whose personal life I know nothing. However, the screenplay was adapted by Gustav Machaty, of whom I know a good deal. As the writer-director of films such as 'Erotikon' and 'Ecstasy' (the latter with Hedy Lamarr's famous nude scene), Machaty celebrated the sensuality of the female body in a way that other European (and certainly American) film-makers of his time lacked the courage to emulate. At any rate, somebody involved in making 'The Lady with the Small Foot' was almost certainly a foot-fetishist, as this sprightly comedy shows a predilection for female feet -- or, to be more accurate, ladies' shoes -- which nearly borders on obsession.
The opening sequence made me cringe, as this starts out to be just one more comedy about some guy who wants to be a detective: in this case, young Tom of Prague. His friend Archibald (played by Machaty) is robbed, and the only clue is a very small female footprint. Tom and Archibald decide to crack the case by checking the Czech feet of every woman in Prague until they find one who matches the footprint. From this point, the film got so ludicrous in its pedal obsession that I excused its total lack of plausibility.
Archibald gets a job as a bootblack, disdaining male customers and surreptitiously measuring the feet of all the women whose shoes he polishes. Tom, meanwhile, gets a job at the skating rink, helping the ladies put on their skates. (Where can I get a job like that?)
SPOILERS NOW. Eventually, Tom finds the matching foot, and shoe-enough it belongs to the thief. (Is she the arch-villain?) She won't confess, but her shoes wag their tongues. So of course Tom falls in love with her, more for the tiny toes of her teeny-weeny tootsies than for any other reason. Happy ending. Oh, there's a murder along the way, but Tom and Archibald are busy with the important matter of appraising ladies' feet, and can't be bothered with trivial crimes such as homicide.
For me, the most interesting thing about this movie was the presence of young Anny Ondráková, later to shorten her name to Anny Ondra. She starred for Alfred Hitchcock in the first British sound film, 'Blackmail', but had to subvocalise her dialogue (in unison with an English actress, speaking the lines just off-camera) due to her accent. Post-dubbing didn't become feasible until later. The print of 'The Lady with the Small Foot' screened at Bologna began with a two-minute screen test of Ondra, rather gratuitously inserted into the movie's footage.
I enjoyed the exterior sequences of Prague, and the scenes at the skating rink. I'll rate this slight comedy 6 out of 10, but if you're passionately interested in female shoes of the 1920s you'll rate this film much higher.
The original story is by one Jan S. Kolár, of whose personal life I know nothing. However, the screenplay was adapted by Gustav Machaty, of whom I know a good deal. As the writer-director of films such as 'Erotikon' and 'Ecstasy' (the latter with Hedy Lamarr's famous nude scene), Machaty celebrated the sensuality of the female body in a way that other European (and certainly American) film-makers of his time lacked the courage to emulate. At any rate, somebody involved in making 'The Lady with the Small Foot' was almost certainly a foot-fetishist, as this sprightly comedy shows a predilection for female feet -- or, to be more accurate, ladies' shoes -- which nearly borders on obsession.
The opening sequence made me cringe, as this starts out to be just one more comedy about some guy who wants to be a detective: in this case, young Tom of Prague. His friend Archibald (played by Machaty) is robbed, and the only clue is a very small female footprint. Tom and Archibald decide to crack the case by checking the Czech feet of every woman in Prague until they find one who matches the footprint. From this point, the film got so ludicrous in its pedal obsession that I excused its total lack of plausibility.
Archibald gets a job as a bootblack, disdaining male customers and surreptitiously measuring the feet of all the women whose shoes he polishes. Tom, meanwhile, gets a job at the skating rink, helping the ladies put on their skates. (Where can I get a job like that?)
SPOILERS NOW. Eventually, Tom finds the matching foot, and shoe-enough it belongs to the thief. (Is she the arch-villain?) She won't confess, but her shoes wag their tongues. So of course Tom falls in love with her, more for the tiny toes of her teeny-weeny tootsies than for any other reason. Happy ending. Oh, there's a murder along the way, but Tom and Archibald are busy with the important matter of appraising ladies' feet, and can't be bothered with trivial crimes such as homicide.
For me, the most interesting thing about this movie was the presence of young Anny Ondráková, later to shorten her name to Anny Ondra. She starred for Alfred Hitchcock in the first British sound film, 'Blackmail', but had to subvocalise her dialogue (in unison with an English actress, speaking the lines just off-camera) due to her accent. Post-dubbing didn't become feasible until later. The print of 'The Lady with the Small Foot' screened at Bologna began with a two-minute screen test of Ondra, rather gratuitously inserted into the movie's footage.
I enjoyed the exterior sequences of Prague, and the scenes at the skating rink. I'll rate this slight comedy 6 out of 10, but if you're passionately interested in female shoes of the 1920s you'll rate this film much higher.
