Cats, cats, cats, and more cats, part 1

I said I might do a post on all my cat bags, but when I thought about it a bit more, it came to me that I could extend that to cats in general.
I have quite a few around the place, some because I fell in love with them myself, others because for some weird reason people think I like cats and have given me a lot of items over the years. Really strange, I know. Why would they think something like that? 😂
"Oh, just give Cat something with a cat on it and she'll be happy." Well, you know I probably will be!

I called this post part 1 just in case I can't hold back and need to share more of the craziness. Actually I'm pretty sure that's going to be happening.
As usual when I do something like this, the order is completely random.

This beautiful cat looks so much like my first cat White Dude, we just had to have this painting.
It hangs next to my bed and unfortunately der Dekan loves to push the frame, so it swings. He knows exactly that's getting him my attention. Not in a good way, but if he's starving - which usually is the reason - he'll take what he can get.
Main thing is the old lady gets up, she'll be doing the right
thing then for sure. I fall for it way too often, he started training me very early on.

When I brought home my beloved yellow mugs, I couldn't leave the pottery workshop without a cat, could I? It would really have been very rude to do that. I liked the funny look of this one.
It's a salt cellar, but I rarely use those, so instead this cat is guarding some of my cat books now.

Talking about cat books ... I may have two or three ... or maybe hundreds. Crime, stories, picture books, photo books, children books, tales, humor, facts, guidebooks ...
This one is not only of the very first cat books of my collection, it's also one of my all time favorites, "The cat who came in from the cold". A small cat sitting on a upturned bucket in a puddle of rain water - or in other words, a book about the cat distribution system. Longden took the cat (who had lied about not having a home) inside and Thermal did what cats do best - take over the place.
I love all of Longden's books that I have, but this one is dearest to my heart.

There's a story to these earrings. They were made by a fellow jewelry artisan from the UK. The first time I wore them to work, they still had open earwires. I lost an earring almost right away and although I could pinpoint exactly where I had been before losing it, it was nowhere to be found. I was so sad!
Until I went to the ladies' room and suddenly felt something poking me. Such a naughty little earring. It must have fallen into my neckline, found its way into my bra and managed to crawl to the back of it where it poked me.
My guess is the earwire got tangled in my long hair and then ... heck if I know. When the artisan heard about it, she was so sweet to send me a pair of closed earwires which kept the travelling earring in check.

I have several portraits of my own cats made in different ways. I have to show these two in one picture because Merlin and Meffi belonged together. My little lovebirds 💗

The pendants were hand painted by my dear friend Dawn (not just her hand painted pendants are gorgeous, by the way).
They have a little special surprise on the back, but that's between Dawn, Merlin, Meffi, and me, I have never shared it.

I made this pendant and ring in my silversmith class. Unfortunately it was the only one I could attend, but at least I got some good pieces out of it.

Did you know that my friend Denis, who works in animation, designed my logo?
I love it so much that I asked Kirsten from Quernus Crafts, who makes adorable polymer clay critters, if she could capture Denis (I named him after his creator) in clay. This is the result.

I haven't forgotten that this post was inspired by cat bags, so my last item today is one of my everyday grocery totes. There are several designs of them. They fold up nice and small, so I can put several of them in my shopper if needed. They are super sturdy.
You can find these tapestry inspired designs from Europe over the USA to Australia. I got my bags at a market, one of those where you can find anything from brushes to aprons, graters to candles, and so on.

Are you ready for more cats?

Silent movies - A Cottage on Dartmoor

My first thought when I read Dartmoor was of course "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (and I still hate how the villain treated the poor dog to make him this "monster", but I'm digressing).
Today's movie - "A Cottage on Dartmoor" from 1929 - doesn't have even one dog, but there is one match nevertheless - a man escaping from Dartmoor Prison (which is why it's also known as "Escape from Dartmoor" in the USA).

Let's start with the plot as usual (spoiler alert!).

Actually, that's what you see first, the moorland, then a prisoner jumping down off a wall and running. The water he's drinking from when he's taking a break turns into the water in a bathtub in which a mother is bathing her toddler. 
After putting the child to bed, the mother comes down to find the prisoner in her cottage.
Sally and Joe used to be co-workers at a barber shop and now we learn the story about they ended up where they are now.

Joe is a barber and Sally a manicurist. Joe is in love with her and asks her out to the talkies, but she turns him down. When she feels sorry for him later and says she will go with him, another barber has already taken the tickets that Joe dropped on the ground. Sally asks him to have supper with her at her boarding house instead, but Joe understands everything wrong thinking Sally likes him as well.

The next day he sends her flowers with a card telling her to wear one of them if there's hope for him. The card gets lost, though, so Sally doesn't know her putting one of the flowers on her lapel makes Joe think she reciprocates his feelings. He gets very jealous when he notices that Sally is drawn to a customer, a farmer called Harry, who keeps coming back for all kinds of treatments just to see her.

That's not Joe in the back, but another co-worker with the shiftiest eyes ever!

Now excuse me while I scream a little because Blogger decided it would be a good idea to delete the next few paragraphs.
Deep breath ... I'm back.

When Harry invites Sally to the talkies and she accepts, Joe follows them to the theater and sits right behind them. The more they are enjoying themselves, the more he's getting riled up until he can't take it anymore and leaves.
Harry takes Sally home and proposes to her with a ring.

The next day at work Sally overhears some co-workers talking about Harry and her. One of them says he will never marry her. She shows them the engagement ring and the co-workers keep talking about the news - standing next to Joe.
So when Harry comes for his usual shave and manicure and Joe sees Harry and Sally holding hands, his tension keeps rising. At one point Sally thinks he will cut Harry's throat, she calls out, chaos ensues and Harry actually gets slashed.
The police turns up and takes Joe away who threatens to be back for revenge on them both.

So now Joe is standing in their cottage on Dartmoor.
As he has told another prisoner about this plan, though, the police is already after him and two policeman turn up to protect Sally while she - believing when he says he hadn't meant to do it and asking for her forgiveness - is hiding him in the room upstairs.
The situation gets even more complicated when Harry comes home and insists on looking in on his child. Of course he's shocked to see Joe there. Again Joe assures them he hadn't meant to do it and Harry replies he will help him escape merely for Sally's sake.
So Sally gives Joe some different clothes and then goes to distract the policemen while Harry smuggles him out of the house and takes him to a stable with a horse.
When Joe finds a picture of Sally in the jacket she gave him, however, he decides not to go through with the plan and instead rushes towards the cottage knowing only too well that he will be shot.
He dies in Sally's arms telling her he couldn't live without her.

