Danton (1921)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Danton |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1921 |
| length | 87 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Dimitri Buchowetzki |
| script |
Carl Mayer Dimitri Buchowetzki |
| production | Wörner-Film, Berlin |
| camera | Arpad Viragh |
| occupation | |
| |
Danton is a German historical silent film by Dimitri Buchowetzki with Emil Jannings in the title role .
action
After the fall of Louis XVI. ruled in France by the National Convention. The political leaders of the French Revolution , Danton, Robespierre and Saint-Just, have usurped power and are sweeping the country with a bloody wave of executions, the symbol of which is the guillotine . But soon the revolutionaries disagree about how to proceed. A bitter enmity arises between former friends Robespierre, a whip and agitator, and Danton, who wants to put an end to the bloodshed. Danton's women's stories are also sharply rejected by his former companion.
Revolutionary friends try to mediate between the two and to achieve a reconciliation, but the former companions begin to work more and more against each other, and each is now planning the death of the other. On March 31, 1794, Danton and his friends were arrested and brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Robespierre knows of Danton's great popularity and that the people, unlike him, worship Danton. With a clever move he convinces the population, meanwhile little more than a mob loudly demanding more and more executions, and buys their votes by having bread distributed to the needy. Danton tries to take countermeasures and deals with the revolution and his enemies with a fiery speech before the convention. After all, like many others, he is guillotined.
Production notes
Danton was made in March 1921 in the Jofa studio in Berlin-Johannisthal , passed film censorship on April 28, 1921 and was premiered on May 1, 1921 in the Ufa-Palast am Zoo . The seven-act film was 1979 meters long. The Austrian premiere took place on November 18, 1921. There the film was about 2200 meters long. On January 15, 1925, the title “popular education” was subsequently submitted in Germany.
The film structures were designed by Hans Dreier .
criticism
In Paimann's film lists is to read: "Substance highly dramatic, game, scenery (excellent crowd scenes) and pictures excellent. A hit of the first order. "
“This film is also called Emil Jannings, perhaps because of individual mass scenes of tremendous impact Dimitri Buchowetzki, who also created the manuscript. He jumps around with the historical Danton fairly freely and focuses more on a somewhat crumbling person Danton than on the historical hero. Massive, with the undercrowded eyes of the irritated bull and incredibly casual on the other hand, this Danton walks through the film. (...) Werner Krauss as Robespierre in the mask and play of his St. Just from the Deutsches Theater. Memorable, an uncanny machine of fanaticism. But with tragic lights: so when he, who has just crossed Danton's name from the death list, is insulted by him and with a measured dab of a treacherous tear cuts the bond between himself and Danton. As Danton's friend, General Westermann, Eduard von Winterstein, in a masterfully closed, unfortunately tight role. In the female cast, Charlotte Ander stands out with her infinitely delicate drawing of Lucile Desmoulins. "
“There are three things that give this film its gripping power. First: the representation. Emil Jannings as Danton surpasses himself. He lives this revolutionary. He shows him with his all too human dross, he shows him in his fascinating, heroic size. He lets him talk, and even in the silent film image one is carried away by the intoxicating music of his sentences. And Werner Krauss is Robespierre, the blood man and philistine. Friedrich Kühne, Robert Scholz, Eduard v. Winterstein, Ferdinand v. Alten, Josef Runitsch give three-dimensional, wonderfully tinted figures. (...) Second: the crowd scenes. Buchowetzki knows how to rhythmically increase the movement of the masses, knows how to make a whole out of the multiplicity without monotony, a collective will, knows how to use it wonderfully as a mirror of individual events, makes it a reflex of the personality effect. Third: the architecture of the images. A result of the arrangement of people in the room, the buildings, for whose effective design Hans Dreier is responsible, and the lighting, which reveals the finest balance of contrasts and transitions. Arpád Virágh's classic photography finally has a not insignificant part in the great success of the "Wörner film". "
"In Büchner's" Danton ", Lucile Desmoulins shouts in front of the scaffold:" Long live the King! " Also in Anatole Frances' revolutionary novel "Les Dieux ont soif" a young girl, the prostitute Athenais, calls out at the end: "Vive le roi!" It is true that representatives of the weaker sex; but the tendency of the whole cannot be mistaken. In that movie "Danton" nobody shouted "Long live the King!" - except for the four to five apparently particularly noble lodge residents of the Ufa Palace, who considered an arrogant joke by the royalist conspirator Hérault de Séchelles to be extremely applaudable. It's really not a royalist film either. Not a revolutionary one, of course. The attitude of this film is very good. You could say this film is not for Robespierre and not for Hérault de Séchelles, but for Ebert and Simons. "When will the revolution finally end and the republic begin?" a title calls out a bit emphatically. Ebert couldn't express it any other way in a moment of fatherly anger. (…) After all, it's a good film, a really very good film. A little elongated, yes; but it is played excellently, and many things are forgiven. And since he should probably be quite faithful historically (you don't roll over a "history of the French Revolution" to film reviews), I had to think with some sadness of my deadly history lessons in high school, in which I did not, but at no cost, Danton von Mirabeau and Robespierre from Saint Just, and Baboeuf from Desmoulins. "
Web links
- Danton in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Danton at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ^ "Danton" ( Memento of the original from March 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in Paimann's film lists
