On the Edge of the World (1927)

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Movie
Original title At the edge of the world
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1927
length 104 minutes
Rod
Director Karl Grune
script Karl Grune
Hans Brennert
production UFA
music Giuseppe Becce
camera Fritz Arno Wagner
occupation

On the Edge of the World is a German anti-war silent film from 1927 by Karl Grune with Albert Steinrück , Brigitte Helm and Wilhelm Dieterle in the leading roles.

action

first act

The film begins with a rotating globe and wants to symbolize that the following story could take place anywhere in the world. A miller lives with his family in a mill near the border to the hostile neighboring country. There are two sons and the daughter Magda. You lead a simple but content life. One day a stranger comes by. He says he's looking for a job and is offered shelter and a job as a journeyman. Magda shows him his room. Another stranger comes over. He carries a vendor's tray with him and pretends to be a peddler and junk dealer. He knocks on the journeyman's door. He looks frightened, as if one were chasing him and only hesitantly opened his room door. Both men seem to know each other. The peddler, obviously an enemy spy, gives instructions to the new miller's boy, a traitor he has paid.

In the evening, the miller's family gathers in the room and thinks about how they want to organize the upcoming celebration for the mill's three hundredth anniversary. Johannes, the miller's firstborn, and his wife are expecting a child. The new mill assistant seeks to be close to Magda and dances with her while the creepy peddler watches her through a peephole. This junk dealer clearly has power over the other man. He puts pressure on and warns them not to make friends with the miller's family because, after all, they have a task of strategic importance to do here. The journeyman's task is laying a secret telephone line with which one can instantly send messages from the enemy country to home in the event of war. At night the hired traitor goes to work in the basement and relocates the line.

Second act

The 300th anniversary of the mill's founding is celebrated on a grand scale, with a fair and carousel, a swing boat and a performance “The Lady Without a Head”. You get dressed up, Johannes is right up to the end of making a cradle for the unborn. Magda's spying admirer wants to give her a necklace as a token of his love at the fair, but is rejected by her. Then strange riders approach the mill. The peddler intercepts them and reveals his true role in acting on behalf of the War Department. A war has broken out and people along the border are being mobilized. The mill festival is suddenly interrupted by this news. Everyone goes home depressed or rushes to arms. Only the miller's son Michael is delighted with his naive patriotism and starts a song on the fiddle. The stylized death blows the horn enthusiastically and you can see how, like swirling ghost shadows, the soldiers chase in a wild storm over fields and hills.

Third act

The spying miller's boy is given the task by the "junk dealer" from enemy territory to set a signal as soon as the defenders ordered to retreat occupy the mill. When this scruple shows, the second-hand dealer puts him under massive pressure and threatens him. The own soldiers withdraw again and enemy soldiers storm up and occupy the mill. Michael wants to defy the enemy and takes on the commanding officer, a lieutenant. Thereupon he is immediately taken away and is to be brought before a court martial. His death sentence, requested by the captain, is only a formality and is to be carried out the following day. Meanwhile, the captain of the enemy Soldateska jumps up to Magda. The journeyman spy then signals the enemy troops, who are now firing in the direction of the mill and thus endangering the enemy. So the fat captain keeps his hands off Magda, and the girl is now safe from him.

Fourth act

A little later, the captain orders that Michael should finally be shot. Magda is able to get to him and begs for her brother's life. Again, the greasy captain senses his chance to land with Magda. "You can save your brother" the officer offers clearly ambiguous. Magda runs away in disgust, followed by the young lieutenant who arrested Michael in the mill. He also offers her help, but without ulterior motives. Magda can no longer believe these words and pulls away from him. In the mill, the domestic spy in foreign service makes Magda again a love confession and even offers her to betray his employers, the enemy soldiers. Disgusted by his loyalty, which obviously changes very quickly, she leaves him and walks away quickly. The lieutenant's attempt to intercede for Michael with his superior is unsuccessful. He goes to Magda and promises her to save Michael on her own. As he is about to kiss Magda, the old miller enters, who looks very desperate.

