Asphalt (1929)

Movie
Original title	asphalt
Country of production	Germany
original language	German
Publishing year	1929
length	93 minutes
Age rating	FSK 0
Rod
Director	Joe May
script	Rolf E. Vanloo , Fred Majo , Hans Szekely
production	Erich Pommer and Joe May for UFA
music	Willy Schmidt-Gentner
camera	Günther Rittau
occupation
Gustav Fröhlich : Sergeant Holk Betty Amann : Else Kramer Albert Steinrück : the old Holk Else Heller : his wife Hans Adalbert Schlettow : Consul Langen, Else's friend Hans Albers : first thief Paul Hörbiger : second thief Rosa Valetti : woman at the bar Hermann Vallentin : Arthur Duarte : Trude Lieske : Karl Platen : Kurt Vespermann : Rudolf Meinhardt-Jünger :

Asphalt is a silent film directed by Joe May . Gustav Fröhlich and Betty Amann play the leading roles . The premiere took place on 12 March 1929 at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo of Berlin . The film was banned from youth.

action

The young police sergeant Holk lives with his mother and father in a bourgeois apartment. He's doing his job as a traffic cop in a very lively and busy city where street crime prevails: pickpockets steal something from a woman's handbag while looking at a special shop window decoration. Holk feels flattered by a woman in a convertible: Although she obviously disregards the right of way at the intersection where he controls the traffic and thus causes a traffic jam, he takes on her personal details with obvious charm.

A young woman gets detailed advice from a jeweler: She ensnares the jeweler and distracts him in this way in order to steal a gemstone with a prepared umbrella. After the woman has left the shop, the jeweler’s employees notice the loss of a stone. The jeweler's son pursues the woman and confronts her in the street; there is a crowd.

After the changing of the guard, Holk notices this crowd on the way home. To clarify the matter, he leads the woman and the clerk to the jewelry store, where the woman is outraged by the allegations and insists on an immediate investigation. The woman is led into an adjoining room by an employee while Holk and the two men examine her handbag and the fur muff. The stone is initially not discovered and the woman is about to leave the jewelry store when the son of the jeweler asks again to examine the umbrella. Holk notices the hidden stone.

The older jeweler is still impressed by the young woman who tearfully tells him that she stole the stone out of necessity and that she was inspired by a newspaper report about such a theft. The jeweler asks the police officer to refrain from prosecution, since the business has not been harmed. Holk points out his status as a civil servant and arrests the woman for stealing jewelry. While she is being driven away in a police car, the two street thieves make fun of her and emphasize the difference between 'old professionals and a beginner'.

In the police car, the woman tearfully tries to arouse pity on the policeman: She refers to rent debts, the impending eviction of her apartment and her fear of homelessness. Arriving in front of the police station, she begs the police officers that she can at least get her papers from the nearby apartment. He lets himself be persuaded when she suggests that they accompany her to her apartment. There Else Holk seduces according to every trick in the book.

Holk becomes weak, drops the charge against her and releases her into freedom. He will soon regret this decision bitterly. Holk quickly fell for the beautiful stranger and went to see her again the next day. Else confesses to him that her boyfriend is a wanted criminal. Suddenly this man, who grandly calls himself Consul Langen, arrives and attacks the sergeant. In the scuffle that followed, the young Holk knocks the villain down so unhappily that he dies in the process.

Holk confesses to his father, a veteran sergeant major, that the accident resulted in death. His sense of duty compels him to arrest Holk junior, his own son, who is now suspected of murder. But then Else's conscience comes in. She faces the police and confirms the version of young Holk that he acted in self-defense. Else, who has since fallen in love with Wachtmeister Holk, confirms the identity of her criminal ex-lover and is then arrested as his accomplice. Holk gets his freedom back.

Production notes

The film was shot in the last three months of 1928. It was subtitled The Police Sergeant and the Diamond Else .

With the exception of a few cleverly cut real shots, the street scenes were filmed in what was then the UFA studios in Neubabelsberg , today's Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam , the street scenes consisted of wooden structures under artificial light. The asphalt buildings were designed by Erich Kettelhut , the costumes were designed by René Hubert .

It is in asphalt one of the last silent films, the partially parallel the filming of Fritz Lang's Woman in the Moon in Babelsberg took place.