Hnh. I'm torn about this movie, I really am.
There are parts that are great and that I enjoyed very much, but there are also a few things that drove me nuts. Maybe it would have been different if it hadn't been so hot and I hadn't had a bit of a bad day overall, but I'm not usually that undecided.

"A Cottage on Dartmoor" was one of the last British silent films (you may have noticed the irony of the men asking Sally out to the talkies).
Its director, Anthony Asquith (who happened to be the son of Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith and his wife Margot), was in his 20s when he made this movie, only his third one.
Asquith was drawn to the cinema from when he was a student at Oxford. When he visited his sister Elizabeth, who was a playwright and had many friends in the American film industry, in New York, they travelled to Hollywood where he got to meet a lot of the movie greats of that time, Fairbanks, Pickford, Lubitsch, Chaplin, and others, and also he got the chance to spend time on the set.
After Asquith returned home, he managed to direct his first film within a year and he used many of the techniques he had learned from being able to see European silent films, like lighting or montage techniques.

Those were the parts I enjoyed. The mood set by interesting camera angles, double exposures, by light and shadow, both in the scenes on the moors and in the cottage, worked beautifully for emphasizing Joe's increasing tension turning into obsession, almost insanity until the explosion.
And Uno Henning, a Swedish actor, does a wonderful job at making Joe utterly creepy. There's nothing romantic about this unrequited love.
Had Joe not been taken out of the picture early by going to prison, I'm sure he would have become a stalker. He's so convinced that Sally has to be his that I honestly didn't believe him when he said he didn't mean to hurt Harry even if it still looked like a threat to me at that moment.
If I had been Sally, I don't think I would have felt inclined to help him, and that Harry wants to help him really shows how much he loves Sally. I liked Harry and that Sally chose him. The inner values count.
(Too bad that Hans Adalbert Schlettow, who played Harry, was very close to the Nazis later which tainted my impression of his acting for me. )
Joe, however, is so beyond redemption that even at the end he just thinks of himself. HE can't live without her, HE has to tell her that, HE has to die in her arms. It's always about him.

I really loved all of the second half of the movie.
I also liked some of the first half, but I also hated some of it (I use "hated" on purpose here).
It's my old enemy, the length. 
My first problem was the awkward date at the boarding house. I think you could get the idea without the camera going back and forth and back and forth between Joe and Sally. I can tell you that my tension was definitely rising through that one, but not in a good way.

Much worse was for me a scene, though, which others loved, the cinema scene. There were some fun ideas, such as the orchestra playing for the silent short at the beginning and then playing cards, smoking, and drinking when the talkie came on.
The constant cutting from one person to the other, however, drove me nuts. It got really bad with the rapid cuts, I actually had to look away. This is a technique which has always been annoying me, in a movie, in a show or even in YouTube videos.
To top it, the cinema scene was about 12 minutes long! I would have lost at least 8 of those. I got so mad that I even had to call my sister for a little rant! 😆 

Another thing that annoyed me was that Norah Baring kept emoting through constantly raising mostly the right eyebrow, sometimes both. I don't know Baring, so I can't say if that was a mannerism of hers or if it was supposed to be dramatic acting, but you know how once you notice something, you can't not notice it anymore?
When she didn't do it, I actually liked her acting.

Lastly, I wasn't sure at all about the music. At the end, Stephen Horne was credited for the piano score. I really loved the piano parts, but it wasn't all piano and I honestly thought some of the other parts were terrible, for example in the cinema scene which made it even worse.
It was hectic and distracted me terribly. I know I should have tried it without the score, but a completely silent film would have been even harder.

This movie was a veritable rollercoaster for me.
If I watched it again, I would probably just fast forward through part of the date scene and skip the cinema scene completely. I'm sure I would enjoy it much more like that.


Sources:

1. Fritzi Kramer: A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, August 3, 2014
2. Benjamin Schrom: A Cottage on Dartmoor. On: San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Essay. Festival 2007

10 on the 10th, uhm, 9th - Dogs

Early once again. The 10th is Thursday - silent movie day.
So I'm already here today to talk about the prompt "Marsha in the Middle" gave us - our favorite dogs. Dogs??? Everyone knows I'm a cat person (you will know it even more in a few days)!

Luckily, I love dogs almost as much as cats in all shapes and sizes, but obviously I never lived with one. Marsha gave us an escape route for that, though. 
"They can be dogs you've owned, grew up with, are on tv, dog food cans, whatever!" Sure, Marsha. I always fall in love with dogs on dog food cans, sigh. But hey, I think I know a good "whatever" ...
As usual, the order is quite random.

1. Flocki was the first dog I met on the farm on my friend's parents. As the farm wasn't close to us, I didn't get to see her as much as I would have liked. I loved that sweet girl and I still miss her. I even got a tee with a picture of her once, it must still be in my wardrobe.
There's one unforgotten story. Once my friend visited her parents over the weekend and I came along and slept on the living room couch. The next morning I woke up to a nose in my face. My friend's mother told me that Flocki had insisted on seeing me first 🥰 quite the shock to my friend who was usually the first one to get woken up by her on visit weekends. When Flocki comes up in our stories, so does this story ... my friend still isn't over it, hehe!

2. I don't have a picture of Hera because she was the German shepherd on the farm of my godmother's parents when I was a kid. When I think of Hera, the first image that comes to mind is her waiting for the kittens to be done when raiding her bowl.

3. Chloey is a family member's dog. She's a French mademoiselle who found a new home in Germany via a shelter for polar dog breeds.
She keeps reminding me of a fox with those ears and this face and red coat (lighter or darker depending on the light), so I like to call her "onser Fichsle" which is just Swabian for "our little fox".
Do you see her grinning? That's because she knows exactly she has her two people wrapped around each single paw. The motto is: "Everything for the dog. Everything for the dog." (You're legally bound to say it twice, I know because we have the same one here, only with "cat".)

