Carlos and Elisabeth

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Movie
Original title Carlos and Elisabeth
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1924
length 115 minutes
Rod
Director Richard Oswald
script Richard Oswald based on motifs from Friedrich Schiller
Prologue by Ludwig Fulda
production Richard Oswald
music Willy Schmidt-Gentner
camera Karl Hasselmann
Theodor Sparkuhl
Karl Vass
Karl Puth
occupation

Carlos and Elisabeth is a German silent film from 1924 by Richard Oswald with Conrad Veidt and Dagny Servaes in the leading roles of an unhappy pair of lovers.

action

The focus of the optically splendidly designed event, based freely on the motifs of Friedrich Schiller's Don Karlos and history, is the passionate, tragic and unhappy love between the Spanish Infante and heir to the throne Don Carlos and Princess Elisabeth of Valois. Both were once promised to each other. But the royal father of Don Carlos, Philip of Spain, tries by all means to prevent the young happiness, because he has kept an eye on the young noblewoman.

His motifs are anything but noble. He claims Elisabeth for himself and takes the privilege of not only snapping her under his son's nose, but also - against her will - to marry her. Don Carlos and Elisabeth continue to meet secretly and devise a plan to escape together. But the plan is caught and King Philip hands his own son over to the Holy Inquisition. His father rejects the petition for clemency, and so Don Carlos dies in a gruesome execution. Don Philip's triumph was short-lived. Elisabeth is no longer willing to go on living without her lover and voluntarily follows Carlos into death. The despotic monarch remains a broken man.

Production notes and background

Carlos and Elisabeth - subtitle: A Drama of Love and Jealousy - was filmed in the last months of 1923. The film, consisting of a prelude and five acts, passed the censorship on February 20, 1924 and was premiered on February 26, 1924 in the Richard-Oswald-Lichtspiele in Berlin.

It is the last major costume film in Oswald's series of large productions that are as expensive as they are splendidly furnished ( Lady Hamilton , Lucrezia Borgia ). After the expensive Carlos and Elisabeth film adaptation failed to meet commercial expectations and, moreover, was sometimes harshly criticized, Oswald then returned to making much narrower budgeted films.

Conrad Veidt plays a double role here: in the prelude he embodies the old King Charles V, while in the actual film he plays Don Carlos, his grandson. Veidt's massive colleague Eugen Klöpfer , however, struggles (optically) to give a credible young Infante Philip at a young age, while later he portrays the adult King of Spain, the father of Carlos.

OF Werndorff designed the film structures , executed by Josef Junkersdorff. Werndorff was also responsible for the costume design.

criticism

The film critics reacted to Oswald's last large-scale film among his silent film productions, for the most part strongly negative, even if the staging of the production was sometimes praised.

Star critic Herbert Ihering judged sharply in the Berlin Börsen-Courier : "If Richard Oswald wanted to prove again that he is the director for modern affairs, the director for Kurfürstendamm and Apache incidents, for social comedies and backstairs stories (in the good, in the exciting cinematic sense) , he couldn't do it more perfectly than with his film Carlos and Elisabeth. (…) The film fluctuates between apache brutality and bourgeois sentimentality. And in order to lift these spheres into a higher world, Spain and the Inquisition, costumes, wonderful landscapes and fabulous photographs are brought up! But beyond that, the film only has to offer something empty (even if it is tasteful itself) if this effort is not confirmed dramatically. Carlos and Elisabeth - German film could not have taken a more serious step backwards. (...) German film has achieved so much this year that it will overcome this step backwards. The regression in taste, but also in film dramaturgical craft. Such a miserable manuscript as this - one has to search a long time to find comparisons. And the actors? Conrad Veidt as Carlos is a frozen, cramped repetition of earlier figures. Dagny Servaes, who looks very good, does not unfold in the game. Klöpfer blurs Philip. And Egede Nissen may have a clear gesture for Eboli, but she plays the range from Kurfürstendamm. Kühne gives the caricature of his Domingo. What a portrayal from which Adolf Klein stands out as a master of the controlled face! At the time of 'Schall und Rauch' there were stage parodies of Don Carlos. This is the film parody of Don Carlos. "

