The golden bed

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Movie
Original title The golden bed
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1913
length 94 minutes
Rod
Director Walter Schmidthässler
script Olga Wohlbrück
Walter Schmidthässler based
on the novel of the same name by Olga Wohlbrück
production Jules Greenbaum
music Lazar from Hadzsics
occupation

The golden bed is a German silent film from 1913 with Theodor Loos and Hanni Weisse in the leading roles.

action

In the center of the action is the seriously ill Princess Arnulf, who lies in her golden bed and seems to float around all the people she meets like a good spirit. She is friend, patron and benefactor in one. The poet Nehls values ​​her because she believes in him and encourages him, her banker loves her because she gives him her trust, other women adore her because, even in her moribund state, she is anxious to return to their wandering husbands to run the home stove, and friends in (financial) need are eternally grateful to her when the high nobility opens their casket for them.

In this microcosm her admirers circle around the golden bed and soon become part of it themselves. And yet each of them is significantly different from all the others. The bank director, clearly structured and with clear goals, remains the calmest, as he is not looking for the ideal value of life. The poet Frank Nehls is the most restless, although he has everything: genius and fame, his delightful daughter Pieps, for whom even a count tears. And yet his idealism plagues him, which can never really be satisfied. His life soon becomes a heap of rubble: his own wife, knitted one-dimensionally, no longer interests him, the bailiffs give him the handle, and the count, the hopeful component in Pieps' life, tragically dies in a car accident. In Frank's life, there is disappointment after disappointment and catastrophe after catastrophe.

Finally, like the others, Nehls also loses the princess who dies in her golden bed. It was she who always gave him support, the best friend who was the only one who managed to tear him away from his beloved and smooth the way back to his wife. Nehls threatens to lose his footing in his life when his brother Felix steps in in dire straits. He is the head of the custody accounts, the bank manager is his superior. Felix gives Frank financial air with an action on the border of embezzlement. Nevertheless, the poet has grown tired of the struggles, mentally lonely and robbed of his creativity. The golden bed as a fixed point, as a safe haven of calm - all of this is a thing of the past. Even when Pieps becomes the wife of the bank director and he knows that his daughter is being looked after, Nehls can no longer do this. Tired of life, his corpse is discovered one day lying under a wrecked car in a mountain ditch.

Production notes

The golden bed was created in the spring of 1913 in the Vitascope studio in Berlin's Lindenstrasse 32 to 24. The film was shown for the first time on April 30, 1913 on the occasion of the reopening of the Berlin marble house -Lichtspiele cinema . It was not until a few days later, on May 8, 1913, that the four-act act passed film censorship and was banned from young people. The length of the film was 1707 meters.

The theater actor Theodor Loos made his film debut here.

criticism

“Long after the end of the novel, we can still see the magnificent figure of the ideal Princess Arnulf. She has won our sympathies as well as those of those around her. [...] Ms. Gernod as princess and Mr. Loos as Nehls do a very high artistic level. [...] Hanni Weisse as Pieps is delightful. But the other roles are also well filled, right down to the smallest batch. "

- Cinematographic review of October 5, 1913. p. 108

“In the first place is an adaptation of Olga Wohlbrück's novel 'Das goldene Bett', which became widely known through its first reprint in 'Woche'. Walter Schmidthässler dramatized and staged the interesting work, and he knew how to capture the main moments of the novel by skillfully combining well-chosen and, incidentally, excellently presented images. "

- The day of May 1st, 1913

“Vitascope filmed this extraordinarily fine book in an excellent adaptation by Schmidthäßler. Magnificent photographic sketches support the nicely lined up scenes, which have a gripping effect in an excellent representation [...] The interesting picture has a powerfully moving final effect. "

- Cinematographic review of February 15, 1914. p. 87

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Newer sources claim that Olga Wohlbrück was involved in the direction, but the original sources from 1913 do not confirm this

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