4. is a double pack. Kosimo, called Kosel, and Nemo, called Schnuck, are the resident dogs in our house. As you can see they are natural models, so natural indeed that they don't believe in weird poodle cuts (which traditionally had to do with poodles going into the water as they were bred for the duck hunt, but which are merely for optics today).
Kosel is all over me sometimes and I love it even if he had the habit to steal one of my pink shoes from the hallway. He loves pink and had to have this flamingo that his nephew is trying to steal. Just look at those dark eyes.
Nemo holds back with me a bit more after trying to knock me over for a greeting, but the other day we had a big hug.

5. Struppi was the first dog I met at my best childhood friend's house. He was a wirehaired dachshund and for some reason I always think of him as a little grumpy old man. No picture available, sorry.
Of course, there are quite a few memories connected with him, but I'll share just one.
We were in the car. My friend's Mom had made given us both a slice of bread with butter and salami on it. Ah, you know where this is heading, don't you? My friend and I sat in the back and Struppi next to me. One moment he looked out of the window, the next moment the salami was gone from my bread and he still looked out of the window!
In my innocence, I had held the slice of bread up and looked away for a second. It was practically like an offer and he took me up on it so fast I didn't even see it. 

6. Finni was another friend's dog, also a dachshund, but a longhaired one.
I can't remember Finni ever being anything but nice, quite amazing for a dachshund, a breed that can be very stubborn (I knew more than just Struppi and Finni). The only thing I remember her being extremely stubborn about was not eating a certain brand of kibbles.
There is a picture of her somewhere, a Polaroid, in a stack of loose photos, I don't know how well it still looks after all those years. If I find it, I'll add it. 

Of course I have met a lot of other dogs over the years and sometimes it was love at first sight, but often we had to part ways after just one fleeting encounter ... at the vet's, on the train, downtown ...
So here comes the "whatever" now.
There are a few dogs on the internet I'm in love with (or should I say I have a parasocial connection to?).

7. It started with Olive and Mabel.
They are the pals of Scottish sports commentator Andrew Cotter. When Covid hit and there wasn't any sports, Cotter commentated "The Dog's Breakfast Grand Final" - which the older and more experienced Olive won, by the way. Sorry for the spoiler.
Cotter followed up with more hilarious videos, for example Olive and Mabel lying on their online dating profiles or joining a gym, but even just him walking through his garden with the labradors has something very calming.



8. I found Ollie and Tato on Instagram and instantly fell for them. Their videos make me happy and give me a moment of peace, much needed these days. Who wouldn't be happy seeing labradors doing their own version of the Lion King (very impressive, that one), Ollie caring for his own pumpkin or Tato (the baby raptor) and his plotting against Santa?
Animal videos are the only time I'm not even disturbed by AI voices. I live for Ollie's mlems and Tatey's pew-pews.

There isn't much on YouTube as they are mostly on Instagram and TikTok, but here's one example.
Most of the time, they are perfectly normal dogs with normal lives, by the way.

9. I also found the Sisters of the Snoot on Instagram, well, the algorithm threw them in my path, start with one dog channel and they pop up like crazy.
The Sisters are Abby (void horse = borzoi), Cleo (chaos worm = silken windhound), and Marcy (void horse in training = younger borzoi). I have no idea why it's so funny to me to hear them being called noodles.
There isn't that much on YouTube here, either.



10. is not exactly a dog. It's a lot of dogs to fall in love with.
It's a channel on several platforms which constantly makes me laugh and cry, not hard to do even with good things. I'm talking about "We Rate Dogs".
"We Rate Dogs" started on Twitter almost ten years ago by - surprise! - rating dogs or "complaining" about people sending pictures in of non-dogs (aka "seals", "polar bears", "sharks", etc.).
Nowadays "We Rate Dogs" is also on Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, TikTok, YouTube and who knows where else. That could be reason to turn me off in other cases, but the owner Matt Nelson has not only turned this into a job by saying "The dogs were good again this week. Here are my top 5."




Part of the proceeds go to the 15/10 Foundation helping to sponsor dogs with medical or behavioral issues and supporting rescue organizations.

There you go, I made it all the way to 10 😊

P.S. How could I forget Snoopy???

From my children's book cabinet - Sue Barton

First of all - before you're coming at me now if you know the "Sue Barton" series, I know these are not children's books, but YA books.
There's a mix of both in what I have always been calling my children's book cabinet.

I never wanted to be a nurse myself. Nothing about it appeals to me personally. I can see my own blood, but not that of others, to start with. I can feel faint just from smelling a hospital on entering it. Mostly, though, I think I'm too soft ... or in other words, a wimp.
Feeling like that makes me appreciate nurses even more for being able to do this. I have been around one or two in my life (and haven't been happy with all of them, after all we are humans) and I'm friends with one or two as well.
So why have I read "Sue Barton" and why do I even own the books myself?
Oh, and if you don't know the series, who even is Sue Barton?

"Sue Barton" is the story of a young woman from student to staff nurse told in seven books written between 1936 and 1952 by Helen Dore Boylston who was a nurse herself.
Her books are among the first to define the YA category.

Boylston worked as a nurse in a field hospital during World War I and wrote a book about that experience as well. She stayed in Europe working for the Red Cross in different countries.
After meeting author Rose Wilder Lane (daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder), they decided to drive from Paris to Albania in a Model T. They lived in Albania for about a year before returning to the USA, a book based on their journal and letters was published in 1983.

Helen Dore Boylston, ca. 1928

After losing money during the Depression, Boylston went back to nursing and then began to take up writing more seriously.
She based her Sue Barton books on her own experiences and real people she knew, she even kept some of the real names, but insisted on Sue not being autobiographical, but the nurse she would have liked to be herself.
Her aim was not to convey a romantic but a realistic picture of nursing, and her protagonist followed different paths during her career just like she had herself.

There are seven books in the series, "Sue Barton: Student Nurse", "Sue Barton: Senior Nurse", "Sue Barton: Visiting Nurse", "Sue Barton: Rural Nurse", "Sue Barton: Superintendent of Nurses", and the last two which followed some years later, "Sue Barton: Neighborhood Nurse", and "Sue Barton: Staff Nurse".

