I can't think of many movies in which soccer was a key element. There's BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM and the ludicrous VICTORY. After that, it's mostly two-minute actualities from about 1900. That doesn't mean that this type of movie is unknown to me. Movies about people in sports coming to learn the true meaning of their game may not be as common a theme as people learning the true meaning of Christmas, but it crops up regularly. As an American, it's usually about baseball or our version of football.
So this movie about how Gustav Froelich is the best player on a small after-work soccer team, caught between the love of Evelyn Holt and the allure of Lissy Arna and her professional team is pretty much a cut-and-dried plot. It's also a bit slow and solemn -- William Haines or Joe E. Brown would have disposed of this story in 75 minutes with a lot more good humor. Co-director Vincent Korda shoots some interesting soccer moves, but the game is assembled through strenuous editing, very high-speed for the era --longer takes would have been better, but between the difficulty of shooting an extended sequence and the excitement of short cuts, it was the obvious and cheap choice.
So this movie about how Gustav Froelich is the best player on a small after-work soccer team, caught between the love of Evelyn Holt and the allure of Lissy Arna and her professional team is pretty much a cut-and-dried plot. It's also a bit slow and solemn -- William Haines or Joe E. Brown would have disposed of this story in 75 minutes with a lot more good humor. Co-director Vincent Korda shoots some interesting soccer moves, but the game is assembled through strenuous editing, very high-speed for the era --longer takes would have been better, but between the difficulty of shooting an extended sequence and the excitement of short cuts, it was the obvious and cheap choice.