The ninth heart

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title The ninth heart
Original title Deváté srdce
Country of production ČSSR
original language Czech
Publishing year 1978
length 90 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Juraj heart
script Josef Hanzlík ,
Juraj Herz
production Barrandov film studio
music Petr Hapka
camera Jirí Macháne ,
Vera Růzička
cut Jaromír Janácek
occupation

The ninth heart is a Hofmannesque fairy tale film from the ČSSR. The film premiered in Prague in 1978. Hardly any other film concentrates and distills Czech characters in the same way. The German dubbed version was first seen in GDR cinemas on March 7, 1980 and on GDR television on DFF 1 on June 6, 1981. A video in German dubbing is available. The film is also known in France under the title Le neuvième cœur , in Italy under the title Il nono cuore and in the English-speaking world under the title The Ninth Heart .

action

Marketplace

Dear ladies and gentlemen and admirers of the high art of comedy, the curtain will soon be raised and the game can begin. A performance, instructive, full of drama and touching the heart, we will show you in the highest artistic perfection a story of unhappy love and terrible perils, the story of the famous knight Filoden and the lovely Princess Beatrice in the Neapolitan country - this is what the puppeteer proclaims. The colorful life of the market square enchants comedians. A knife thrower shows his art. A tightrope walker balances between the stalls. In between, a strolling young man strolls. It's the student Martin. He looks after the beautiful girls and looks around the world. He likes the daughter of the puppeteer best. But when he wants to adore a stolen rose from the charming girl, Toncka's little cheeky brother prevents it. The grand duke's stately carriage drives past. The princess sits in it. Martin boldly throws the rose through the open window at proud Adriena. The pale beauty smiles enigmatically after him. The hustle and bustle continues in the market, eyed suspiciously by the general and his law enforcement officers. Filoden and Beatrice's puppet show begins. It is about a knight who frees Princess Beatrice from the curse of her nightly, ghostly disappearance. A viewer feels angry, a general, insulted by the play for the noble ducal family, sees in the performance an obvious allusion to Princess Adriena. He keeps a suspicious eye on the comedians.

The feast

The piece is over. Toncka, the puppeteer's daughter, collects the coins. Martin tries his luck again and invites her to dinner. Toncka agrees in a friendly manner, but says she cannot come alone and invites the whole comedian company to join. Martin bravely grants, although he doesn't have a penny. At the landlord's, Martin opens up hard - even the minstrel in the corner is loaded. You eat, sing and celebrate. Soldiers put up a notice: A savior is wanted for Princess Adriena. The puppeteer and Toncka celebrate the play of the missing princess once again - this time specifically with reference to Adriena. This is embarrassing to the rumbling landlord and he wants to foot the bill immediately. Martin admits his poverty. The landlord is screaming. Martin is locked up - but the mysterious minstrel gives him a coat as a thank you. It is a magic cloak that makes you invisible. With the help of the coat and lots of visible and invisible jokes with the authorities, Martin escapes the ducal prison. But he's losing his coat for now.

love

Martin is hiding with the comedians. Martin and Toncka recognize their love in the bell tower. Toncka gives him a necklace with a miraculous heart - it is supposed to protect Martin - out of love. At the market the two sing for the audience - that's when the authorities spy them and a burlesque persecution of the young studios begins. Martin escapes, but the general uses ruse. He wants to lock up all the comedians. To save the friends, Martin appears - he wants to face the dangerous task and find out Princess Adriena's disappearance. Eight young men have already disappeared this way. The comedians, and Toncka in particular, are desperate.

fool

At court no young man wants to have anything to do with the deadly Adriena anymore. Your father is angry. He wants to marry off the daughter and see a successor. As a reward for the rescue, you can even ask for the hand of the princess. The duke instructs the student. He has to guard Adriena at night and follow her when she disappears. The court jester asks Martin into the garden. Here Martin learns a lot more, and he receives the magic cloak again from the fool: The old fool has taken the princess into his fatherly heart and he has dark things to say: The duke has a pact with a sinister court astrologer, Count Aldobrandini. He knew how to control the will to power and has the duke in his hands with alchemical promises of great wealth. Finally the trap snaps shut, the sinister Aldobrandini demands the hand of the fun-loving Adriena. She doesn't want to know anything about the ugly wizard. But in a lonely hour he knows how to lick a drop of blood from the girl. Since then she has been under a hypnotic spell and is subject to his will. After this night the Count disappeared and Adriena's strange nightly wandering began. The fool fears another terrible secret, since the hand of Adriena for Aldobrandini would be easy to force with the help of the Duke. Martin sees his situation as hopeless. The fool comforts. He will accompany Martin.

