Geld und Geist

Of the classic Swiss "Gotthelf movies", this is the only one in color. It is, as usual, oversimplifying Gotthelf's novel, the acting as well as the whole movie's development are of a rather wooden quality, and the end is a somewhat cheap (but still working!) Hollywood-style attempt to get a weeping audience; but nonetheless, it could have been a lot worse - the people and their environment have a quite authentic Swiss (resp. Bernese) "look and feel", all being Swiss actors and (in the original version) speaking their native Swiss German; their "woodenness" also is surely not entirely inappropriate for the depiction of Bernese farmers. It is *not* an authentic representation of Gotthelf's novel, and only partly of Gotthelf's time, still this movie (very successful in Switzerland at its time) is a distinctly Swiss effort and not boring to watch.