The girl without a fatherland

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Movie
Original title The girl without a fatherland
Ernst Deutsch-Dryden - The girl without a fatherland Poster.jpg
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1912
length 37 minutes
Rod
Director Urban Gad
script Urban Gad
production German Bioscop
for the projection group "Union" (PAGU)
camera Guido Seeber
occupation

The girl without a fatherland , subtitled An Episode from the Balkan War or A Drama from the Balkan Countries , is a German silent film in three acts by Urban Gad from 1912.

action

1st act

The border between two Balkan countries during the war : a spy sneaks into a gypsy camp. He is interested in secret documents from the border fortress not far from the camp. Because he failed in an attempt to obtain the documents, he recruits the young gypsy Zidra for the theft. She is not interested at first but agrees when he pays her well. A short time later, Zidra meets Lieutenant Sergej Ipanoff, apparently by chance, who is taken with the young woman and ensnares her in the forest. She evades him and he shows her how she can come to him in the fortress without being noticed. She passes the plan on to the spy. Zidra meets with Ipanoff, who shows her the fortress. During the explanations, she measures the distances inside the fortress with steps, reads Ipanoff from the hand and finally balances in high spirits on a fortress cannon.

2nd act

Zidra is in Ipanoff's large room, where she drinks, eats and finally smokes a cigar. She evades his advances until he is offended. To keep him peaceful, she dances for him, but flees the room when he tries to pounce on her. In the garden of the fortress they both continue to flirt until they are confronted by Ipanoff's superior. Zidra is thrown out of the fortress and Ipanoff is sentenced to 14 days imprisonment for his improper behavior.

Zidra explains the way to the fortress to the spy. She refuses any further collaboration because she has fallen in love with Ipanoff. It takes a large sum of money to get them to implement the next step in the spy's plan. She secretly sneaks back into the barracks and ends up in Ipanoff's room. Your secret rendezvous is disrupted by a colleague of Ipanoff. Zidra hides behind the curtains and hurries out of the room when Ipanoff and the other man disappear into an adjoining room. She arrives in the fortress commander's office and begins to open the cupboards there. Meanwhile, Ipanoff can no longer find Zidra in her hiding place in the room.

3rd act

The fortress commander discovers the broken cupboards and the numerous plans scattered on the floor. Ipanoff is called and immediately suspects Zidra. She hid behind the curtain again and claims to have always been there. In a fight with Ipanoff, she loses a plan that she had hidden under her dress. Ipanoff is upset. As he explains to her the meaning of the word "fatherland" and the damage Zidra wanted to do to his fatherland, she gradually returned more documents that she had hidden under her dress. Ipanoff turns away from her. She flees and is seen by soldiers from the fortress. They shoot her, but she successfully escapes. Ipanoff, in turn, is arrested as a traitor, even if none of the plans could be stolen by Zidra. While the gypsies were moving on, the spy was arrested a short time later at the border. He and Ipanoff will be tried. Ipanoff is demoted before the court martial and sentenced to death. Zidra learns from the newspaper that he will be executed at dawn.

production

The girl without a fatherland was shot in the summer of 1912 within a week in the Bioscop studio in Neubabelsberg; however, two thirds of the film were shot outdoors. After The Dance of Death , The General's Children and When the Mask Falls , it was the fourth part of the Asta Nielsen / Urban Gad series 1912/13. On September 13, 1912, the censors banned the film from young people. The girl without a fatherland had its world premiere on November 29, 1912 in Berlin. It was marketed internationally and shown in Italy in 1911 (as Sangue di Zingara ) and in the USA in 1914 (as A Romany Spy ).

The film is 1010 meters long (approx. 37 minutes at 24 frames / s). Some incomplete copies of him have been preserved in the Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum für Film und Fernsehen , in the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv and in the Nederlands Filmmuseum . Scenes from the shooting of The Girl Without a Fatherland were included in the Asta Nielsen film Die Filmprimadonna , which has been preserved in fragments.

criticism

In retrospect, Asta Nielsen gave the film a rather simple assessment: it “naively presented a gypsy girl in the midst of a colporta dealing with espionage, money and cannons”.

literature

  • The girl without a fatherland . In: Ilona Brennicke, Joe Hembus: Classics of the German silent film 1910–1930 . Goldmann, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-442-10212-X , p. 205.
  • The girl without a fatherland . In: Karola Gramann, Heide Schlüpmann (ed.): Nachtfalter. Asta Nielsen, her films . Volume 2 of Edition Asta Nielsen . 2nd Edition. Filmarchiv Austria publishing house, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-902531-83-4 , pp. 95-99.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See excerpt from the program, quoted in after The girl without a fatherland . In: Karola Gramann, Heide Schlüpmann (ed.): Nachtfalter. Asta Nielsen, her films. Volume 2 of Edition Asta Nielsen. 2nd Edition. Filmarchiv Austria Publishing House, Vienna 2010, p. 97.
  2. ↑ See the film title of the film copy from the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv on filmportal.de
  3. ↑ Helmut Herbst: The star, the craft and the contraband . In: Heide Schlüpmann, Eric de Kuyper, Karola Gramann, Sabine Nessel, Michael Wedel (eds.): Impossible love. Asta Nielsen, her cinema . Volume 1 of Edition Asta Nielsen. 2nd Edition. Filmarchiv Austria Publishing House, Vienna 2010, p. 215.
  4. ↑ Giovanni lasi: Polarstern: In Italy . In: Heide Schlüpmann, Eric de Kuyper, Karola Gramann, Sabine Nessel, Michael Wedel (eds.): Impossible love. Asta Nielsen, her cinema . Volume 1 of Edition Asta Nielsen. 2nd Edition. Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna 2010, p. 374.
  5. ↑ Jennifer M. Bean, “Brought Across the Sea,” In America, 1912–1914 . In: Heide Schlüpmann, Eric de Kuyper, Karola Gramann, Sabine Nessel, Michael Wedel (eds.): Impossible love. Asta Nielsen, her cinema . Volume 1 of Edition Asta Nielsen. 2nd Edition. Filmarchiv Austria Publishing House, Vienna 2010, p. 349.
  6. ↑ Asta Nielsen: My way to film: From the early days of German film . In: BZ am Mittag , September 26, 1928.