The way to the castle

During the night Martin and the fool watch. Adriena rises and goes sleepwalking. Martin and the fool follow her invisibly under the magic cloak. At the end of a gloomy corridor, the princess is picked up by two black servants and driven in a Venetian gondola on a canal through an underground, white dream landscape. A hike follows. Here the fool stumbles, falls from the protective coat and becomes visible. The servants see this with disapproval and amusement: At last there is a savior, the ninth heart! You take poor old Pierrot. You get to the dark construction of a black castle. A pale court society cavort here in a pale light. Its ruler is Count Aldobrandini. Aldobrandini welcomes the fool with evil enthusiasm - his ninth heart! One turns in ghost dances. Aldobrandini wakes Adriena from the trance of her hypnosis. Horrified, the girl sees power and powerlessness.

The magician's secret

Aldobrandini's goal is a mysterious essence. One of these, from the graves of the pharaohs, has rejuvenated his life for three hundred years. But this is running out. The essence is obtained from nine living hearts. The fool's heart completes the alchemical magic. The lifeless bodies of the nine victims would only bring the essence back to life - but Aldobrandini keeps the precious drops - as one might think . The magician proudly explains this to the terrified Adriena - but they still have an eavesdropper - the student Martin, who is hidden under the camouflage coat.

The hall of time

From the room of the dark distillations, the magician leads the princess to a mystical room full of burning candles - surrounded by huge clockworks. It is the hall of the subterranean time, as the prince and magician Aldobrandini claims to be. At a gesture by Aldobrandini, all the clocks stand still here - including the huge pendulum with the face of the sun. A second counts as much as a day in this room. But while Aldobrandini indulges in his hubris, Martin has seized the essence and brought the fool and the other victims back to life. They flee with Adriena through the labyrinthine corridors. Aldobrandini is broken, he's aging in fast motion. But the escape of Martin, the fool and Adriena ends in the hall of time from which there is no escape - and time goes by madly - a year has already passed.

Freedom bells

The New Years bells are ringing in the world. Toncka stands in the bell tower and calls Martin. She has long since buried hope. But she loves for love. At the same moment, Martin feels Toncka's present in his hand - the heart-shaped pendant shines brightly and guides the three prisoners between candles and clocks to a new opening in the Hall of Time. Happy they rush to the gondola, where Adriena angrily and ungratefully hurls the miraculous heart into a corner. On returning to the world there is great relief at the ducal court, and one regards more or less Martin as Adriena's future. Another sinister court astrologist has been found - Count Merlini. Adriena is becoming more and more haughty. And Martin, unfortunately, believes everything is lost. But again the fool has saved something for Martin and presses Toncka's miraculous heart into his hand. Martin returns to his comedians, Toncka and he fly into each other's arms, and the puppeteer closes the play with his big black artist's hat.

background

Literary template

The filmed fairy tale comes from the Czech poet Josef Hanzlík , it has not yet been translated into German. The fairytale atmosphere is essentially inspired by the stories of ETA Hoffmann ; especially the golden pot and the stone heart . Some motifs are also derived from Božena Němcová's fairy tale The Arch King , Grimm's fairy tale The Dancing Shoes and the Danish folk tale The Princess with Twelve Pairs of Gold Shoes .

actor

Julie Jurištová , the actress of the haughty Princess Adriena, is known from fairy tale films, e. B. as snow white in snow white and rose red . Ondřej Pavelka - here the student Martin - played in the fairy tale film The Magic of the Beautiful Girl . The beautiful puppeteer Anna Mal'hova also starred in other Czech fairy tale films. Juraj Kukura , who plays Count Aldobrandini here, became a popular television and cinema actor in Germany from the 1980s.