Fifth act

Winter has set in overnight and the captain is informed that the prisoner has escaped. The lieutenant had previously sent the guard away with an order. Meanwhile, the spy gives other soldiers a secret signal that the mill wheels have come to a standstill, and the mill is under fire from them. The enemy occupiers then decide that the mill should be torched today. Michael suddenly stands in front of his father, in a strange uniform. He has received this enemy uniform from the lieutenant, who has fallen in love with Magda and thus meets with love, with which he can safely get through the enemy ranks. The lieutenant advises Magda to hide Michael's civilian clothes in order to cover his tracks. She goes to the mill cellar with her new love, not knowing that the spineless spy has crept there. You hide Michael's clothes there and are watched by the spy. The lieutenant and Magda confess their love. Once the war was over, no longer was anyone's enemy and he would return to her with peaceful intent.

Sixth act

Before he sets the mill on fire as planned, the captain wants to comb it again from above for Michael who has fled. When you open the hatch to the cellar, Magda and her lieutenant are being disturbed by the turtles. Magda manages to hide in time. When the secret phone line is discovered, the captain immediately believes that his opaque lieutenant was using it to pass secret messages on to the enemy. He leaves his revolver to him so that he can judge himself. Up in the mill, the miller and Johannes are extremely reluctant to be led outside, because the mill is to be torched in five minutes. Trapped in the basement, Lieutenant Magda makes wild allegations about the telephone line, which he believes could have been put on by one of the Müller family members. She thinks quickly and replies that this must have been done by the newly hired journeyman.

Neither of them can escape upstairs because the mill is already starting to burn and the access to the basement is blocked. Half mad with fear, the spy creeps out of his mouse hole and admits everything. This leads to a fierce duel between the two men. The spy screams madly and calls on the enemy soldiers rushing to the basement window to kill him. Then they shoot him down. Then Magda and her lieutenant are dragged out of the smoky, burning basement hole. Now the mill is a sea of ​​flames. At the last moment, the miller and Johannes managed to rescue the heavily pregnant woman Johannes, who was already in labor, outside. A makeshift bed is prepared for her with straw. And while a brief moment of peace has returned to the burned-down Müllers, the war between the two sides rages on with undiminished severity. The old miller says with a glance at his burned mill skeleton. “Forgive them, Lord, for they do not know what they are doing!”.

Production notes and trivia

On the Edge of the World was created in the UFA studios from January to March 1927. The six-stroke with a length of 2635 meters passed the film censorship on April 30, 1927 and was released for the youth. Since the UFA fell into the hands of the arch-conservative industrialist Alfred Hugenberg at the end of the shoot in March 1927 , a radical re-cut was ordered within the group, so that this version with a length of 2429 had to pass the film censorship again on August 18, 1927. In an open letter on the Weltbühne , director Grune protested against this version, mutilated in his eyes and leading the pacifist message ad absurdum . In this, Grune accused the UFA of having made cuts “of an opinionated and artistic nature”. When his objection was unsuccessful, he sued in court for his name not to be mentioned in the opening credits and in the film advertising. The pacifist closing message of Grune's original version, in which the old miller calls for peace between the peoples and refers to the baby of Johannes and his wife with the words “he should become a carpenter and build new mills”, fell victim to the scissors. The premiere of the film took place on September 19, 1927 in Berlin's Gloria Palast.

The buildings and costumes come from Robert Neppach . Harry Froboess was responsible for the stunts. The actors Fee (Felicitas) Malten and Georg John often mentioned in the cast list could not be identified in the present version. Painting is often assigned to the part of the miller's wife, but this is completely ruled out as she was just 15 years old at the time of shooting (Steinrück, her alleged film husband, was just under 55).

The film title refers to a motto attached to the mill:

  • I'm lost
  • on the edge of the world
  • I grind your grain
  • You plow your field

criticism

Heinrich Fraenkel's "Immortal Film" called Am Rande der Welt a "strongly symbolized war film".

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. about this: Klaus Kreimeier : The Ufa story. History of a film company. Munich 1992. p. 165
  2. ^ Heinrich Fraenkel: Immortal Film. The great chronicle from the Laterna Magica to the sound film. Munich 1956, p. 425

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