The girl Johanna

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Movie
Original title The girl Johanna
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1935
length 77 minutes
Rod
Director Gustav Ucicky
script Gerhard Menzel
production Bruno Duday for UFA
music Peter Kreuder
camera Günther Krampf
cut Eduard von Borsody
occupation

and (in alphabetical order) in small roles: Valy Arnheim , Günther Ballier , Reinhold Bernt , Rudolf Biebrach , Eduard Bornträger , Paul Dahlke , Jac Diehl , Erich Dunskus , Hermann Erhardt , Adolf Fischer , Hardy von Francois , Fred Goebel , Hela Gruel , Karl Hannemann , Emmerich Hanus , Hans Hessling , Oskar Höcker , Max Holsboer , Willy Kaiser-Heyl , Lothar Körner , Maria Krahn , Gustav Mahncke , Karl Meixner , Hans Meyer-Hanno , Hadrian Maria Netto , Klaus Pohl , Erik Radolf , Arthur Reinhardt , Margarete Schön , Lilli Schoenborn , Fanny Schreck , Rudolf Schündler , Hans Sternberg , Ernst Stimmel , Renée Stobrawa , Otto Stoeckel , Ludwig Trautmann , Albert Venohr , Georg Völkel , Franz Weber , Heinz Wemper , Walter Werner and many others

The girl Johanna is a German historical feature film from 1935 with elements of National Socialist propaganda . Angela Salloker plays the heroine, directed by Gustav Ucicky .

action

France at the time of the Hundred Years War :

In 1429 the French threaten to lose the 92-year war against England and internal adversaries. Only Orléans still offers bitter resistance - it is the only city that France's King Charles VII has remained. In order to explore acceptable peace conditions, the king sends his emissary Maillezais to the enemy camp, to the general Lord Talbot and his ally, the Duke of Burgundy . But Talbot is not interested in a compromise; rather, he is preparing for his final battle, the decisive battle. He expresses his contempt for the weak French king by burning the Talbot coat of arms on Maillezais' forehead.

Orléans' population became more and more desperate, the nobles and military defenders Count La Trémouille , Dunois and the Duke of Alençon were only interested in their own benefit and, moreover, plotted against their monarch, who owed them a lot of money. Finally, the king also loses faith in a victory and tries to run away with his confidante Maillezais by night and fog. On a street, however, he is stopped and prevented from escaping by ordinary citizens who are trying to rescue the dead from the Loire, who are tied to hand and foot . Those who were drowned in the river were victims of the villainous Duke of Alençon, who tried to prevent these men from speaking to their king, asking his Majesty not to surrender Orléans to the English, through the murder he ordered.

The mob thinks they recognize the king in the duke, pulls him out of his litter and tries to kill him thereupon. At the last moment, the 17-year-old peasant girl Joan of Arc, who recognizes the king, steps out to the ringing of a bell. The girl Johanna can prevent the worst. Jeanne explains that she was sent by the Archangel Michael to save France and to crown the king in Reims . Karl, not particularly religious and a cool, calculating power man, as a shrewd tactician sees this lucky circumstance as the ideal opportunity to motivate the people to make new efforts. From then on, a shout rang out across the battlefields: “God and the Virgin!” And as if by a miracle, the fateful turning point in the war succeeded, the soldiers of King Charles storming the opposing fortifications under the leadership of Joan of Arc. The Duke of Burgundy is captured. When Maillezais tries to cut him down with the sword, it is Jeanne, of all people, who protects the fat ally of the cowardly Englishman Talbot, who escapes at night and in fog.

Just a few months later, as predicted, Karl was crowned in Reims. At his side sits Johanna in shimmering armor. During the lavish coronation feast that followed, the celebrants received bad news. The black plague has broken out in Reims . In addition, the English are marching again, the way to Paris has already been cut off! Johanna immediately wants to fight again and calls to arms. But those present only laugh at her because she wants to pull against the English with her at the top again. “History cannot be repeated,” they say. With her esteem by the king, Jeanne has long since made many enemies in his environment, above all the nefarious La Trémouille, who proclaims: “The walls of Reims house a witch!” He points to the virgin. "A witch has put a crown on his most Christian majesty!" Johanna is blamed for the outbreak of the plague and, in her hubris of having declared herself a saint, she is responsible for this plague, which is seen as God's punishment.

And so Johanna's life turns fatally. The mob went mad, the Duke of Alençon roared: "Beat her to death, the cursed witch!" While the king had Johanna brought out of the ballroom, La Trémouille, now city commander of Reims, with the approval of the king, offered 3000 silver thalers - dead or alive - to her capture. She is accused of heresy , captured and handed over to the English. This seals the fate of the virgin. As a Machiavellian cynic, King Karl, caught between his gratitude to this girl on the one hand and the local mob and the still threatening English under the leadership of Lord Talbot, does not need long to think about it: he lets La Trémouille and Johanna fall free of power politics. “If God wants Johanna to burn”, he argues to the guilty Duke of Burgundy, “none of your prayers will help”. In addition, he reasoned, Joan of Arc could be of much more use to him as a dead martyr for the glory of France than as a living person. Imprisoned in chains in Rouen , Jeanne is now awaiting death by fire. When Maillezais thereupon grievously reproaches his king and accuses Johanna of gross ingratitude and betrayal of loyalty to Johanna, the latter only replies coldly: “But to die for one thing ... that's not the hardest part. Living and acting for a cause is much harder. She was my tool, never anything but a tool. It must be on fire. The living one is no longer of any use to us, it only harms us. The dead Joan will be a martyr. It is necessary that it burns! ”The visibly aged Duke of Burgundy succumbs to his dismay over the betrayal of Johanna during the conversation between the king and Maillezais.