The first two books see Sue and her friends Kit and Connie train at a famous hospital. She falls in love with young doctor Bill Barry and gets engaged, but insists on working as a nurse before getting married.
In the third book, Sue and Kit work for the Henry Street Settlement as visiting nurses in New York. Bill, who has taken a job as a rural doctor, has changed his mind about waiting and wants to get married as soon as possible which leads to a breakup, but not for long.
When his father dies, Bill has to postpone the wedding. Sue wants to be near him and organizes a job as a rural nurse for herself in the fourth book.
Sue and Bill get married at the start of the fifth book and Sue works as the head of the new hospital's nursing school, but isn't sure she's right for the job. The marriage gets a bit rocky, but at the end Sue is pregnant with her first baby and resigns from the school.
In the sixth book, Sue and Bill have three children. Sue regrets having given up nursing, but finds her experience also helps her in the family and around the neighborhood. Kit is now head of the nursing school.
The final book sees Bill taken ill. He has to stay in a sanatorium for months, so Sue needs to go back to work and care for her now four children with the help of an old friend. Bill recovers, and although the end is open, it still seems to hint at Sue going to give up working again when he comes back.

In Germany, the books were first published as a three volume edition in the 50s. More editions followed, but only later as the series of seven volumes. I remember how surprised I was when I first saw the seven paperbacks at our book store because I thought I had missed something until I read the descriptions.

Susanne Barden - Hinaus ins Leben
 (Sue Barton: Student Nurse/Senior Nurse)
Susanne Barden - Weite Wege
(Sue Barton: Visiting Nurse/Rural Nurse)
Susanne Barden - Reifen und Wirken
(Sue Barton: Superintendent of Nurses/
Neighborhood Nurse/Staff Nurse

I hated these covers and treated myself to a set of the edition I knew from my childhood as a birthday gift this year.
So sentimental, I know! The newer covers, however, always made me think of dime novels from the medical field (which takes me back to the shelf where they kept all the pulp fiction in the grocery shop of my childhood, so funny what we remember). I even liked the old font better.
Aren't they pretty?

For this post, I compared parts of the first books in English (which I found on The Internet Archive) and German, and the translation seems to stay true to the content for the most part, but is rather free in regards to the style.
There have also been some smaller cuts to the text. Maybe the reason for that was them turning seven books into three. I still don't approve and wonder why they felt they had to make the series a trilogy in the first place.
Sue Barton becomes Susanne Barden and a few of the other names are changed as well (which I only understand in one case in which the name has a special meaning).
What surprised me was that Fahrenheit wasn't changed to Celsius because that's something I'd have done. 68 Fahrenheit meant nothing to me as a kid.

My sister was the first one to borrow the books from our city library and she liked them (although she also didn't want to be a nurse), so I read them as well. That must have been around the second half of the 70s.
I don't think I really thought about how old exactly the books were, in the 70s they didn't seem that dated to me yet, after all I had absolutely no knowledge of nursing and you could have sold me anything.
I then bought the books for my collection as a grown-up. Of course it became clear to me then how old they were, but by now it was just a vintage read, anyway.

My favorites were the first one and a half German books (English 1 to 3) and the last third of the third book (English 7). I enjoyed the others as well, but not as much although at the time I never gave it much thought why that was. Do you already suspect something?

When I read the books again for this post, it was so obvious to me. Unlike others, I wasn't a fan of Bill.
My favorite books showed Sue as an independent woman who was following her dream and was good at it (okay, maybe a bit too good to be realistic, but it's fiction after all), and Bill wasn't featuring in them very prominently. Sure, he was the love interest, but for me romance wasn't the important part in these books. I think he lost me when he got really pushy about the marriage although he had promised Sue before that he would wait.

In one book, Sue called Bill "too serious, I sometimes think" (or something like that, I only know the line in German).
To be frank, to me he sometimes seems more like a spoilt child, no matter what a wonderful doctor he is, while Sue comes over as a lot more mature.
Boylston never got married, by the way, and neither did Kit in the books who is one of my favorite characters.
Then, however, I remind myself again of the time those books were written. The 30s were a time when women started to gain independence, for example in professions like nursing, but the 50s when the last two books were published wanted to see women back in the home, at the stove, and caring for husband and children.
At least, Sue could prove that she was able to survive without the man in the house.

I agree with a blogger, though, who wrote "I think the author sold out to the publishers on that one."
Granted, when Bill is telling Kit he will be coming home soon and wants to surprise Sue, she's sure Sue will give up working, but Bill wonders if she won't be missing it. Kit says that it's up to her and him to decide and Bill replies that it's up to Sue. It's just that I got the feeling from it that he hopes for her to quit and I don't seem to be the only one. Maybe we don't trust Bill to have grown up enough to understand?
As it is the last book, I guess we can decide ourselves what Sue is actually doing next.

I can't really tell you why I love reading these books, but every, now and then I grab them and still have fun with them, still feel Sue's passion about her work, still get annoyed about Bill and am still glad I'm not a nurse (as should every patient).

P.S. I seem to remember having seen Boylston's other series about actress Carol Page in the library or elsewhere, but don't think I've ever read them.
I have also never read Cherry Ames, another popular series about a nurse. Actually I had never even heard of her before researching for this post and couldn't find a German translation for the books.


Sources:

1. Katherine Ashenburg: Rereading: Sue Barton and Me. In: The American Scholar 72(2003),3, pp. 137 - 141 (closed access)
2. Deborah Philips: Healthy Heroines: Sue Barton, Lillian Wald, Lavinia Lloyd Dock and the Henry Street Settlement. In: Journal of American Studies 33(1999),1, pp. 65 - 82 (closed access)
3. Rebecca M. Douglass: Middle Grade Monday: Helen Dore Boylston. On: The Ninja Librarian, November 1, 2021
4. "lunacat101": Helen Dore Boylston (1895-1984), Part I, II, III. On: Authors' real lives, January 3, 2015 - April 5, 2015 - September 19, 2015
5. Travels with Zenobia - Paris to Albania by Model T Ford : A Journal by Rose Wilder Lane and Helen Dore Boylston. Ed. by William Holtz. Columbia & London, University of Missouri Press, 1983

Gaslight

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings is doing the Summer of Angela (Lansbury). I'm not going to participate fully because I don't have access to all the movies.
So I thought I would do this post a bit different and not just concentrate on the 1944 "Gaslight" with it.
You can find Lisa's post here.

Picture via pxhere

Did you know that the term "gaslighting" derives from this movie? Although the term has been used earlier, it has become popular in the mid-2010s. In 2022, for example, it was Merriam-Webster's word of the year.
"The modern definition of gaslighting is a psychological manipulation technique in which a person tries to convince someone that their reality is untrue." This goes beyond an argument or trying to push your opinion or way of thinking on someone. It's meant to give a person control over another one by making them questioning themselves and what they believe and think.
Where does the gaslight come into it, though?