Ihering's colleague Willy Haas came to the following conclusion in the Film-Kurier : “Eugen Klöpfer as King Philipp. His face already fills every decorative frame, even the widest and most pompous. Actually the face of a proud peasant aristocrat, an upper court farmer, an alkali from Zalamea (he would have to be wonderful in this role), shining with a sense of power, self-confidence, almost swollen with overwhelming joie de vivre, immeasurable in pleasure as in despair. Is that "King Philip"? Why not! The frame could not be filled with tragic life out of the sheer dark rigidity - it would have frozen into ornament itself under the superiority of the decorative ornamentation. This Philip is a condottiere, a Renaissance beast, - but already undermined, collapsing in front of the scrupulous, frayed, intellectual basilisk gaze of the Catholic Inquisition. Opposite him is twice - as Don Carlos and his grandfather Charles V at the same time - Conrad Veidt: the one who is completely falling apart, completely furrowed: once - as Charles V - where he is already completely finished with this world; then - when Don Carlos - where he, unsteady and deeply doubtful, a pale, young neurasthenic, but once again, with the unnaturally forced strength of the neurasthenic, desperately tries to break the chains - which nevertheless, and precisely because of that, closer and closer pull together until the heroic-melancholy-don-quixote end. (...) The overall impression of this tangible, sometimes brutal, always consciously popular fact is - splendid. Sometimes like the impression of an untamed predator. Sometimes like a child's dream indulgence. But "the audience as a whole is on the same level as that of a ten-year-old child," Richard Oswald once said. He paints the dream orgies of such a wild boy - and what is still a child is not only completely dazed in the end - but also: what is man in us big children is completely absorbed. "

On the Lichtbild-Bühne read: “This film is alive, and it would undoubtedly be even more if one knew how to cut something out of the excessive length of the five acts following the prelude; even if it were at the expense of the feast for the eyes that the beautiful pictures of this work give us. - For this a special word of thanks for Otto Werndorff, the creator of the buildings and costumes, who also gave his best performance so far and not least contributed to the fact that the style of the time was met in a perfect (and yet never intrusive) way. - The motifs chosen in Italy, which are photographed just as well as the interior shots, are also very beautiful. Unfortunately, as a young Philipp, Klöpfer failed completely in the portrayal; too massive to make this ambitious youth credible; Even with old Philipp only the mask was good, but the game was strangely erratic and not very internalized. - Klein gave the best performance as the Grand Inquisitor, and then Veidt, who was particularly shocking in the foreplay as Charles V (a witty idea to let the same actor play grandfather and grandson), but who also had it as Carlos , the prince, knew not only to look good, but also to find the finest nuances in this by no means easy role. - Only the first of these two attributes can be credited to Elisabeth von Dagny Servaes; Actually, Eboli Egede Nissens was stronger, especially in the first part. "

Stefan Großmann judged in Das Tages-Buch : “In this case, however, the unsuspecting lobbies are doing Mr. Oswald a miserable service. Even if you quote the well-known maid as a spectator, you have to say that the work has failed. A film that doesn't even take into account the dualism of contrasts, which for two hours only offers court intrigue and court corpses - without a single bright incision - even the maid does not win such a monotonously historicizing film. Certainly Oswald, the manuscript writer, does not lose sight of his maid for a moment. If, for example, he cinematically illustrates the phrase "Philip overthrew his father from the throne" in such a way that the Crown Prince literally throws the regent down the six or seven steps from the throne in front of his court, this is an exaggeration of the cinematic object lesson. It was not meant so tangibly in Schlosser's world history. Oswald sometimes faces difficult tasks, e.g. B. when he tries to film a line of text: "Meanwhile it is fermenting in the people". The poor actors then have to ferment for three minutes. The worst thing, especially from the maid's point of view, is that Oswald kept very closely to the events of Schiller's "Carlos". Some, e.g. B. the Posa tragedy remains incomprehensible. And there was such a picture-rich, refreshing, lively addition, namely De Coster's Ulenspiegel, which is also in the shadow of the gloomy Philipp and his Alba. You are, dear Oswald, too versatile. A busy director, an excellent concert conductor and another skilled textbook writer - no, you are expecting too much. "Carlos and Elisabeth" had already failed in the book! "

Balthasar (d. I. Roland Schacht ) wrote in Das Blaue Heft : “What seems to me to confirm that I am right with this view is that“ Carlos ”is the final link in a development chain. One can certainly regret that Oswald turned away from the feature film. But from “Lady Hamilton” to “Lucrezia Borgia” to “Carlos and Elisabeth”, a consistent line leads to an ever stronger compression of the pictorial. One could reject “Lady Hamilton” as a weak product of the competitive ambition, one could hesitate before “Lucrezia” whether one should condemn her because of the fragmentation and imbalance of the manuscript and the inadequate cast of the title role or praise her because of the novelty of the pictorial (which the at least have done), you can put this film aside, because "the whole direction" doesn't suit you. But one cannot fail to recognize that he wants new things and gives new things and that he is full of beauties. "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Berliner Börsen-Courier No. 98 of February 27, 1924
  2. ^ Film-Kurier No. 50 of February 27, 1924
  3. ↑ Lichtbild-Bühne, No. 23, from March 1, 1924
  4. ↑ Das Tages-Buch, No. 10, of March 8, 1924
  5. ^ Das Blaue Heft, No. 7, of April 1, 1924

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