The double face
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The double face |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1917 |
| length | approx. 63 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Alfred Halm |
| production | Friedrich Zelnik |
| occupation | |
| |
The double face is a German silent film love melodrama from 1917 with Friedrich Zelnik in a double role and Hanni Weisse as a German Eliza Doolittle.
action
The basic structure of the story is based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion with clear borrowings from the French pre-war film series Fantômas .
Olaf Brant, a writer and professional aviator at the same time, has put forward a theory. He claims that he can bring a socially “fallen girl” back onto the right track thanks to his morally high influence and let her mature so morally that this young woman is ultimately fit to be married. In Hilde, a young, inexperienced flower girl, he sees his ideal test subject. He likes it a lot and appears to Brant as a diamond in the rough. He follows her, mysteriously introduces himself to the girl as the “black Jenö” and says, both mysteriously and self-importantly, that they both (whatever) could probably do something together. Soon Hilde falls under the spell of the mysterious stranger. Brant alias Jenö believes that he will discover a dark side in her that is not unwelcome for his experiment.
Olaf notices that Hilde finds a bracelet and, when the police approaches on the street, puts it in his pocket and lets it disappear instead of handing the jewel over to the police. Part of the experiment is Olaf's Janus-headedness, and so next time he approaches her with his real identity, Olaf Brant. He invites the young woman on a test flight and brings her to his home. The double face quickly changes its identity again and reappears as the “black Jenö”, its dark alter ego. In front of Hilde's eyes, he steals a number of valuable objects from Brants, i.e. his own property. When Brant reappears and begins to suspect an innocent man, Hilde does not intervene, as she does not want to whistle her friend, the “black Jenö”.
In order to finally put her to the test, one day Olaf feigns a serious illness and lets Hilde pamper and care for him according to all the rules of the art. During this time, the flower girl tells the young man her moving life story, which made her slip down the social ladder: When Hilde's father died, she grew up with her foster mother, who, however, brought her socially and morally astray. Brant is touched, but wants to put the little one to the test one last time to see whether she can withstand all illegal temptations from now on. He entrusts Hilde with a large amount of money and a little later appears again in the disguise of the “black Jenö”. This demands the cash from her. Hilde, who had actually planned to run away with Jenö, never gets around to implementing her plan: the “black Jenö” identifies himself as Olaf and thus prevents Hilde from the last temptation. Both confess their love and get married.
Production notes
The double face was censored in August 1917 and premiered in November of the same year in Berlin's marble house. The length of the four-act vehicle was 1302 meters
criticism
“The witty, tendentious plot of this exciting film is based on the serious thought that a misguided, downhill person can be brought back on the right path through the right environment and loving treatment. Friedrich Zelnik alternately embodies the role of the seducer of the “black Jenö” and that of Olaf Brant, who, through his moral influence, succeeds in bringing Hilde, who has sunk through external circumstances, to such a high level in moral terms that he has to accept her his wife can do. Friedrich Zelnik performs this double role in an almost masterly manner. "