"Gas Light" is a theater play from 1938 written by British novelist and playwright Patrick Hamilton which wasn't just well received in the UK, but was a huge success in Los Angeles - as "Five Chelsea Lane" - and later on Broadway - as "Angel Street".
It was also adapted to screen in several countries and I want to have a look at three of those adaptations.

One is the 1940 film that I hadn't even known existed (more on that later) with Anton Walbrook (the Austrian actor Adolf Wohlbrück took the English name after he emigrated) and Diana Wynyard.
One is the 1944 film with Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotten - and of course Angela Lansbury.
Then there's one German version - there have been several - from 1960 with Dieter Borsche and Margot Trooger.

Basically, the plot (spoiler alert!) is the same in all adaptations - a man trying to convince his wife that she's insane.
The 1940 film has changed some of the names, but the plot is close to the play.
The 1944 movie, however, which is about half an hour longer, hasn't only changed a few of the names and added a possible love interest at the end, but also offers a complete backstory at the beginning instead of just one scene.
The 1960 television play hasn't changed the names and is close to the play.
I hope it won't get too confusing from here.

You know I usually check out not just information about the movies, but also some other reviews as well because they sometimes make me look more closely at some things or to see if I interpreted something differently from others.
This time, however, I only had a very short peek into reviews and decided to go completely with my own personal thoughts about those three versions.

***

I'll start with the 1944 Hollywood film simply because it's the most famous one.

Public domain via
Wikimedia Commons

Young Paula Alquist leaves the London house where her aunt Alice, a famous opera singer who has raised her, has been brutally murdered. She goes to Italy where she meets Gregory Anton who accompanies her on the piano during her singing lessons. They fall in love and marry, then return to London.
After Paula finds a letter to her aunt signed by a Sergius/Sergis (I understood Sergius, but you find both names) Bauer, things change between Gregory and her. He has everything belonging to Alice taken to the attic which he gets boarded up. He goes out every night and flirts with Nancy, the parlor maid, in front of Paula whom he treats alternately loving, condescending or angry. He isolates her from the outside world and tells her she keeps forgetting, losing and imagining things until she starts believing it herself. The only time she insists on going to a recital, he makes her break down by claiming she has stolen his watch.
She's hearing footsteps above her room and the gaslight dims without another lamp in the house having been turned on.
Finally, Gregory claims Paula's mother has been insane and died in an asylum, that the letter by Bauer never existed and that Paula will have to be institutionalized as well.
A young Scotland Yard detective, Brian Cameron, has recognized Gregory, however, because he was an admirer of Alice as a child and has seen Gregory with her. He visits Paula to tell her the truth about him - that he's just trying to drive her to madness to get full access to her estate, that the footsteps are his and the gaslight dims downstairs because he turns the one in the attic up to search for Alice Alquist's jewels there. They find the letter by Bauer and Cameron realizes Gregory is Bauer who already has a wife in Prague.
While Cameron is still talking to Paula and asking Elizabeth, the cook, to take care of her mistress, Gregory finds the jewels hidden between paste gems sewn to a dress.
Cameron and a constable overpower Gregory and tie him to a chair. Paula asks to talk to him alone, but she doesn't give in to the attempts to make her cut him free. Instead she taunts him by behaving as if she is actually mad.
Gregory is taken to prison. Paula and Cameron step outside and it's clear that Cameron would like to see Paula again.

***

Next is the British movie from 1940.

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There's no backstory here except the scene of an old lady, Alice Barlow, being strangled (with her own embroidery floss!) and the furniture ripped apart in search of something.
Only years later, the Mallen couple, Paul and Bella, move into her house.
Paul treats Bella cruelly increasing the pressure on her constantly. He makes her think she's stealing, forgetting and imagining things, reminds her of her mother's insanity and threatens to have her institutionalized.
He is also mean to her only friend, a little dog, and later it's even implied the dog is dead (I chose to not believe this). He doesn't just flirt with Nancy, but even kisses her and takes her to a music hall.
While he's away, Bella is visited by an ex-policeman named Rough who has recognized Paul as a man called Louis Bauer. He had also notified her cousin who had been turned away by Paul. He tells her the truth about Paul and the gaslight and the story of Alice Barlow and her missing rubies.
When Mallen comes back, Rough confronts him. Bella finds the brooch that Paul said she had lost and she shows Rough it opens. Rough recognizes it as Alice's brooch. There are indentations inside which had loose stones in them that Bella put in a vase - Alice's precious rubies Paul had been searching for all that time.
Paul throws a chair at Rough, but together with his helper Rough manages to tie him up. Bella talks to him and taunts him. When Paul is taken away by the police. Bella steps out on the balcony alone.

***

The last one is the German television play.

Jack and Bella Manningham are in their salon. Jack makes Bella think she's stealing, forgetting and imagining things, reminds her of her mother's insanity - her mother died at the same age Bella is now - and threatens to have her institutionalized. He flirts with Nancy. He even claims Bella has hurt her own dog.
While Jack is gone in the evening, Bella gets a visit by ex-policeman Rough who tells her that Jack is really Sidney Power who has cut the rich Alice Barlow's throat for her rubies. He keeps calling Bella by her maiden name "Bella Royd" to make clear to her that Jack already has a wife in Australia.
They also find out that Jack has tried to poison Bella slowly with her "medicine".
When they open Jack's desk, they find Bella's brooch and Bella shows Rough the rubies she had taken out of it and put in a vase.
When Jack comes back, Rough confronts him. After a short fight, Jack tries to escape, but is captured by police. Tied to a chair, he tries to make Bella set him free, but she just taunts him. The police takes Jack away and Bella walks upstairs by herself.

***

I always liked "Gaslight". I'm a fan of Ingrid Bergman and love her portrayal of Paula Alquist for which she got an Academy Award.

It's always tough to watch other adaptations if you are happy with the one you already know, so I was a bit wary, but then I was amazed how quickly the British film drew me in. Of course you jump right in without the backstory.