music

The film music works like an alchemical synthesis of all melancholy aspects of Mozartian music: Without quoting literally, Josef Hapka refers to the beginning of Mozart's Requiem , to the C minor Mass , the Prague Symphony and the cryptic tone sequences from Don Giovanni . The surreal dream walks in the film are in turn accompanied by a monotonous melody reminiscent of the first movement from Sibelius' Violin Concerto Op. 47 in D minor .

synchronization

The German dubbing was done in the DEFA studio for dubbing in Leipzig with the speakers Horst Kempe , Elke Wieditz , Friedhelm Eberle , Walter Wickenhauser , Roswitha Marks . Werner Klunder wrote the dialogue for the German version . The German dubbed version was directed by Johannes Knittel , Edith Weiler-Jahnig was responsible for editing and Ralph Kollowa was responsible for the sound .

Stylistic devices

Puppets

To live as a comedian means to walk on a swaying rope - that's what Toncka's father says to the student Martin: And so, in this fairy tale film , puppet theater and world theater are directly opposite. In the marionette theater, the puppets Beatrice and Filoden prefigure the events surrounding the student Martin and Princess Adriena. The relationship between the fairytale film and the audience is reflected in the relationship between the marionettes and the fairy tale heroes. The universal drama reflects itself in the parable of the puppets. But while Toncka's father, with his puppet theater, limits the compulsion of marionettes to puppet theater and at the same time lives freedom, the dark alchemist Count Aldobrandini tries to turn people into puppets for his personal exercise of power. The refined representation of the theatrical art interwoven with life culminates in this fairy tale film in the fact that Juraj Herz , the film's director, plays the new, black court astrologer Count Merlini, who appears at the end of the fairy tale, in a highly self-deprecating manner.

Art fairy tale

Baroque building by Dientzenhofer

The intellectual sources of this ingenious art fairy tale film lie in German romanticism: Kleist's Marionette Theater , Hauff : The Cold Heart and ETA Hoffmann : The Stone Heart and The Golden Pot . In the fairy tale The Arch King, Božena Němcová describes a girl who, like Princess Adriena, is unable to live in power and splendor. The fairy tale story of the young man who heroically follows a princess who disappears at night and frees her from the clutches of a gloomy power is known from Grimm's fairy tale The Dancing Shoes and the Danish folk tale The Princess with the Twelve Pairs of Gold Shoes and is featured in the play by Filoden and Beatrice reproduced. But this art fairy tale filmed here by Josef Hanzlík goes even further: The young fairy tale hero is the student Martin, who - adventurer and dreamer at the same time - fights against adverse black powers like Hoffmann's student Anselmus. In this web of power, the student Martin has to save the princess, but Martin finds his great love in Toncka. Similar in the golden pot from ETA Hoffmann ; Here the student Anselmus finds his happiness in Serpentina, while the Hofmeister doll Veronika has long enjoyed getting caught up in adversity. The moment when Count Aldobrandini brews his alchemical essence from stolen living hearts is reminiscent of the heart collection of the Dutchman Michel from Hauff's fairy tale The Cold Heart . However, the relationship between the dangers is different at Hauff. The gloomy festival in Aldobrandinis Castle points to the dance in the haunted castle from the fairy tale film The Fearless .

aesthetics

Large astronomical clock on the City Hall in Prague

The underground castle of Count Albrandini appears in the style of the melancholy baroque buildings of the Czech master builder Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer . The black magic of the astrologer is staged in the cabinet of curiosity aesthetics of the court of Rudolf the Second . The alchemical images from the alchemical manuscript Splendor Solis by Salomon Trismosin also come to life like a fairy tale. A clock pendulum with a sun face swings in the room of time. And the life light metaphor of the many candles in this room not only creates a further level of meaning for time in addition to the many clocks, but also reminds of the symbolistic life light in Fritz Lang's The tired death . The hall magic of the countless clocks is based on the aesthetic model of the famous astronomical clock of the Prague City Hall . The ninth heart is both a fairy tale film and a work of art.

