Heidi

Heidi, an orphan, is taken to live with her grandfather in the Swiss Alps. At first he is put out by her arrival and does not want the child there. Before long, though, she breaks through his gruffness and the two grow close. On the mountain she also makes a friend of a shepherd boy named Peter. Three years later her aunt arrives and wants to take Heidi back to Frankfurt. The film gives the difference between mountain life and city life through the child’s eyes. The account does not build the grandfather as an obstacle; it shows a man who has been left alone. Elsbeth Sigmund and Heinrich Gretler appear in Luigi Comencini’s hundred minute Swiss film, completed in 1952.