Condottieri (film)
Condottieri is a historical and war film by Luis Trenker , which premiered in 1937 and was set in Italy during the Renaissance , and which also played the lead role. The characters acting here correspond vaguely to real characters in the story.
action
Northern Italy in the early 16th century. Prince Cesare Borgia , head of a powerful aristocratic family, has been besieging the castle of the Duke of Lombardy for two months. Only a well-aimed shot kills the steadfast opponent. Lombardo's wife Caterina Sforza wants to continue fighting, but her decision is thwarted by the kidnapping of her child by one of Borgia's soldiers. To get her son Giovanni set free, she agrees to give up the castle and flees with him into the mountains.
Meanwhile matured into a grown man, Giovanni Lombardo wants to restore his father's honor and recapture his father's castle. In the meantime, the leaders of mercenary armies, so-called Condottieri, are trying to recruit young men as soldiers in Lombardy . Giovanni joins the army of the Condottiere Malatesta, and soon he is praised for his courage and recklessness. But the life of a mercenary by other gentlemen's grace is not his, and so Giovanni is able to persuade four of his friends won in the mercenary army to take back the father's castle together with him. The bailiff is taken by surprise and the castle returns to the ownership of the original master.
Angered by Giovanni's arbitrariness, Malatesta and Cesare Borgia soon turn against him and are able to get the council of Florence to bring Giovanni to court so that he can justify himself to the dignitaries for his actions. In fact, the young Lombard can refute the allegations made against him. Giovanni then sets up his own mercenary army, which he now heads as a condottiere. From now on, pay should not be the focus of action, but, according to Giovanni's intention, the struggle for a united fatherland. Giovanni's host is growing in popularity, much to the displeasure of the established condottieri. Malatesta finally tries to poison the annoying competitor with the help of his courtesan Tullia. But Tullia feels something for the young Lombards and does not carry out the assassination attempt. Thereupon Giovanni rides with his men to Florence, where he suspects the nucleus of this conspiracy against himself.
His soldiers, dressed in uniform black, leave a powerful impression on the city's citizens and council. But Malatesta succeeds in constructing suspicion of high treason against Giovanni. He is then arrested and imprisoned. However, you can rely on his four closest friends. In a daring coup they penetrate into the dungeon and free their leader. On the flight to Savoy , Giovanni meets his childhood sweetheart Maria again, whom his faithful troubadour Nino found for him during his absence. He and his remaining men join the French condottiere D'Argentière and return to Florence. There Giovanni settles accounts with his old adversary Malatesta in a duel. More and more supporters of Giovanni's flock quickly.
Following the advice of Mary, Giovanni gives birth to Malatesta. The country rejoices in the face of Giovanni's heroic deeds, and even the Pope welcomes him and his fighters to Rome . At the height of his fame, Giovanni marries Maria. But Malatesta has long since forged sinister plans of revenge and assembled a huge army. In the decisive battle, Giovanni threatens to be defeated, who is hit by a bullet and loses an arm. With only one arm, with which he wields the sword, Giovanni tries to avert the impending defeat and plunges death-defyingly into the fray against the overpowering opponent. Impressed by his courage, all of his supporters gather behind him and push forward like a wedge into the formation of the enemy. The victory is certain, but the seriously injured Giovanni does not survive this day. "The people carry their hero into the cathedral and kneel at their bier, which is transformed into an immortal tomb, a lasting memory of a person who subordinated his entire life to one ideal: freedom and fatherland!"
Production notes
The shooting took place between August 1936 and February 1937. The studio recordings were made in Rome and Berlin (Tobis Studios). The outdoor shots were shot in the Dolomites , Venice , Urbino , Torrechiara , Parma , Gradara , San Gimignano and Verona , where the “Florence” scenes were shot.
The German premiere was on March 24, 1937 in Stuttgart . Condottieri ran into Berlin on April 27, 1937. It was approved for young people aged 14 and over. In the Nazi state, the film was given the title “State-politically and artistically valuable”.
The film was produced in an Italian and a German version. The German version was shown in Finland , Czechoslovakia and most recently (on January 4, 1940) in the USA . The Italian version was also launched in France and Portugal at the end of 1937 .
Condottieri was the first large-scale German-Italian collaboration on a film project since the political rapprochement of the governments of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini (1936). In fascist Italy, the nationalist-patriotic message of a unified Italy conveyed in the film was unmistakable. The black-clad mercenaries of Giovanni are also reminiscent of the black shirts of the Mussolini movement.