Meanwhile, the trial of the virgin, who hopes in vain to be saved by her king and is instead mocked by onlookers, takes place in Rouen. The verdict is clear from the start, the hatred of the English against the young girl, who, with her incredible zeal and heroic courage, had stolen the victory they believed to be certain, was too deep. Maillezais and some of his followers try to save Jeanne. But the king sends the Duke of Alençon with some soldiers to arrest Maillezais and stop the attempt at liberation. In the face of her death, the girl says: "I believe that I must die so that my fatherland becomes free". Then Johanna's life ends at the stake . With her death in flames, Joan of Arc finally becomes a legend. The cry “Joan was sent by God, she is a martyr” echoes through the battered land. And so it is the unearthly power of the dead that leads France to final victory after another 22 years of war. Three years later, in the presence of Maillezais, King Karl declares the cremation of Johannas in a retrial brought about by her mother to be wrong.

Production notes

The shooting of Das Mädchen Johanna took place between the beginning of February and mid-April 1935, and the film was filmed in the UFA studios in Neubabelsberg . The premiere was on April 26, 1935 in the UFA-Palast am Zoo .

The film structures were created by Robert Herlth , who also designed the costumes, and Walter Röhrig . Both were assisted by Anton Weber . Hermann Fritzsching provided the sound . Cutter Eduard von Borsody served Ucicky as assistant director.

The lyrics to Peter Kreuder's music are by Hans Fritz Beckmann . The song played was called: Great Fantasy: The Girl Johanna .

The special effects (especially the fire at the stake) come from Erwin Lange , for whom Das Mädchen Johanna was the first independent work as a pyrotechnician and special effects artist.

The cameraman Günther Krampf , who has been working exclusively in England since 1932, returned to Germany for the last time for Das Mädchen Johanna .

The theater actor René Deltgen made his film debut here. In Das Mädchen Johanna , the two most powerful theater directors of the Third Reich (alongside Heinz Hilpert ) met each other as film actors : Gustaf Gründgens and Heinrich George .

In Sweden, Finland, the USA and Portugal, Das Mädchen Johanna was also launched in the same year. Until 1948 it remained the only sound film that dealt with the life and death of Joan of Arc.

Because of the National Socialist propaganda elements, the film was no longer allowed to be shown in Germany after 1945 by order of the Allied military authorities. See also the list of German films banned under Allied military censorship .

The film works partly with a disguise of the historical facts. Johanna's companions Dunois and Alençon are portrayed here as their enemies, while the Duke of Burgundy, who is responsible for their extradition to the English, appears at least at the end of the film as her loyal husband and ultimately perishes at her imminent death. The person of the combative Maillezais, who stands by Johanna until the end and wants to free her, is not historically proven. However, the model for him could be Étienne de Vignolles , who was also captured during an attempt at liberation. Johanna is also shown here in prison as a desperate woman who even questions her divine vocation in front of the priest.

Reviews

“The following joint, and for the time being last, work by Ucicky and Menzel that complied with current propaganda demands was created in 1935. DAS MÄDCHEN JOHANNA. Determined less by anti-British tendencies - after all, the motif already laid out in the Jeanne d'Arc material did not seem opportune in view of the imminent naval agreement - but rather obeying the primacy of domestic politics, the film secularizes the legend. His dialogue goes back to quotations from Hitler, he takes the romance of the fable and turns the myth around to an example of the ranks in politics - not least because of the cool, dominant portrayal of King Charles by Gustaf Gründgens. "

- Goswin Dörfler in CineGraph: Gustav Ucicky, Delivery 5 from December 1985

The lexicon of international films called Das Mädchen Johanna an equipment film “that put the history of the 15th century in relation to the present and the National Socialist worldview: a bleeding people is led to a national rebirth out of shameful oppression by the belief in victory of a simple 'national comrade'. How inconsistent this construction turned out is shown not least in the role that Gustaf Gründgens had to play: He portrays King Karl as a cynical realpolitician who even rehabilitates Johanna's after 25 years out of personal vanity. "

Bogusław Drewniaks The German film 1938–1945 found: "... here too an ideological orientation of this work was unmistakable".

The writer Graham Greene analyzed Das Mädchen Johanna in a review for the Spectator and also stated massive, National Socialist propaganda: “The real hero is Charles with his Nazi mentality, his belief in the nobility of treachery for the sake of the nation. The purge of 30 june and the liquidation of Tremouille, the burning Reichstag and the pyre in Rouen market-place - these political parallels are heavily underlined. The direction is terribly sincere, conveying a kind of blond and shaven admiration for poor lonely dictators where have been forced to eliminate their allies. "

See also

Individual evidence

  1. Klaus Brüne (Red.): Lexikon des Internationale Films, Volume 5, S. 2382. Reinbek near Hamburg 1987.
  2. ^ The German Film 1938–1945. A complete overview . Düsseldorf 1987, p. 81.
  3. ^ The Spectator, October 25, 1935 issue.

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