The Sans-souci flute concert
The Flute Concerto by Sans-souci is a German historical film shot in black and white from 1930. It was the first sound film of the Fridericus Rex films that were very popular between 1920 and 1942 and deal with the story of Frederick the Great.
action
In 1756 a masked ball was officially celebrated in the Dresden palace of the Saxon minister Heinrich von Brühl. Unofficially, however, talks are taking place with the ambassadors from Austria, Russia and France who are aiming at a plot against the Prussian King Friedrich. The Prussian envoy Major von Lindeneck notices this incident and succeeds in delivering a copy of the secret treaty to the Prussian king. Friedrich he consults with his generals, who urge caution. Frederick II is stunned by the reaction and is now developing a counter plan. To do this, he sends von Lindeneck back to Dresden. However, he is not very enthusiastic about it, as he thinks he has reason to doubt the marital fidelity of his wife Blanche, and now has to leave her alone. However, loyalty to the king is more important to him and he carries out all of the Prussian king's orders. When the ambassadors of Austria, Russia and France asked for an audience with Friedrich, he gave a flute concert in order to gain time, which was based on the famous picture of Adolph von Menzel . In the course of this concert he received the dispatch from Vienna, which completely revealed the plot. He ends the concert and has the ambassador hand over the declaration of war. He went outside and announced that he had just given them the marching orders for the regiments. The Seven Years War begins.
reception
The voice of Otto Fee was heard for the first time in this film. The audience was so delighted with his voice that they stood up and applauded as he spoke his first sentence.
The film provoked violent protests, as nothing new was banned the day before the premiere of the film In the West . The press criticized the fact that a film like In the West, nothing new , which should deter a war, would be banned and instead a film like The Flute Concert by Sans-souci , which calls for war, would be shown. Protest broke out particularly in the Berlin working-class neighborhoods. At a performance at the Excelsior in Neukölln , protesters threw stink bombs and itching powder into the audience and threw ink on the screen. In the Kristallpalast in Wedding , young workers destroyed the windows of the cinema. In the same district, workers tried to cut the electrical cables to the metro theater, but were stopped by police. The militant protests stopped shortly afterwards, also because the police cracked down on them. The forward sympathized with the protests. Instead, he called for a boycott of the cinemas that showed the film. In Berlin at least, this boycott also had significant financial consequences for the cinemas showing the film.
The film was restored by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation in the early 1990s and released as a VHS.
literature
- Erwin Leiser : Germany, wake up !. Propaganda in Third Reich film. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1978
- Axel Marquardt, Heinz Rathsack: Prussia in the film. A retrospective of the Deutsche Kinemathek Foundation. Reinbek 1981
- Eberhard Mertens (compilation and introduction): Film programs. Vol. 5: The great Prussian films. I. Production 1921–1932. Olms Press, Hildesheim, New York 1981
- Fred Gehler The Flute Concerto by Sans-souci . In Günther Dahlke, Günther Karl (Hrsg.): German feature films from the beginnings to 1933. A film guide. Henschel Verlag, 2nd edition, Berlin 1993, p. 238 ff. ISBN 3-89487-009-5
Web links
- A Flute Concert of Sans-Souci in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The flute concert by Sans-souci at filmportal.de (with photo gallery)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Peter Jelavich: Berlin Alexanderplatz: Radio, Film, and the Death of Weimar Culture. University of California Press, 2005 ISBN 0-520-24363-3 , p. 184