Ladies' Paradise (film)

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Movie
German title Ladies' paradise
Original title Au Bonheur des Dames
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 1930
length 8 files, 2432 meters, at 24 fps approx. 89 minutes
Rod
Director Julien Duvivier
script Noël Renard
after Émile Zola
production Le Film d'Art,
Charles Delac,
Marcel Vandal
music Gabriel Thibaudeau (2009)
camera André Dantan,
René Guichard,
Émile Pierre,
Armand Thirard
occupation

The Paradise of Women is the German title of the French silent film drama Au Bonheur des Dames, which was filmed in 1930 by Julien Duvivier based on the novel by Émile Zola . Noël Renard edited the literary template for the film. Dita Parlo can be seen in the lead role of Denise Baudu .

The novel published in 1884 and the film made after it describe the rise and splendor of the department store as well as the decline and ruin of retail trade in Paris at the end of the 19th century.

action

The young orphan Denise comes from the provinces to the big city of Paris. Her uncle had invited her months earlier after her father's death and offered her a job in his fabric shop. But when Denise arrives in the metropolis, her dreams burst. A department store recently opened right across from her uncle's shop, the “Ladies' Paradise”. This comes up with a larger range and lower prices - the retailer cannot keep up with that. Denise's uncle's fabric shop is about to go bankrupt.

But Denise gets a job as a model in the "Ladies' Paradise" and promptly falls in love with the owner of the empire. The situation comes to a head when Denise's cousin dies and her uncle, blind with anger, storms into the “women's paradise” with a gun.

Background, publication

The film was a production of the company Le Film d'Art by Charles Delac and Marcel Vandal and was awarded by the Alliance Cinématographique Européenne (ACE). The recordings were made in Galeries Lafayette , 40–48 Boulevard Haussmann , Paris and on the beach in L'Isle-Adam , Département Val-d'Oise . The stage set created Christian-Jaque and Fernand Delattre. Gerlaur and Marthe Pinchard designed the costumes. The photography was done by André Dantan, René Guichard, Émile Pierre and Armand Thirard , while Walter Percy Day was responsible for optical effects.

The film premiered in France on March 24, 1930. In Germany it was also called Das Fräulein vom Kleidlager and was awarded by Universum Film AG UFA . He was also seen in Italy, Greece, Hungary and Poland.

In Germany the film was submitted to the Berlin Film Inspectorate for censorship on March 24, 1930 and was banned under the censorship number B.18784. According to a further submission on March 29, 1930, it was partially approved by the film inspectorate under the number O.00297. It was not until July 22, 1930 that he was able to pass the Berlin film testing station under number B.26382 with a length of 8 files equal to 2432 meters, albeit under a youth ban.

Because of the "piquant situation" and because of the "provocative demeanor and lascivious facial expression of the woman shown in close-up", which could result in "excessive use of the imagination of young viewers", the film inspection agency also prohibited the posting of two photos.

The film was released on May 8, 2009 by the studio absolut Medien GmbH as part of the silent film edition series in French with German and English subtitles on DVD.

Sound version

A sound version of Au bonheur des dames , hastily produced under the economic pressure of the approaching sound film , was premiered on May 3, 1930 and was shown in cinemas from October. It fell through with the audience due to its poor quality and quickly disappeared again while the silent version continued to be shown; the audio version must be considered lost today.

André Cayatte made a sound film version in 1943 during the German occupation with Blanchette Brunoy, Michel Simon and Albert Préjean in the leading roles.

Restoration and re-performances

In 1988, the Cinémathèque française first attempted restoration of the almost forgotten film, which it presented a year later in Cannes with piano accompaniment. Building on this material, Lobster Films carried out another restoration in 2008. With the original illustration music from 1930 lost, Canadian composer Gabriel Thibaudeau wrote a new jazz-influenced music that also includes vocal passages.

Arte / absolut.medien GmbH released the film on DVD in October 2009 with the new accompanying music by Gabriel Thibaudeau, played by the Ensemble Octuor de France .

The municipal film house cinema in Nuremberg showed The Paradise of the Ladies on Sunday, May 29th 2011 in the restored version with piano accompaniment by Dr. D. Meyer.

The culture broadcaster Arte showed the film in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, June 27, 2012, from 00:05 to 01:35 on German television.

reception

In Germany, Max Mack had already made a silent film in 1914, entitled Zum Paradies der Damen, based on a manuscript by Walter Schmidthässler , in which Hanni Weisse played the leading role. Lupu Pick made another silent film with the same title in 1922, in which he and Edith Posca appeared.

“The fact that the German title Das Paradies der Damen transports the world of the department store back into a religious, mythological distance and, including the Fall of Man, stamps buyers and sellers like Denise as guilty Eve daughters, incidentally reveals something of the mental overload and overload of their inheritance German culture has to bear heavily. "

- Burfeind / Schneider-Quindeau, p. 92

Moviepilot.de judged:

“Based on the story of the protagonist, who, fascinated by the splendor, finds a job in the 'Paradise of Ladies', the film describes the growth and structure of this department store and at the same time the decline of the retail trade of an entire Parisian district. The figures appearing are actively or passively connected to the rampant department store: as employees, buyers or adjacent retailers. In addition to the saleswoman Denise, particular attention is paid to the owner of the department store, Octave Mouret, and his life in fine Parisian society as well as his business practices. The model for this figure was the entrepreneur Auguste Hériot, who founded the Parisian department store Grands Magasins du Louvre . "

