Italian Prof. Bhaer

Well, If you look at films from that era, anyone with an accent was picked to play a character with an accent no matter were he was from. (Fernando Lamas had the same problem.) Brazzi would later play a Frenchman in South Pacific. French, Italian, and Spanish speaking leading men were popular and considered romantic continental lover types.

Actually at the time the book was published (late 1860’s) the Professor Bhaer character was a stereotypical German. Germany had been divided into various kingdoms and principalities since the middle ages and had never been a unified country under a single government.

During the 1860’s Prussia, the strongest of the German states, fought a series of wars, designed to force the other German states to unite under Prussian leadership. First Denmark, then Austria and finally the culminating war with France in 1870 completed the unification process.

It wasn’t until the 1870 war that the Germans acquired the reputation of being militaristic and warlike. Prior to 1870, when the book was written, Germans were typically regarded as sensitive and scholarly intellectuals.

And that was exactly the way Louisa May Alcott portrayed Bhaer.

This film was made shortly after WWII, so there was a squeemish attitude about Germans at the time. For example, the musical "Brigadoon" (1947) came from a German folk legend, but because of WWII, the setting was changed to Scotland. I've no doubt that is why Prof. Bhaer's ethnicity was changed for this 1949 version.

Hi, great to have a grumble, the movie stinks, everything about it is wrong.
The acting is terrible, especially the Jo person, she never sounds convincing, you can tell she's reciting a script.
Laurie is about 20 years older than he is in the book. This is a grown man, not a schoolboy as he was meant to be.
Beth dies in the book.

really, really bad adaptation.

Hollywood has always had trouble getting accents right. The producers never had any respect for the intelligence of the audience; never thought we could spot an incorrect accent and would just buy everything as presented. As another example, in "Bride of Frankenstein", the German woman who helps pull the monster from underneath the burned windmill has a Scottish burr. Ah, but then along came Meryl Streep.

Well in the 94 one they got an Irish guy, and he was perfectly believable as a German

http://i39.tinypic.com/2qi2reh.jpg

I thought Brazzi gave such a charming performance that the fact he was Italian, not German, was not at all distracting to me. He really brought out the Jo/Bhaer shipper in me. I fell in love with him almost instantly.

He was okay in the part, but I really prefer Paul Lukas from the 1933 version.

~~
💕 JimHutton (1934-79) and ElleryQueen 👍