I understand if others might like it better to see how the relationship between Gregory and Paula is developing, how he builds her up only to slowly destroy her afterwards once he has what he wanted, unlimited access to the house.
I, on the other hand, was quite overwhelmed by the contrast between Paul and Bella. She might have been afraid to lose her mind, but in fact you could tell he was the mad one which I thought made him a marvelous villain.
Where Gregory is more subtle, Paul is outright evil. I think that also shows in the music hall visit with Nancy. Gregory is attracted by Nancy, Paul goes the step further. He doesn't care whom he uses and how to get to his goal.
At the end, you could tell Boyer's obsession with the stones - no idea if that was on purpose, but I liked the light effect in his eyes when he talks about the jewels, and then he blinks and the light goes away - but it was still quite controlled. While it was fine acting, I loved Walbrook's unhinged madness even more. It would have been interesting to see him across Bergman.
Dieter Borsche neither shows the subtle charm of Boyer nor the madness of Walbrook. Instead he hides behind the mask of the respectable gentleman which didn't make it any less scary.

Now Bergman was fabulous and she got a lot of occasions to show the full range of emotions, happy, doubtful, scared, broken, vengeful.
Wynyard didn't have those. I didn't know her before this movie, but she probably couldn't have outacted Bergman if she had had them. I still liked her performance a lot, though, especially at the end when she's taunting her husband until he loses control completely.

The Nancys. I would have loved to see even more of Lansbury. Her Nancy was truly unlikable in the way she seemed to look down on her mistress throughout, but actually it felt to me as if she mostly saw this a chance to better her station in life without giving a thought to what that would mean for Paula. A naive hope because we know she could only have been a little affair for Gregory, but that naiveté went well with her being so young (17 when filming began).
Cathleen Cordell was good at being flirty and seductive, but it felt more superficial to me than Lansbury. Somehow I felt Cordell's Nancy had more experience.
Christine Maybach was okay, but didn't offer as much as the other two.

I think Joseph Cotten is a bit young for the role. They had to make him Alice's child admirer from years ago to give him a reason for being interested in this cold case. That was probably necessary to hint at a love story.
Rough, the ex-cop in the other two adaptations, makes more sense to me - this is an open case that has been haunting him for years before he recognizes the murderer and prevents another crime.
What I liked better, however, was how Cameron could make Paula trust him by presenting the second glove that Alice had given to him as a child. Rough is gaining trust mostly through his age and by being kind of fatherly. I don't know that a woman who is already frightened out of her mind would so readily listen to a complete stranger.

One question - what was the purpose of having Dame May Whitty as the nosy neighbor in the 1944 movie? Just so she could tell Cameron about the house? Or for comic relief?

***

Would you believe that MGM actually attempted to gaslight the audience when they did their remake? MGM bought the rights to the play, but insisted on all prints of the British film, which hadn't reached the US market yet, to be destroyed in order to wipe out possible competition. The film's director, Thorold Dickinson, had the foresight to make a personal copy.
I don't know what kind of competition it would have been at the time the 1944 movie came out.
They had the stars and they had the money for some glamour. Just compare the sets, oh, and the clothes. Bergman's dresses were absolutely gorgeous and I loved the way they did her hair.
Well, and the German version, being a television play, was the simplest one regarding both sets and costumes (but the waffles with the tea looked pretty 😉).

All three adaptations were quite different in several points, but you know what? I really enjoyed all of them.
Nevertheless, I do have a favorite and much to my own surprise, it's the 1940 film. I'm actually fine with it not having a long backstory. Maybe I'm getting more impatient with some things, but I enjoyed that the film was shorter, didn't have as many embellishments, seemed tighter. Yeah, and you might have noticed that I prefer Paul to Gregory - if you can say "prefer" in case of a villain at all.
Possibly I just like Walbrook better than Boyer (I liked him in "The Red Shoes" as well and hope to find access to other movies with him).

It would have been fun to find the other adaptations as well, the German ones and an Australian one, and maybe it would be interesting to watch the play on stage. I'll have to check that out.

Kudos to you if you have made it till here and thank you!
Have you seen "Gaslight", either version, and what do you think?


Sources:

1. Amanda L. Chase Avera: Gaslighting: What Is It And How Do We Fight Back? On: Middle Georgia State University - News, April 17, 2023
2. Gideon Haigh: GASLIGHT-ing: An Inquiry. On: Cricket et al, May 22, 2024

Silent movies - Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

It's about time for some F. W. Murnau who was one of the most influential filmmakers of the silent era - and yet I only know one of his movies (which will turn up here eventually, I'm sure you know which one I'm talking about).
That had to be put right immediately, with a movie which many reviews rave about as it being a masterpiece, the best silent film and one of the greatest films ever - Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans from 1927.

I admit that such labels always make me a bit nervous. I said before that I'm not a film expert at all, I just tell you a few facts and then how I like a movie. Or not. So if I don't like one that everyone seems to be so excited about, it makes me feel a bit shy about expressing my opinion. Do I like a film because I think I'm supposed to? If I don't, is it because I'm not smart enough for it or is there a different reason - and will I openly admit I don't, just because I think I'm entitled to my own opinion even if it may be unpopular with others?
Actually yes, I will and I guess I just wanted to make sure you know that.
Now I'm going to watch the movie and then I'll be back *cue the muzak*

Public domain via
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"This song of the Man and his Wife is of no place and every place: you might hear it anywhere at any time.
For wherever the sun rises and sets ... in the city's turmoil or under the open sky on the farm ... life is much the same: sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet."

The plot (with spoilers).

Vacation time, the city people come to the countryside. One of them is the Woman. She has been staying for weeks because she has her eye on a farmer.
The Man is torn between her - a modern Flapper, passionate, uninhibited - and the Wife - old-fashioned, shy, sweet-natured - with whom he has a child. When the Woman literally whistles for him, though, he can't resist and follows her to the lake while the Wife sits with their child crying and remembering the good times.

The Woman wants the Man to sell his farm and come to the city with her the images of which she conjures up in his mind, the hustle and bustle, the music, the dancing, the people.
When he asks her what to do about the Wife, the Woman says he should take her onto the lake and drown her, make it look like an accident by overturning the boat, and take a bundle of bullrushes along to save himself. The Man throttles her, but she turns it into an embrace.

