The beauty spot

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Movie
Original title The beauty spot
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1936
length 29 minutes
Rod
Director Rolf Hansen
script Carl Froelich based
on the story La Mouche by Alfred de Musset
production Carl Froelich
music Hansom Milde-Meissner
camera Reimar Kuntze
occupation

The Beauty Spot is a short German feature film by Rolf Hansen and Carl Froelich , who was in charge of artistic direction and production. The almost half-hour film from 1936 with Lil Dagover in the leading role is of great historical importance in view of the fact that it went down in the annals as the first German feature film production in color. Three years later, Women Are Better Diplomats, was the first full-color German feature film.

action

Little is known about the content. Versailles in the 18th century. The plot focuses on intrigues at the court of the French King Louis XV. and the amorous adventures between the king's mistress, Madame de Pompadour , and a young lieutenant to his majesty, who in turn feels fond of a pretty lady-in-waiting.

Production notes

The beauty spot was created in February and March 1936 in the Froelich film studios in Berlin-Tempelhof . The 799-meter-long short film was censored on July 2, 1936 and was premiered on August 4, 1936 in the Ufa pavilion on Nollendorfplatz.

The film structures were designed by Franz Schroedter . Hans Grimm was responsible for the sound. Wolfgang Zeller took over the musical arrangement.

The film received the state rating “artistically valuable”.

Worth knowing about the color system

The strip produced in Opticolor coloring developed by Siemens was rotated using the so-called lenticular lens process: There are color filters in or in front of the camera lens, each with a blue, green and red color strip. Lenticular structures are embossed into the substrate of the film, through which the images are displayed in the form of juxtaposed, linear, alternating blue, green and red stripes (color separations). This creates a kind of optical line grid. When the film is projected, the light only falls through the bright stripes of the layer and is deflected by the embossed "lenses" onto the respective stripe segment and thus colored. However, since the process proved too expensive, it was abandoned.

Elsewhere you can read the following: “The world premiere of the first and only publicly shown short film ' Das Schönheitsfleckchen ' (D: Rolf Hansen) was the start of state-sponsored color film propaganda that Opticolor wanted to see understood as the German response to the US Technicolor process. In fact, the process could not establish itself economically because it was denied the support of film producers and cinema operators. "

reception

The film review hardly dealt with the content or the dramaturgical or staging design of this production, but all the more intensely with the color aspect. In German Tonfilme, born in 1936 , it says: “The color quality of the film achieved with the Berthon-Siemens process was relatively high. Nevertheless, the process was ultimately unsuccessful because the image brightness was too low during projection. "

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Günter Knorr: German short film 1929–1940. A reconstruction. Vienna-Ulm 1977, entry: The beauty spot (no page)
  2. ↑ The beauty spot on filmportal.de
  3. ↑ The beauty spot on karlhoeffkes.de
  4. ↑ Ulrich J. Klaus: Deutsche Tonfilme, 7th year 1936 , Berlin 1996, p. 232

Web links