The walk into the night

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Movie
Original title The walk into the night
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1921
length 81 minutes
Rod
Director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
script Harriet Bloch
Carl Mayer
production Sascha Goron
music Richard Siedhoff (2016/17)
camera Carl Hoffmann
occupation

The Walk into the Night is a German film drama from 1921, directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau.

action

Dr. Eigil Börne is a doctor whose career is just beginning. He is engaged to the young Helene, whom he neglects. Helene suffers from it and confides her feelings in a diary. During a medical visit, Eigil meets the dancer Lily, for whom he has a passionate affection. He confesses these feelings to Helene and asks that the engagement be lifted.

Eigil moves to the country with Lily, where her difference to Helene becomes clear. She is silly but also fun-loving. Helene, on the other hand, plunges into self-pity and mourns the loss of her love. In addition to the mental ailments, she is also physically ill. When Lily falls in love with a painter whom Eigil restored to sight, she leaves him. Some time later, the painter threatens to go blind again, whereupon Lily asks Eigil for help. Eigil is full of hatred and tells her that he will only help the sick painter if she kills herself. After Lily killed herself, Eigil appears to have taken her own too.

criticism

The fact that “The Walk into the Night” is more viewable than the retelling suggests is due to the fact that this story does not take place in overloaded studio decorations, but in rooms that are calm and clearly structured and in poetically photographed landscapes. The often-vaunted technical mastery of German photo and camera work leads the emotionally charged topics, linked with deep-seated fears and feelings, out of the suffocating spaces in which they were created, into the vastness of nature, in whose elements the conflicts can be reflected. The landscape becomes a soul landscape, most clearly in the central scene of the storm. The hysteria destroys the boundaries between inside and outside.

In the Lichtbild-Bühne No. 51 of December 18, 1920, it can be read: "I hardly remember ever having seen a film that draws so from the depths of living life, that brings so shockingly true people, real people, free of all pose, which one does not notice that in the end they owe their existence only to the brain of a manuscript writer. One of those very strong feature films that we always have too little of. Everything here is geared towards the acting, not even a single scene should work through presentation, pomp, crowds or other outward appearances. (...) Olaf Fönss gave the professor deep humanity, Gudrun Brun-Steffensen, an excellent embodiment of the ambivalent nature of the dancer. Conrad Veidt was in the role of the blind painter in his Game easier than usual and only to his advantage. Erna Morena was here for a change the yearning, suffering woman and she also looked like that. FW Murnau turned out to be an outer one you are a sensitive director. "

Willy Haas wrote enthusiastically: "The manuscript was written by Carl Mayer - a poetic work; nothing less. The technique of the film obeys him at the touch of a fingertip. It is unbelievable how he rushes over passages, urgently, breathlessly, with two hints. Wonderful, how he knows how to stay elsewhere again, carefree, almost stubborn, for example when the lights of cars glide over the rainy asphalt of a dark city, or when the sea rummages, or when the pale sun opens up "

restoration

The original negative of the film did not reappear until after World War II, but the third film reel and all of the subtitles were missing. Only around 1980 did the Munich Film Museum gain access to a complete copy from the Gosfilmofond, Moscow, where the original negative was once stored as spoils of war before the third roll was lost. But here too all intertitles were missing. Enno Patalas could only name a few titles with certainty and put them back into the film.

In 2016 the Filmmuseum München was able to reconstruct the editing sequence of the film and the missing subtitles based on detailed studies of the surviving script by Carl Mayer and numerous contemporary reviews. The wording is based on the script, which deviates in some details from Murnau's implementation, and on verbatim quotations in the reviews. The camera negative, which was supplemented with elements from the Munich copy, served as the basis for the digital image restoration. The restored colors (viragen) are based on the conventions of the time.

David Bordwell judged: "The Munich Film Museum's team has created one of the most beautiful editions of a silent film I've ever seen. You look at these shots and realize that most versions of silent films are deeply unfaithful to what early audiences saw. In those days, the camera negative was usually the printing negative, so what was recorded got onto the screen. The new Munich restoration allows you to see everything in the frame, with a marvelous translucence and density of detail. Forget High Frame Rate: This is hypnotic, immersive cinema. "

music

The silent film pianist Richard Siedhoff composed music for the cinema orchestra (salon orchestra) for the film in 2016/17 for the Metropolis Orchester Berlin , which premiered on December 1, 2018 under the direction of conductor Burkhard Götze in the Zeughaus Kino Berlin and in the Edition Filmmuseum is also available on DVD.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Critique by Jutta Brückner
  2. ↑ http://www.filmportal.de/node/4793/material/684511
  3. ↑ http://www.filmportal.de/node/4793/material/684513
  4. ↑ [1]
  5. ↑ [2]
  6. ↑ [3]
  7. ^ Silent film concert: The Walk into the Night - live with the Metropolis Orchestra Berlin - Ries & Erler . In: Ries & Erler . November 26, 2018 ( rieserler.de [accessed December 4, 2018]).
  8. ↑ [4]
  9. ↑ http://www.richard-siedhoff.de.ralf-siedhoff.de/index.php?id=139
  10. ↑ Edition Filmmuseum Shop - The Walk to the Night Edition Filmmuseum 97. Accessed December 4, 2018 .