So the Man suggest a boat ride on the lake which makes the Wife very happy. Soon she becomes suspicious, though. In the middle of the lake the Man prepares to throw her overboard, but when the Wife pleads to him, he knows he can't do it. Reaching land, the Wife runs away from him and he follows her onto a trolley heading for the city. She is afraid and desperate, but finally the Man can calm her down.
When they see a bride enter a church, they follow her, and on hearing the pastor talk to the couple about love and guidance, the Man breaks down crying and asking for the Wife's forgiveness.
Coming back out of the church and walking down the stairs, the Wife holding the flowers the Man gave her, they look like newlyweds themselves.
They explore the city together. The Man gets a shave, so they can have a photo taken. They have fun at a carnival, the Man catches a straying pig from one of the booths for which he gets cheered, they are even asked to do a rural dance.

When sailing back across the lake, there's a sudden storm which makes their boat run full of water. The Man ties the bundles of bullrushes to the Wife just before the boat capsizes in the waves. He makes it to the shore and gathers the men from the village. They search the lake, but find just a few loose bullrushes.
The Man is broken with grief. The Woman, however, thinks the plan has succeeded and goes to the Man's house, but his reaction is not what she has expected. She runs, but he catches up with her and chokes her again.
Only when the Maid is calling for him, he lets the Woman go and runs home. A neighbor went back out on the lake and has found the Wife after all.

A new day begins.
The Woman is taken towards the lake in a carriage. She clutches her luggage and she doesn't look happy at all.
The Wife wakes up, her eyes light up as she sees the Man. They kiss and the sun rises.

"Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans" was Murnau's first Hollywood feature after William Fox invited him to the USA to make an expressionist film.
It is based on the adaptation of the story "Die Reise nach Tilsit" (The excursion to Tilsit", on Projekt Gutenberg in German) by the German dramatist Hermann Sudermann and won the Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Picture at the first Academy Awards in 1929 (only awarded once) and also for best cinematography. Janet Gaynor won "Best Actress" (for her work on three movies in that year including this one, only later they changed to awarding individual ones).
It was not the financial success, however, that Fox had hoped for.

The movie is about temptation and the path to redemption.
Except for some short glimpses into the past, the movie dives right in. We don't see how the Man meets the Woman, we are right in the middle of the affair, so far in that the Woman already hatches plans for the future.

There are a lot of opposites shown in the film to depict the two different worlds, the city versus the countryside and modern life versus old-fashioned life, but also the emotional worlds.
On one side we have the two women, on the other side the Man torn between them. He's brooding, has a heavy walk (Murnau put lead in his shoes), he's unshaven and seems dark. After realizing that he wants to stay with the Wife, though, especially after the shave for the photo, you can literally see a weight and the shadow has been taken off him. He smiles, his eyes shine, he's light on his feet, and he's happy again.

It made me wonder if that is how the Woman met him and fell for him and what her motivation actually is for wanting to take him to the city with her. Is it merely a question of enjoying the power she has over him? Has she even thought about what life would be like with him the city because for me it was hard to imagine the Man there with her, just I couldn't see the Woman permanently in the countryside with the Man.

It is lovely seeing the Man and the Wife having fun on their unplanned day in the city, exploring what seems to be completely new for them.
There's a moment for example when they are so lost in a kiss that they completely forget they are in the middle of heavy traffic which is symbolized by the city fading away and turning to the countryside in the background.
I'll be honest, though, I could really have done without the chase after the young drunk pig, but maybe it was some kind of comic relief scene.

Do you sense a but? Because there is one.
I get the idea of redemption and reconciliation, but the Man  had planned to kill the Wife for another woman, and I'm not so sure I would have been able to forget that so quickly. Also, my image of him wasn't necessarily improved by the two choking scenes.
Of course that is based on the original story, though (which doesn't have a happy ending for the Man, by the way).

Would I say that this was one of the greatest films ever? I don't think so, but I'm not even sure I would want to say that of any film at all. There are so many and they are so different, how can you compare and pick?
If someone asks me for my personal five favorites, I usually can't even tell you those because they might not always been the same. Although there are films I say are my all-time favorites, I couldn't tell you how many there are.

Would I say, however, that I enjoyed the movie? Yes. 
I'm not going to list cinematic techniques here, tracking shots, double exposure, etc. (if you are interested, there's just one of many articles here). What I can tell is that they worked really well, for example when the Man is brooding and the Woman seduces and haunts his thoughts in a double exposure.

My favorite was Margaret Livingston as the Woman. I thought she played the temptress and femme fatale really very well although you didn't learn anything about her motivation.

I also enjoyed the overall mood, but here's another little but relating to that.
Murnau made the film using the "Movietone" process which means music and sounds, but not dialog, were pre-recorded and that track was played in the theater along with the film. I was fine with the music, but I found the sounds too loud, a neighing horse, the squealing pig, horns in traffic. Luckily, there weren't too many of those. On the other hand, I understand how he used those sounds and others might like them.
There are amazingly few intertitles, however. Murnau didn't like intertitles. Some of them were necessary in the beginning, but then were fewer and fewer toward the ending.

So yeah, in the end I guess I'm not one of those super enthusiastic viewers, but nevertheless "Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans" is definitely worth watching.
I can even see myself watching it again to maybe catch some more of those cinematic techniques that went by me the first time.
In my defense, it was very hot and I had a sleeping cat in my arm without being able to move - when the boy needs snuggles, his wishes are my command.


Sources:

1. Pamela Hutchinson: My favourite film - Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. In: The Guardian, Filmblog, November 16, 2011
2. Shari Kizirian: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. On: San Franciscso Silent Film Festival, Essay, Festival 2011
3. Andreas Babiolakis: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. On: FilmsFatale, October 13, 2019
4.  Jaime Rebanal: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. On: Cinema from the Spectrum, June 10, 2016

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings is doing the Summer of Angela (Lansbury). I'm not going to participate fully because I don't have access to all the movies. I already missed the first one and I'm a few days late with this post because the day was already taken by another post.

Today's movie is Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
You can find Lisa's post on it here.

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There are two distinctive memories I connect with this movie from 1971.
The first one is a German TV show for children called "Sport-Spiel-Spannung" (literally "Sports-Game-Suspense"). The "suspense" part was my favorite because they had clips from movies, for example Disney.
I don't know if I imagine this, but it feels as if one particular scene from "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" turned up more than once. I don't think the show had re-runs, so either I did see it more than once because it was very popular or it was just on two or three times and it felt like more to me?
It's also possible that it turned up in Disney shows, however, because I read some people thought it was an animated short film because of that, not part of a feature film.

