Algol (film)

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Movie
Original title Algol
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1920
length 81 minutes
Rod
Director Hans Werckmeister
script Hans Brennert ,
Fridel Koehne
camera Axel Graatkjær ,
Herrmann Kricheldorff
occupation

Algol (alternative title: Algol. Eine Tragödie der Macht ) is a German feature film by Hans Werckmeister from 1920.

action

Robert Herne is a miner in a coal mine. One day, while working in the mine, he comes across an alien from the planet Algol. This gives him the secret of the Algol waves and a machine that converts these waves emanating from the Algol star into energy. Herne now has an inexhaustible source of energy in hand.

Herne, who recognizes and seizes the chance of his life, uses the machine and supplies the whole world with energy. He is gaining power and influence everywhere. But his girlfriend Maria leaves him and flees to an agrarian neighboring country that still resists Herne's striving for power. Herne marries the wealthy mine owner Leonore Nissen, with whom he has two children.

Twenty years later, Maria's son Peter Hell comes to Herne to ask him to let the energy of the Algol rays benefit all of humanity. Herne refuses. His daughter Magda follows Peter Hell to the idyllic neighboring country, which, however, comes under increasing pressure under the influence of Herne's power politics. Herne's wife Leonore is killed in an accident with the Algol rays and his son Reginald seeks his father's life in order to be able to usurp world domination. Herne realizes how much the power of the algol machine has corrupted him and destroys it.

background

Werckmeister worked here with the architect Walter Reimann , who a year earlier designed the buildings for Robert Wien's classic silent film Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari had designed. The film was shot outside in Potsdam in the Sanssouci Park and at the Orangery Palace. Algol premiered on September 3, 1920 in Berlin's Kurfürstendamm UT .

There is a copy of the film with new subtitles from the 1980s under the incorrect title "Algol - Tragedy of the Night".

Reviews

Contemporary critics particularly praised the decorations by Reimann and Graatkjaer's camera work. However, the film appears to be a strange mixture of realism and fantasy; the fantastic is material and does not arise from filmic unreality. This is attributed to the rather randomly seeming sequence of scenes, which is attributed to poor directorial work. The story suffers from a lack of logic, but has some poetically interesting moments.

literature

  • Bernd Perplies: Algol. Faust's temptation from space. In: Bernd Perplies: The German science fiction film. Approaches to a neglected genre. GRIN Verlag, sl 2006, ISBN 3-638-45187-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Patrick Conley: Algol - Tragedy of the Night. Image log and directory of the inserts. Self-published, Frankfurt am Main 1989.
  2. ↑ Peter Ejk: Algol. In: Der Tag , September 4, 1920 (reprinted in: Film und Presse , No. 9, 1920, ZDB -ID 12006-6 )
  3. ^ Herbert Ihering : Algol. In: Berliner Börsen-Courier , September 5, 1920, ( online version ).
  4. ^ Review in: Der Kinematograph. No. 713, September 12, 1920, ZDB -ID 575137-8 , ( online version ).
  5. ↑ P .... r (= Georg Popper), Hamburger Theaterzeitung. No. 39, October 1, 1920, ZDB -ID 291019-6 , ( online version ).

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