For Albert Steinrück , who embodies the dutiful father of the main actor Gustav Fröhlich, this was the last fully completed film role. He did not see the premiere of this film.

Its first performance after the war took place on June 26, 1973 on ZDF . An FSK examination on May 31, 1995 (No. 72660) resulted in an approval without age restrictions and on public holidays.

In 1997 the British duo In the Nursery released their own soundtrack for the film as part of their Optical Music Series .

criticism

In Siegfried Kracauer's Von Caligari zu Hitler (1947) the pictorial use of asphalt, pavement and street motifs in “ street films ” of the time and especially in asphalt is emphasized: “The opening credits of this film illustrate, like a documentary, how asphalt is made and how it greedily devours the open country to pave the way for city traffic -: this thundering chaos that [...] is mastered by the magical gestures of the policeman. Recordings that emphasize the unity of asphalt and traffic also form the end credits for the actual plot. The emphasis placed on the asphalt goes hand in hand with insets of street scenes at each dramatic climax. "

In Kay Weniger's More is taken from you in life than it is given , Mays Asphalt was “his most socially committed and critically described May production of the highest quality. 'Asphalt' was convincing as an intelligently made social piece from the Berlin small-people 'Milljöh', a little in the tradition of Zille , Jutzi and Döblin . "

The Lexicon of International Films says: “The French film historian Charles Ford called this film the 'first example of German realism'. [...] A silent film melodrama that loses its colportage character through convincing presentation and excellent camera work. "

Reclam's film guide mentions: “Better than the somewhat clumsy 'bourgeois tragedy' with a happy ending, the film managed to make observations on the edge, street scenes and the drawing of bizarre types. The camera also deserves attention. "

Bucher's encyclopedia of the film claims that asphalt shows "a superficial influence of both expressionism and street films ."

Michael Hanisch wrote euphorically in the film guide for German feature films from the beginnings to 1933 : “The film shows the high technical mastery of the director and his cameraman. Günther Rittau's lighting design, the liveliness of the play scenes, the art of montage, the performance of the actors, who knew how to express with a gesture, a movement of the mouth, what their colleagues needed several sentences to do a few months later, in the beginning of the sound film era - Asphalt has all of this as a work of art that documents the high art of silent film in its final phase. "

literature

• Michael Hanisch: Asphalt. In: Günther Dahlke, Günter Karl (Hrsg.): German feature films from the beginning to 1933. A film guide. 2nd Edition. Henschel-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-89487-009-5 , p. 181 f.

Web links

Commons : Asphalt (1929)  - Collection of images, videos, and audio files

• Asphalt at filmportal.de
• Asphalt in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Asphalt at the Murnau Foundation
• The complete film with English subtitles at archive.org
• Contemporary asphalt film reviews in filmhistoriker.de
• Asphalt criticism in sommerkino.at

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Release certificate for asphalt . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; released September 2016).
2. ↑ Günther Dahlke, Günter Karl (Ed.): German feature films from the beginning to 1933. A film guide. 2nd Edition. Henschel-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-89487-009-5 , p. 181 f.
3. ^ Siegfried Kracauer: From Caligari to Hitler. A psychological history of German film. Translated by Ruth Baumgarten, Karsten Witte . Frankfurt / M .: Suhrkamp 1979 (= Kracauer: Schriften. Ed. Von Karsten Witte. Vol. 2), ISBN 3-518-28079-1 , p. 167 f.
4. ↑ Kay Less : "In life, more is taken from you than given ...". Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. Acabus, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8 , p. 338.
5. ↑ Klaus Brüne (Red.): Lexicon of International Films. Volume 1: A - C (= Rororo. Paperback books 6322). Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-499-16322-5 , p. 185.
6. ^ Dieter Krusche, Jürgen Labenski : Reclams Film Guide. Reclam, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-15-010205-7 , p. 31.
7. ↑ Liz-Anne Bawden (ed.): Buchers Enzyklopädie des Films. Edition of the German edition by Wolfram Tichy. Bucher, Luzern et al. 1977, ISBN 3-7658-0231-X , p. 500.
8. ↑ Günther Dahlke, Günter Karl (Ed.): German feature films from the beginning to 1933. A film guide. 2nd Edition. Henschel-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-89487-009-5 , p. 181 f.