The second one is that we actually went to see that movie at the cinema which is not something that happened that often at that time. We even got some money to get snacks - those were the times when you could still bring your own snacks unconcealed - and we went to the big grocery store. Choosing was not easy for us, we finally decided on a "Crunch" milk chocolate bar (which disappeared for many years later). I won't name the company because I don't longer buy their products.

Now that you have survived my reminiscing, let's finally get to the movie, shall we?
Let's start with the plot (spoiler alert!). Wait, which plot, though? The original one? The cut version? Or the German cut version? How about the cut version because that's the only one I got to see and then we'll talk about the cuts later on, shall we?

England, 1940.
Three orphans - Charles, Carey, and Paul Rawlins - are evacuated with other children from London to the countryside to escape from German air raids.
All children have already been taken home by families, only the Rawlins children are left when Miss Eglantine Price arrives to pick up a parcel and involuntarily gets tasked with caring for the children.
Things don't start too well. The children don't want to stay in the countryside and Miss Price doesn't have any experience with children.

When the children have gone to sleep, Miss Price unpacks her parcel, a broomstick, sent by "The Emelius Browne Correspondence School for Witchcraft". Unfortunately, the children witness her flying when they set out to go back to London, and Miss Price has to tell them she does a course for witchcraft hoping to help with the war effort. In exchange for their silence, Miss Price puts a travelling spell on a bedknob Paul took off the bed.

When the school announces its closure before she has received the most important spell, Miss Price convinces the children to take the bed to London where they meet Professor Browne. He's a (not very good) street magician who took the lessons from an old book whose last part is still with the bookseller.
Going there, they find out that the important words for the Substituiary Locomotion spell are engraved on a sorcerer's star medallion.
In order to find the medallion, they travel to the island of Naboombu where talking animals live, enchanted by the sorcerer. They find Leonidas, King of the Animals, wearing the star. After a soccer game for which Browne is acting as a referee, he manages to exchange the star for his whistle, and they barely escape the island.
This soccer game is the above mentioned scene, by the way.
 


At home, they try out the spell to make clothes move, but it ends in chaos.
Professor Browne goes to catch a train back to London, but has to sleep at the station because the last one already left.
Meanwhile, Nazi soldiers have landed on the coast to spread fear of an invasion. They choose Miss Price's house for their headquarters and take her and the children to the old castle.
Browne overhears two of the Nazis and heads back to help Miss Price who then uses the spell on the armors to make them attack the Nazis and chase them off. The plan works. Unfortunately, they also destroy her workroom and thus end her life as a witch.
In the end, Miss Price has adopted the children and Professor Browne has enlisted in the army, but promises with a kiss to be back.

"Bedknobs and Broomsticks" is based on two books by Mary Norton, "The Magic Bedknob; or How to Become a Witch in Ten Easy Lessons" and "Bonfires and Broomsticks" which later got combined into "Bed-Knob and Broomstick".
I read both books after re-watching the movie, and although I don't want to give away details about them now because there might be a post in the future, I can reveal that to me this is a severe case of "how did they get from this to that?".

You may think that "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" is a bit of a "Mary Poppins light". A lady, three children, magic ... but although "Mary Poppins" came out seven years before this movie, the project had actually been older. Disney had bought the rights shortly after the first book was published in 1943, the sequel followed 1947.
When negotiations with P.L. Travers about the rights to "Mary Poppins" took longer than hoped, they started on "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" instead. After acquiring the rights to "Mary Poppins", however, this movie got shelved more than once because of the similarities.

After the movie finally came out, both critics and audience were divided in their opinions. Too long, a mishmash of ideas, not enough heart, inventive, enjoyable, best animation ever, magical, charming, messy, underrated ... 

Now I don't remember how much I liked it myself when I was a kid, but I didn't get to see this version, anyway.

The movie originally had a runtime of 141 minutes. I'll be honest, I don't think that was a very good idea for a movie aimed at children first. For its premiere, however, they cut it down by 23 minutes. That's still almost two hours (and the version I watched), still quite long for children.
A lot of people seem to have been confused about Roddy McDowall getting third billing after Angela Lansbury and David Tomlinson. The reason was that they cut out the whole sub-plot showing the vicar at seducing Miss Price to get his hands on her land. Good choice if you ask me. I haven't seen it, mind you, but I can't imagine it doing anything for the plot.
Some years later, they cut it down even more, but I can't tell you what got cut out then. It got a little confusing for me with all the different versions!

So which version did this little German child get to see? Not hard to guess, is it? We didn't have that many scenes with the Nazis here. They got cut out which probably made the ending a bit confusing. There were other scenes that got cut, after all we ended up with only 90 minutes, but the Nazis were probably the biggest part.
I read some forum discussions and I loved how someone said this would have been the chance to talk about history with your kids. Not many people were ready to talk about that kind of history with their young kids in the 70s. That we get to see the full version now, fine, we have learned, but back then history was for school to teach in the first place.

What's interesting to me is how Nazis made it into the movie at all. Not because I'm German and can't take it, but because I read the books.
While the war is mentioned in the first book, the only other mention are butter rations. No Home Guard, no soldiers. No helping with the war effort. The spell is there alright, but for a completely different reason (which could be just as traumatizing, though, but Disney has traumatized me with more than one movie).
I'll say it again, "how did they get from this to that?"

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the movie. I think Lansbury played the aspiring witch (who doesn't look like the stereotype) very well. I liked Tomlinson and the kids were okay.
I agree that the movie was long (I have no interest in watching the even longer version), but it was entertaining. It is a bit dated here and there as was to be expected, and the soccer game may not be quite as exciting as little Cat thought it was, but it was still fun.
My favorite song is "Portobello Road" (despite the accordion), by the way, maybe it is the mix of the melody and the market atmosphere that speaks to me?

Of course the movie gets compared with "Mary Poppins" a lot (they first wanted Julie Andrews as Miss Price, by the way), usually with the result that the latter is so much more brilliant.
I know I'm stepping into dangerous terrain now, but I don't like "Mary Poppins". There, I've said it.
I love the books, but the film is way too long for me and so are some of the songs, and I also think the film very much disneyfied the Mary from the books.
So yes, if you made me choose which one of them to watch for a Disney evening, it would definitely be "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" for me.