Riots in Damascus
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Riots in Damascus |
| Country of production | German Empire |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1939 |
| length | 93 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Gustav Ucicky |
| script |
Philipp Lothar Mayring , Jacob Geis , based on a manuscript by Herbert Tjadens |
| production | Otto Lehmann |
| music | Willy Schmidt-Gentner |
| camera |
Oskar Schnirch , Paul Rischke |
| cut | Gertrud Hinz |
| occupation | |
| |
Aufruhr in Damascus is a German adventure film from 1939 with anti-British propaganda undertones by Gustav Ucicky . Brigitte Horney and Joachim Gottschalk play the leading roles .
action
The film begins with a text overlay and quotes a short passage from the book " The Seven Pillars of Wisdom " by Colonel Lawrence, called Lawrence of Arabia , in which the latter praises the fighting spirit of the German enemy in a militarily hopeless situation: "... here for the first Sometimes I became proud of the enemy ... ”.
The year is 1918. The place of action and theater of war is the diaspora of the gradually falling apart Ottoman Empire : the Syrian front near Damascus , where Arab units, supported by British military, race against a fortress bravely held by a scattered German unit. Under the leadership of Captain Schulz, the German men, who are disciplined and without panic doing their desperate service in nowhere, willingly defend their fort, the last post of the Central Powers, against the Arab desert tribes. But gradually the soldiers run out of ammunition under the direction of one-armed Captain Schulz and his direct subordinate, Lieutenant Hans Keller. The groceries are also running low and the telephone connection to Damascus is down. Then Captain Schulz sends Keller and Sergeant Kroll and three other men to Damascus in a camel caravan.
On the way, the small German troop meets the German Vera Niemayer, who has just been pushed off a camel by an Arab from her caravan and abandoned in the desert. Vera is picked up by Keller and taken away. Vera is the only survivor of an Arab attack, in which her father was also killed, she says, and was then kidnapped by the Arabs. Keller takes them to Damascus. On a train ride, the two gradually get closer and begin to like each other. In Damascus, Captain Lamberty Keller gives little hope for the urgently needed food supply. In order not to let the soldiers in the fort starve to death, Lamberty has to bite the bullet and ask Moni, the Arab trader he had recently rejected, for help. Meanwhile, the five Germans in Damascus find some time for leisure and entertainment for the first time after Vera has been safely housed. She in turn spends a cozy evening in the cellar, which she then lets spend the night in her four walls. During an English night attack on Damascus, the two lovers come to an extreme.
The next morning, Lieutenant Keller and his men have to leave again, and Vera decides to volunteer to join the German hospital in Damascus as a nurse. Meanwhile the situation in the fort becomes more and more desperate. Private von Elmendonck learns from a letter that after his brothers and mother, his father died too, killed on the Western Front. Meanwhile, Keller is back at the fort and has brought weapons and food. But in the meantime the Arabs are approaching from one side and the English from the other. Captain Schulz orders Keller to break out; He and radio operator Gerlach are supposed to dress up as Arabs. Schulz will also withdraw with his men, but first destroys everything that should not fall into the hands of the British. Keller and Schulz plan to break through to Damascus on different routes. In the meantime Vera begins to care for the wounded in the hospital. Keller and Gerlach come to a German base, the Hartung outpost. There are dead German soldiers lying around everywhere, who will first be buried in full honor by the two Germans.
Under Captain Schulzen's leadership, the other caravan drags its way through the desert sand. On the way to Damascus, Corporal von Elmendonck, the last of his family, dies. Soon the water will become increasingly scarce. In their search for the precious liquid, the team is lucky and finds water in a house. In Damascus, the last Germans are being evacuated by train to Constantinople before the British and Arab militants march into the city. Keller and Gerlach, disguised as Arabs, reach Damascus, as do Schulz and his caravan. The captain is killed in an ambush by an Arab rifleman. Now the turmoil breaks out in the streets: the Arabs have hidden themselves on the roofs of the buildings and are attacking the Germans from above. Schulzen's squad made their way to the “German stage”, where the hospital with Vera is also housed. Keller and Gerlach follow, Hans and Vera see each other again. She urgently asks him to finally stay with her and even invents a white lie, but Keller has received a new order from Captain Lamberty: All soldiers who are still fit for action and who are not seriously wounded are to be brought out of Damascus in order not to be captured by the British. While the Germans are moving out into the desert again, British soldiers march into the city and finally also into the German hospital. In the last shot of the film you can read in a German newspaper that Lieutenant Keller and his men had reached the German lines in Aleppo .
Production notes
The riot in Damascus arose with the outdoor shots from September 15 to the beginning of December 1938 at locations in Libya (desert shots) and on the passenger ship “Habicht” off the Libyan coast. The battle scenes in the desert fort were shot on the Terra outdoor area in Berlin. The studio recordings, which were taken from December 28, 1938 and completed at the end of January 1939, were taken in the Ufast town of Babelsberg. The film premiered on February 24, 1939 in Leipzig ; the Berlin premiere took place on March 8, 1939 in the Capitol cinema.
The film cost around 1,055,000 million Reichsmarks and received the National Socialist film ratings of “valuable for the state” and “artistically valuable”.
Erich Czerwonski and Carl Böhm created the film structures, Walter Rühland took care of the sound . Film editor Arnfried Heyne worked here as Ucicky's assistant director. The military advice was in the hands of Erich von Gomlicki .
For the Egyptian actor Serag Monier , who appeared in several German films since 1937, this was his last German production. He played an Arab trader who asks Captain Lamberty for the life of an Arab in Damascus, but is harshly rejected by him. After filming was over, Monier returned to his home country.
For Brigitte Horney and Joachim Gottschalk this was the second collaboration on a total of four films together (Gottschalk only made seven films).
useful information
While this film - in keeping with the prevailing Nazi ideology - wanted to celebrate the song of praise to bravery and German perseverance even in the face of a military defeat, this message became itself especially after the beginning of the Second World War, when Great Britain again became Germany's opponent not really understood in friendly foreign countries. When the riot in Damascus started, for example in Romania, the German ambassador in Bucharest, Fabricius, reported to Berlin on November 17, 1939: “A showing of this film will have a devastating effect on propaganda. Romanians cannot understand that this film is being brought from the German side ... "
criticism
Boguslaw Drewniak saw in the film after Ucicky's NS-ideological Jeanne d'Arc film Die Mädchen Johanna “again a political work.” Filmportal.de also located a “NS film with anti-British tendencies” here.
“The riot in Damascus has an open ending. The logic of the film is about the need to keep fighting. For the audience too. In this reality film there is no other reality than the National Socialist place. "
See also
- List of German feature films premiered in the German Reich during the Nazi era
- Propaganda film
- List of German films banned under Allied military censorship
Web links
- Riots in Damascus in: The Global War. The First World War and the cinema.
- Stir in Damascus in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Riots in Damascus at filmportal.de