The curse of the sun
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The curse of the sun |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1917 |
| length | approx. 71 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Robert Reinert |
| script | Robert Reinert |
| production | German bioscop |
| occupation | |
| |
The Curse of the Sun is a 1916 German silent film drama with Maria Carmi in the leading role.
action
Maria lives in harmony with her father, an art-loving landowner named Fernando. He calls her his "sun child". Fernando is currently completely absorbed in the completion of an opera composed by him that has not yet been named. One day Maria receives mail; in the letter her old childhood friend Peter announces his arrival. When he arrives at the estate, Maria's heart is soon over and the two young people fall in love. But Peter is an unsteady ghost, whose thirst for adventure will soon pull him out into the wide world again. Maria remains impregnated. In order to spare her father the shame of an illegitimate birth, Maria decides to leave the house and farm for a while. She finds shelter in a simple forester's house and gives birth to a son. But soon it becomes too crowded there, and the forester couple throws mother and child outside the door. Maria doesn't know where to go, she doesn't dare go home. So she initially errs through mother nature. When she meets the father's servant one day, she basically lays her newborn baby at his feet, in the hope that the old rascal will first see it and secondly take it with him to look after the boy. Then Maria disappears. But apparently the servant has tomatoes on his eyes because he does not see the worm and goes on carelessly. When Maria later returns to the same place for a check-up, the little one has disappeared.
Maria is very reproachful and believes that something terrible must have happened to the child. Finally, ruefully, she returns to her father in the manor house. During her absence, he completed his opera and out of bitterness gave it the title “The Curse of the Sun”. The content has a lot of biographical features, because the story is about a young mother who killed her child and is then cursed by her father. When the opera is to be premiered in the Gutshofhallen, the globetrotter Peter has also returned alongside Maria. In the scene in which the mother tries to flee from the sunbeam, Maria screams and runs out of the performance into the open, followed by Peter. When he learns from her that she allegedly killed their two children, he curses Maria as well as the sunbeam the girl in Fernando's opera. From then on, the former "sun child" begins to shy away from the light of the sun. Soon the whole area knows about Maria's alleged bloody act, and when a pogrom mood spreads once, it is the father who stands in front of the mob who exclaimed “child murderer!” And tries to protect his daughter. He dies in the process. Maria now locks herself in completely in daylight and only leaves her father's castle when night falls.
How can Maria know that her child is still alive? It was found then by a man who took it, raised the boy, and became a good father. The boy has become a handsome man whom the foster father called Edgar. When Edgar's adoptive father dies, Edgar learns about the background of his birth and he decides to get to the bottom of the roots of his ancestry and to visit the home of his birth. When he arrives at Marias Manor, he sees a figure sneaking around the castle in the moonlight who is his mother. He approaches to take a closer look at this strange woman. Mary recognized her own flesh and blood in disbelief. A loving hug follows, and now she knows that the curse of the sun has finally been lifted.
Production notes
The Curse of the Sun was created shortly before the end of 1916 in the Bioscop studio in Neubabelsberg and had four files, spread over 1,470 meters in length. The film passed the censorship in January 1917, the premiere was probably a little later. When it was re-censored on July 10, 1924, the film was shortened to 1,310 meters.
The film structures were designed by Robert A. Dietrich .
criticism
“This film too rises above the mundane and gives the great tragedy the opportunity to live out herself and fully develop her art. The plot is built up with a lot of skill and increasing dramatic effects and arouses deep sympathy for the fate of the heroine, who accuses herself of child murder and believes it has been cursed by the sun. (...) The fourth act is particularly beautiful, in which Maria Carmi appears to us like a priestess, holy beautiful in the execution of her atonement. The direction in general, too, especially in the last act, has created incredibly wonderful things. Every single picture is a work of art, both in terms of the motifs and in terms of photography. "