- moviepilot

Lucie Derain found words of praise in Cinémathographie française on April 5, 1930:

“The entire drama of progress is portrayed with an infinitely sympathetic simplicity. Duvivier has skilfully streamlined the plot, you don't get bored for a second. The diversity of scenes, the accumulation of revealing details of a character, a state of mind, a situation, the decorative richness of the film, and sometimes the power of the image - all of these make this French film an original, significant, interesting work. A social painting of the times, drawn with great care and amazing poetry. "

- L. Derain : Cinémathographie française

Raymond Chirat was not satisfied with the literary film adaptation when he wrote about Duvivier in his book in 1968:

«La transposition à l'époque moderne et les modifications apportées de ce fait au roman ne sont pas des plus heureuses. Surtout, l'interprétation est faible. Dita Parlo n'est pas la femme du rôle, Armand Bour - en Baudu - manque de puissance, et Pierre de Guingand n'a ni charme ni autorité. Restent les évocations du grand magasin qui n'atteignent toutefois pas la puissance de description de Zola; une vision de la rue qui rappelle heureusement les films allemands de la grande époque; une fête au bord de la Marne avec canots et ballons rouges, pleine de trépidation et de gaîté; la mise en valeur de la figuration avec remous de foule particulièrement réussis lors de la scene de poursuite à coups de revolver dans le grand escalier du magasin. Ce qui nuit le plus au film, c'est une contraction, un étouffement du large roman qui apparaît tout à coup sec et étriqué. »

“It wasn't a particularly lucky idea to move the plot to the modern age and then change the novel. On top of that, the representation is weak. Dita Parlo is not the woman for this role, Armand Bour as Baudu lacks strength, Pierre de Guignand has neither charm nor authority. What remains is the depiction of the department store, which does not even come close to Zola's power of description. A vision of the street that happily recalls the German films from the great days. A party on the banks of the Marne, full of vibrant serenity, with boats and red balloons. The expansion of the pictorial representation with swirling crowds is particularly successful in the chase scene with the revolver shots on the large stairs of the department store. What hurts most is that the film compresses the great novel, strangles it, so that it suddenly appears dry and narrow-minded. "

- R. Chirat : 1968

literature

  • Carsten Burfeind, Werner Schneider-Quindeau: Religion and Urbanity: Challenges for Church and Society . Waxmann Verlag, ISBN 978-3-8309-7236-5 , pp. 91-92.
  • Raymond Chirat: Julien Duvivier . Premier Plan Publishing House, Lyon 1968.
  • Jennifer Forrest, Leonard R. Koos (Eds.): Dead Ringers: The Remake in Theory and Practice (= EBSCO ebook academic collection, SUNY series, Cultural Studies in Cinema / Video. UPCC book collections on Project MUSE). Verlag SUNY Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-7914-8963-5 , p. 218, note 3 (Leonard R. Koos, Hiring Practices)
  • Patrick Glâtre: Au bonheur des dames. In: Val-d'Oise terre de tournages (Cergy-Pontoise, Val-d'Oise, France), Comité du Tourisme et des Loisirs du Département du Val d'Oise, 2011, pp. 53–54.
  • Anna Gural, Robert Singer (Eds.): Zola and Film: Essays in the Art of Adaptation . McFarland Verlag, 2005, ISBN 0-7864-2115-0 , pp. 96-102. (Klaus Peter Walter, La rançon du progrès)
  • Laura Horak: Au bonheur des dames . Essay. online at silentfilm.org
  • Allen Jones: Au bonheur des dames (Julien Duvivier, 1930). at over-blog.com , January 12, 2013
  • Michael Miller: The Birth of the Department Store. Émile Zola's Au bonheur des dames and BBC's The Paradise miniseries. online at h-france.net

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ IMDb release info
  2. ↑ deutsches-filminstitut.de , document: Zulassungskarte.
  3. ↑ Censorship report No. 297 of March 29, 1930, ill. at deutsches-filminstitut.de (PDF)
  4. ↑ a b The Paradise of Ladies DVD Edition arte-edition.de (with trailer and pictures)
  5. ↑ Forrest-Koos, p. 218, note 3
  6. ↑ cf. cinema.arte.tv and Horak: “Though the silent version previewed to the press had won praise for the 'symphony of light inspired by the vertigo of constructions and demolitions', the sound version released to the public in October 1930 was roundly criticized for the poor quality of the sound ".
  7. ↑ The Ladies' Paradise in the Internet Movie Database (English) allo-ciné
  8. ↑ cinefiles - in the Salle André Bazin , on Saturday, May 20, 1989 at 11 a.m., at the piano Bernard Riobe
  9. ↑ "Inspired by American jazz, which conquered Paris at the end of the 1920s, this created a successful orchestral accompaniment with sung passages that musically expresses the film's special dynamics in an original way." Writes cinema.arte.tv about the new composition .
  10. ↑ kunstkulturquartier.de
  11. ↑ ard.de
  12. ↑ also Das Paradies der Damen , 3 acts, cf. GECD # 39190 and filmportal.de
  13. ↑ filmportal.de
  14. ↑ Ladies' Paradise on moviepilot.de
  15. ↑ The Paradise of the Ladies by Julien Duvivier at cinema.arte.tv (with contemporary reviews)
  16. ↑ Restaurations et Tirages De la Cinémathéque FranÇaise III, 1988 (PDF) p. 21, accessed on June 23, 2016.