The central figure of Giovanni Lombardo corresponds to the real figure of Giovanni de 'Medici, who went down in Italian history as Giovanni dalle Bande Nere .
The costumes for the film were designed by Herbert Ploberger , the buildings by Erich Grave . Max Hüske was in charge of production.
At the Venice Biennale, the film received the trophy from the Italian General Directorate for Film for the film that shows the “best natural beauties and art treasures”.
The National Socialist regime was not satisfied with the result of the film in every detail. In the film's large dictionary of persons , it says: Trenker "this time offended Hitler and Goebbels because he used Leibstandarten soldiers for a scene with a kneeling before the Pope." This scene is only closed in the version made for Catholic Italy see, while in the German version the condottiere and his mercenaries stop.
According to the Allied military governments, this film was banned from showing in Germany in 1945. The reason for this may have been the fact that Trenker's staging was a commissioned production by the fascist Mussolini regime, as well as the basic militaristic character of the film.
The first post-war performance of Condottieri in Germany took place on September 19, 1977 on Bayerischer Rundfunk .
The subject of the real Condottiere Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, popular in Italy, was filmed several times between 1911 and 2001.
Reviews
The film's large lexicon of people described Condottieri as a “gorgeous strip about medieval military leaders and armed forces” with which Trenker “resurrected the Medici era”.
The lexicon of international films called Luis Trenker's film "controversial".
With regard to Trenker's anti-Napoleonic historical drama The Rebel , Bucher's encyclopedia characterized the film Condottieri as “a further transfiguration of resistance to alien tyranny - here the Borgias”.
The contemporary Italian film critics were consistently benevolent about the visual design of Condottieri , but always criticized the episodic character of the film. The Corriere della Sera compared the film with a "huge, shiny, colorful fresco", consisting of an "uninterrupted sequence of great images". Il Lavoro wrote that "this rather complicated story is not told with clarity and not with much force", but praised the strength of the images created by Trenker and the design of the crowd scenes. The newspaper Bianco e Nero highlighted the mosaic quality of Trenker's film in its review and criticized: “Trenker doesn't yet know what to tell: his film consists of a series of individual images, beautiful, interesting and full of poetry, but all of this does not lead to a structure a solid narrative […] The story of Giovanni appears more like a mosaic of beautiful episodes than a real story. "
See also
literature
- Franz A. Birgel: Luis Trenker. A Rebel in the Third Reich? The Rebel, The Prodigal Son, The California Emperor, Condottieri , and The Fire Devil. In: Robert C. Reimer (Ed.): Cultural History through a National Socialist Lens: Essays on the Cinema in the Third Reich, Rochester, NY 2000, pp. 37-64.
- Fabian Tietke: Co-produced contradictions. The German-Italian period films Campo di maggio, Hundert Tage and Condottieri. In: Francesco Bono, Johannes Roschlau (ed.): Tenors, tourists, guest workers. German-Italian film relations. Munich, edition text + kritik, pp. 57–68.
Web links
- Condottieri in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Condottieri in filmportal.de
- Condottieri in the Murnau Foundation
Individual evidence
- ^ Original quote from the program for Condottieri , Illustrierter Film-Kurier No. 2627
- ↑ a b Kay Less : The large personal dictionary of the film . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 8: T - Z. David Tomlinson - Theo Zwierski. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 45.
- ↑ Klaus Brüne (Red.): Lexikon des Internationale Films , Volume 1, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1987, p. 572.
- ↑ Bucher's Encyclopedia of Films , ed. by Liz-Anne Bawden, edition of the German edition: Wolfram Tichy, Luzern / Frankfurt a. M. 1977, p. 786
- ^ Italian Condottieri reviews in The Italianist
- ↑ In the original: "un vasto, smagliante, colorito affresco"
- ↑ In the original: "una serie ininterrotta di quadri stupendi"
- ↑ In the original: "Questa storia abbastanza complicata, non è narrata con chiarezza e nemmeno con molto vigoro"
- ↑ There it says: "Le masse sono manovrate con abilità e con senso pittorico"
- ↑ In the original: “Trenker non sa ancora raccontare: I suoi film risultano tutti da una serie di sequenze, interestingi, belle, piene di poesia, ma che montate insieme non arrivano a costruire il corpo solido di un racconto […] la storia di Giovanni appare qui più un mosaico di in episodi che non una vera storia. "