Follie nel mondo

... above is my email address so as to enable you to contact me if you want to - I know a great deal about figure skating history because I have learned so many details during the time my mother was the first female figure skating sportscaster for the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation ORF. Besides, I wrote a book about the Vienna Ice Revue.

I love this movie because it shows Austria´s figure skating queen Eva Pawlik. I remember to have seen her in the programme of the Vienna Ice Revue in Brussels in 1961 when I was 5 years old. I dreamed the dream of being such a great show-star by myself. In "Frühling auf dem Eis" I saw her again when I was about twenty years old in a retrospective on TV. Although her skating style may look a bit old fashioned to us now she is still a strong personality on the ice and also as an actress in the frame story. It is worth mentioning that she is - as an actress - not worse than the "real" actors. It would have been impossible the other way round - for actors cannot learn how to skate within a few weeks. Besides, "Frühling auf dem Eis" is one of the few movies in the history of films in which an internationally successful skater (Pawlik was runner-up at the 1948 Olympics) plays the main role in a movie. I can only remember the legendary Sonja Henie from Norway who did so and the German couple Marika Kilius and Hans-Juergen Bäumler. Even the great Kati Witt only played a main role on the ice and not in the frame story of a movie.

The reason why 10 points are appropriate: Eva Pawlik is starring not only as a figure skater, but also as an actress. I have not known anything about Pawlik but my grand-parents told me about her extraordinarily marvellous appearances in the programmes of the Vienna Ice Revue that played for Berlin six weeks a year in the fifties and that was well-known all over the world at that time. I am a musician. So I saw Pawlik´s dancing in "Frühling auf dem Eis" from a musician´s point of view. Every spin, every slight moving is in perfect harmony with the music. Though I am not even twenty years of age, I can imagine that the audience was thrilled by Pawlik´s skating.

I am 95 years old, so I have seen almost all figure skating stars of the twentieth century. I saw most ice shows in Vienna, especially those with Austrian World Champion Felix Kaspar, Austrian Olympic Champion Herma Szabo, Austrian double Olympic Champion Karl Schäfer and the Olympic runner-ups Ilse and Erik Pausin. After World War II there was again a lot of exhibition skating in Vienna, with double Olympic Champion Dick Button and Austrian Olympic runner-up Eva Pawlik who was entitled the "Pawlowa on the ice". When I watch the movie "Frühling auf dem Eis" with Eva Pawlik (who was also a good actress) all the marvellous figure skating impressions come back to my mind. I love this movie because it is part of Austria´s figure skating history that is unique in the world.

I love the old movies. Although the frame story is - beyond all doubt - not excellent, the movie is worth 10 points in my opinion because it shows the wonderful skaters of the legendary Vienna Ice Revue.

Austrian and European Champion Eva Pawlik who lost her Olympic Gold Medal only against Canada´s sweetheart Barbara Ann Scott is brilliant not only as a skater but also as an actress.

There is no doubt that the other actors having learned how to act on stage and in a movie are not really better. It would have been more difficult for them to skate...