h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It was short enough for me to comfortably watch! Anyways it looks to me like I'm more levelheaded than the Kafka in the film ... but I can relate to getting distracted while trying to work at a piece of art or writing! But in my case it's just about always my cat who comes and mews at me. She can't tolerate me sitting in front of the computer or at my painting desk for so many hours a day and neglecting her. It's strange how a little thing like that can be distracting. But I'm happy to have her. I wish I had so many nice people around me as Kafka did in the movie!

Yeah, it's nice to have friends around.

I know what you mean about the cat - we've got one that does that. He'll just stand there and meow at you. He's still mad because in the other apartment, there was room for him to sit on the table near the computer, and here there isn't.

At first, when I found out it was to be about Kafka, I wanted to away screaming.

But I forced myself to watch anyway, and now I feel sorry for him. Curse you, Dmitri...

And yes, I probably watched 'Die Verwandlung' when one of my closest friends was studying German at the university of Stockholm, and I was studying to become an executive secretary (including business German).

She'd repeatedly drag me along to the Goethe Institute in Stockholm, where we'd watch German films with no subtitles, such as 'Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum' or 'Der König und sein ' (that was an odd one).

Aha, a fellow-sufferer from German cinema.

We got all the classics, you know. One time, Professor Gaensefleisch wanted us to watch 'Der blaue Engel'. We said, 'Oh, yeah, with Marlene Dietrich'.

Professor Gaensefleisch: Marlene Dietrich? Pah! Sie hat nur Beine. (=All she has is legs.) The real actor is Emil Jannings.

Curse you yet again, Dmitri - 'Der Blaue Engel' without Marlene Dietrich? That's blasphemy!

*wanders off to google Jannings*

Oh... it was right there...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXGMQWdXdyU

Stuffy professor. Jannings was considered the superior actor. But if you've googled, you've found out why his reputation suffered after the war. He got trapped into making films for Goebbels.

A year or so after seeing the 'Blue Angel', I found myself in Germany, where they'd just declassified the old UfA films from the days of the Reichspropagandaministerium. I watched them all - including one Emil Jannings made that he probably regretted.