The Eerie House (1916)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The scary house |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1916 |
| length | 67 to 72 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Richard Oswald |
| script | Richard Oswald |
| production | Richard Oswald |
| camera | Max Fassbender |
| occupation | |
| |
Das eheimliche Haus is a German silent detective film from 1916 by Richard Oswald .
action
The unemployed Arthur Wüllner is hired by a man as a secretary in his house. No sooner has he started his job than he is used by the landlord for various tasks. But then strange occurrences in the eerie house begin to confuse him. He is warned on pieces of paper written by an unknown hand that important documents will disappear from the closed safe. Then a woman he does not know appears in the mirror and comes out to Wüllner to ask for his help.
For reasons inexplicable to him, Wüllner was dismissed by his employer a little later. To help the unknown beauty from the mirror, he secretly returns to the house one evening. With the help of the detective Martin Whist, Wüllner is able to unravel the strange events: his employer and his helper played an evil game with him that was part of a large-scale crime.
Production notes
The four-act film with a length of, depending on the source, 1,373 to 1,478 meters was shot in June 1916, passed film censorship in August 1916 and was banned from young people. In September 1916 it celebrated its premiere in Cologne's Skalatheater. The uncanny house was shown for the first time in Berlin (Mozart Hall) on September 22nd, 1916 . The new censorship of March 10, 1921 confirmed the youth ban.
Werner Krauss as the villain of the film appears in a double role. The buildings are by Manfred Noa .
criticism
“They are actually two houses that are connected to each other and that belong to two owners, but who are one and the same person. This owner, who leads a double life, employs a young man in his extensive business, who has to take care of things on his behalf, which the owner can use in his other guise. The new Richard Oswald film offers a plot of this kind, in which a detective intervenes, in a completely new way; one does not see his work or his activity in more detail, but it brings about the naturally resulting conclusion. In other words, a detective film so completely different from the ones that almost brought this genre into disrepute in public opinion and with the authorities. As strange as the subject is, Oswald's staging is just as surprising. Above all, he proves to be a chosen one of the decorative arts, because the interiors presented are of rare taste, wonderful depth, soothing elegance and cozy harmony. "Oswald" does not stick to the conventional, even if he cannot avoid it completely because he has to make concessions to the tastes of the public. And so his ambition has the almost insoluble task of always paying homage to this taste in new ways and thereby realizing his artistic ambitions, to offer the performers rewarding, stimulating, inciting tasks and to tie the knot of the plot according to the fundamentals of the dramaturgy and to solve. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lichtbild-Bühne, No. 31 of August 5, 1916