Heidi
United States, West Germany
1968
105 Min
Color
1.33:1
English
Synopsis
The film altered the plot of the novel somewhat by casting Simmons as Fraulein Rottenmeier, the governess, making the character far more sympathetic (thus eliminating the antagonism between her and Heidi), and introducing a romance between the governess and Schell’s Herr Sesemann.
It also added a subplot in which Heidi’s grandfather, a church organist in this version, has long been unable to play because of a family tragedy. At the very end of the film, he regains his confidence, mounts the steps to the organ, and begins to play.
Different from the book, the scene in which Clara walks for the first time after her accident does not take place in the Sessemann house but on the Swiss Alps. Clara, Fraulein Rottenmeier, and Herr Sessemann have come to Heidi’s cottage to visit her and her grandfather. Clara is deliberately left alone on the mountains by Heidi’s grandfather. She struggles to get out of her wheelchair, knocking it over and falling down in the process. As she tries to get up, she sees her father, Herr Sessemann, looking at her encouragingly, and haltingly walks towards him. —Wikipedia
Director
Delbert Mann
Delbert Martin Mann, Jr. (January 30, 1920 – November 11, 2007) was an American television and film director. He won the Palme d’Or (Golden Palm) at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Director for the film Marty. It was the first Best Picture winner to be based on a television program, being adapted from a 1953 teleplay of the same name which he had also directed. Mann is also the only director other than Billy Wilder and Roman Polanski to win an Oscar for his direction and a Cannes Palme d’Or for the same film. From 1967 to 1971, he was president of the Directors Guild of America.
Mann was born in Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas, the son of Ora (née Patton), a civic worker and teacher, and Delbert Martin Mann, Sr., a college professor. Mann graduated from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. After school, he served with the U.S. Army Air Corps in WW II, then got discharged after service in the European theater. He then attended Yale Drama School… read more
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