The girl with the sulfur sticks (1925)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The girl with the sulfur sticks |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1925 |
| length | about 20 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Guido Bagier |
| script | Hans Kyser |
| production | Guido Bagier for UFA |
| music | Guido Bagier |
| cut | Guido Bagier |
| occupation | |
| |
The girl with the sulfur is a German fairy tale short film from 1925 based on a template by Hans Christian Andersen . This first attempt at a sound film by German cinemas was directed by Guido Bagier and produced on behalf of UFA . The title role was played by twelve-year-old Else von Moellendorff , who was still inexperienced in acting .
action
December, just before the end of the year. A little girl was sent out in the snow and cold by her stepmother to sell matches in the street. There is a lot of activity everywhere, the cars are honking their horns, the road traffic makes a lot of noise. The girl's call sounds clear: “Buy sulfur sticks!”, But the little one is anything but successful. At the Christmas market, where the little match seller hopes for a better deal, she is shown around by a bear from a guy, fat, old, bushy-bearded Santa Claus.
But the busy people scurry past her, pushing them home into the warmth of the cozy living room. The frozen minor doesn't dare to go home without having earned anything. She crouches on the side of the road, sags, the cold bites all her limbs. Eventually she falls asleep despite the frost and snow and experiences a dream in which her life appears to be a better one, like a fairy tale. At the moment of this small, brief feeling of happiness, the girl with the sulfur sticks dies from frostbite.
Production notes
The girl with the sulfur sticks was censored on December 17, 1925 and was premiered on December 20, 1925 as part of a festive performance in the Mozart Hall in Berlin .
Joseph Benedict Engl was responsible for the decisive moment of this pioneering film: the sound. Rudolf Wagner conducted Guido Bagier's film composition.
Sound technology with the Tri-Ergon method
The UFA production made according to the Tri-Ergon process, at the same time a tragic snapshot of early German failure when attempting to produce the first sound film, was a commercial failure due to considerable technical deficiencies, which was to have far-reaching consequences for German sound film development. Shocked by this all-encompassing failure, no further sound film attempts were made for the next three years. It was not until the end of 1928 that attempts were made, again under the direction of Bagier, to establish sound film in Germany. As a result of these renewed efforts, several short films such as Your is my heart, The Last Song and Paganini in Venice were released in early 1929.
In Guido Bagier's diary entry of December 21, 1925, the following can be read about the sound technical fiasco of the premiere of Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern :
“It's all over - all the work was in vain. [...] I got to the Mozart Hall just in time. The cultural film was over - our film was placed in the special projector. The introductory music sounds loud and clean from the speakers. The sound was good, although, perhaps in the hope of harming us, the lively orchestra had gone to great lengths to accompany the cultural film. The picture fades in [...] The exclamations, the barrel organs and the barrel organs with the background music of the orchestra create a strange, enchanting sound. This scene also passes. As the child begins to wander across the snow fields to Maria's crib, I suddenly hear a strange hissing sound in the loudspeakers, which increases rapidly. I run up to the projection booth. After the first roll, Seeger has just started the next one on the second phone next door. He calls out to me: 'Something must be wrong here!' The sound becomes quieter and quieter - the audience more restless and restless. I shout at Seeger: 'Turn up the sound - amplify!' Seeger goes to the last limit with the potentiometer - instead of music, the statophones only make a roaring noise. Seeger exclaims in horror: 'The batteries are sagging - someone must have tampered with them!' And a powerful curse follows! Now it's getting terrible: our wonderful final choir is drowned in the hissing and crackling of the loudspeakers - the audience begins to play along - there are interjections: 'That's it!' - and the performance ends with a mixture of laughter and protests! "
Reception and consequences
In his second volume of Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst , Oskar Kalbus wrote about the public acceptance of this first attempt at a German sound film :
“This first German sound film was premiered in the Theater am Nollendorfplatz - and 'brilliantly' failed. The newspapers of that time know that the sound film 'croaked through' for two days. It may seem understandable that for the time being you had had enough of the sound film and no longer thought about making a new one. The sound recordings were good, the playback spoiled everything. Somewhere in a Berlin suburb there was a heap of junk one day: the remains of the 20 devices with which the Triergon people wanted to and could have shown that their sound film was worth hearing from the whole world. "
Individual evidence
- ^ The failure of Tri-Ergon on filmportal.de
- ^ Oskar Kalbus: On the becoming of German film art. Part 2: The sound film . Berlin 1935. p. 7.