Reviews

  • “An astrologer who has maliciously abused his power has kept himself alive for centuries with an elixir drawn from human hearts. With the involuntary help of a princess whom he has hypnotized, he was able to steal eight hearts again, when a brave student kills him after many dangerous adventures. Elaborately designed film fairy tale that arranges familiar plot elements of the genre in an unconventional way. ” - Lexicon of international film

Awards

In 1980 The Ninth Heart was nominated for Best Film by Mystfest.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Das ninth Herz on pp. 311–314 in 77 Fairy Tale Films - A Guide for Young and Old (ed.) Eberhard Berger, Joachim Giera u. a. Henschel Verlag GmbH; Berlin 1990; ISBN 3-362-00447-4
  2. ↑ The puppet show
    Filoden: I am the brave knight Filoden and I come to you in the Neapolitan country to compete with the strongest men - in tournaments and at the feasts. So clear the way, squire, and let me into the royal palace.
    Servant: Unknown, distinguished stranger, don't you know what deep, boundless grief our lord and king finds himself in for his beloved daughter, the noble Princess Beatrice, and that the whole royal city is mocked - for the ninth day in a black English cloth .
    Filoden: Oh, I'll be recruited right away so that I can unveil this gloomy secret. With skill and bold courage I will rescue the lovely virgin Beatrice from all adversity and take her as my dear wife. I want to dare and it will cost my life. I dedicate it to Princess Beatrice!
    King: Well, it should be done as you wish, noble knight Filoden. Yes, if you have the same level of understanding as you are daring, then you can pass the test.
    Filoden: I know well what is depressing the Neapolitan country. Mr. King, Mrs. Queen, I will put all my strength into it.
    Fool: who oppresses the country? Do you know that? Just don't say it too loudly. Think about your skin!
    King: Shut up, you disgusting fool and buffoon. Now is not the time for fun and nonsensical sayings, and you, honorable brave knight Filoden, know that our poor princess mysteriously disappears every night. Not even the strictest guarding of your bedroom can help. But if you are ready to throw your life into the redoubt to free them from the devil's claws of a traitorous person, you will be rewarded with rich wages - you get the hand of the princess and half of the kingdom on top of that.
  3. ↑ The motif of the camouflage coat and the events surrounding the princess disappearing at night come from the Grim Tale The Dancing Shoes , which can only be followed on this path at risk of death .
  4. ↑ Furthermore Des Ondřej Pavelka was in the fairy tale films Pohádka o lidské duši ( photos ) from 1986, directed by Libuše Koutná and Království Potoku ( photos ) from 2005, directed by Pavel Jandourek to see
  5. ↑ 1979 in Na vysokej skale: Krásna Ľudmila ( photos ) and 1980 in Krásna múdrosť ( photos )
  6. ↑ Bohemian Puppet Theater ( Memento of the original from February 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.isergebirgs-museum.de
  7. ↑ Bohemian Marionettes ( Memento of the original from March 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.marionetten-sammlung.ch
  8. ↑ Marionettes from the Prague workshop ( Memento of the original from September 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.egerlandmuseum.de
  9. ↑ The encounter with traveling comedians is a topos of the Czech fairy tale film. The filmed theater, play in play, creates a level of theatrical self-reflection. In other Czech fairy tale films, the significant comedian appears in The Third Prince , Frau Holle , Princess Julia , The Pearl Maiden and, somewhat modified, in King Thrushbeard .
  10. ↑ The Czech fairy tale film The Three Weary Princesses, based on a fairy tale by Charles Deulin and based on Grimm's The Dancing Shoes , is also dedicated to this theme of the princess who disappeared every night
  11. ↑ 22nd image from Splendor Solis by Salomon Trismosin. (JPEG) astro.com, accessed October 30, 2010 .
  12. ^ The Splendor Solis. By Salomon Trismosin. hermetics.org, accessed on October 30, 2010 (English, index page that links to all images).
  13. ↑ On the life light metaphor, cf. z. B. in Breton fairy tales ed. and transferred from Ré Soupault the two sagas The Righteous , pp. 205-211 and The Doctor by Fougeray , pp. 279-283; published by Eugen Diederichs Verlag, Düsseldorf / Cologne 1959
  14. ^ Astrological clock in Prague
  15. ↑ The ninth heart. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used