The Count (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Earl |
| Original title | The Count |
.jpg) | |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1916 |
| length | 2 rolls, 609.5 meters, corresponds to 24 minutes at 22 frames per second |
| Rod | |
| Director | Charlie Chaplin |
| script | Charlie Chaplin, Vincent Bryan , Maverick Terrell |
| production | Henry B. Caulfield |
| camera |
Roland Totheroh , William C. Foster , George C. Zalibra |
| cut | Charlie Chaplin |
| occupation | |
| |
Der Graf is the German title of the American two-reeler "The Count", which Charlie Chaplin made in 1916 as the fifth film for the Mutual Co. He co-wrote the script with Vincent Bryan and Maverick Terrell . In the USA the film was also called The Phoney Nobleman and was released there on September 4, 1916.
action
Tailor Charlie burns a hole in a customer's pants while ironing, whereupon his boss throws him out. In the pocket of his trousers, the master tailor finds Count Broko's rejection of an invitation to a party at Fräulein Geldsack's and goes instead, pretending to be Count Broko. Charlie goes too, but in the kitchen because he likes the cook. Unfortunately a servant and a policeman like it too. The false count, on the other hand, is after the lady of the house. When he meets Charlie there, he forces him to pretend he's his secretary. But no sooner have they entered the ballroom than Charlie quickly reverses the roles. He now plays the count and immediately floats across the floor with the hostess.
Then the real Count Broko appears on the scene. He exposes the fraud and calls the police. In a crazy chase, Charlie barely escapes while his master is arrested.
background
The Count was created in the Lone Star Studio , 1751 Glendale Boulevard, Hollywood. The camera work was in the hands of Roland Totheroh and William C. Foster , assisted by George C. Zalibra . The prop master George Cleethorpe was responsible for the equipment . Edward Brewer was the technical director .
Der Graf did not come to Germany until after the First World War, where he was shown under titles such as Charlie as a pseudo-Graf , Charlie as a tailor or similar.
In 1932, Amedee van Beuren bought Chaplin's mutual comedies from Van Beuren Studios. He added music by Gene Rodemich and Winston Sharples to them , added sound effects and distributed them as sound films through RKO Radio Pictures , without Chaplin being able to take legal action against it.
The Count was restored in 2013 as part of the Chaplin Mutual Project with financial support from the George Lucas Family Foundation and The Material World Charitable Foundation .
reception
"Chaplin's anti-authoritarian films gave life to the phantasies of his audience. In The Count (1916) and The Rink (1916) he delighted in lambasting the affectations of elite 'society' and and their fawning obsession with European aristocracy." (Ross p. 19)
“The Count” was Chaplin's most complex and expensive film to date. The slightly muddled story required several large decorations and quite a few extras. The plot, which is once again about someone pretending to be a rich man, offers a good basis not only for ridiculous scenes with absurd gags and funny slapstick , but also for social criticism .
The 'fine people' are all portrayed as complete naive people who fall for the tricks of Charlie and his boss, even when they display table manners that are impossible for counts or show other “uneducated” behavior. They don't question the scam until the tramp gets drunk and starts throwing pies around. Our hero doesn't worry too much anyway, he just wanted to have fun all the time (and make us fun) and just fooled both his ex-boss and the whole bunch of rich snobs .
"From the eight or ten films that have come to Germany so far, there remains a wealth of details, each of which is perfectly played." Kurt Tucholsky wrote about Chaplin's art in the Prager Tageblatt on July 22, 1922.
In The Count, for example, in addition to an olfactory gag (the stinking cheese in the kitchen), he also comes up with an acoustic one (in the silent film!): While they are eating soup, Charlie gestures to his boss not to sip so he should could understand what Miss Geldsack (Edna Purviance) said to him.
Chaplin's special way of eating a watermelon ensures cheerfulness; he eats it in such a way that he has to clean his ears afterwards. Sometimes he uses his walking stick like a golf club, sometimes like a billiard stick to demolish a cake.
“As a tailor's apprentice in The Count , he measures a corpulent lady - against the rules, of course. He has a hard time measuring his nose, ears, neck and finger length, and it gets very precarious in special areas such as the waist. Meanwhile, the iron burns a hole in the cut pieces of fabric. As a fake count, he gets caught up in a quick series of hilarious situations at a party. Charlie dances the waltz grotesque, Swingfox and Charleston, pulls the chandelier, swings in the porch swing, creates an absurd capriccio of cinematic movements. " (Babette Kaiserkern)
When Charlie dances the tango in The Count , the upper and lower parts of his body don't seem to fit together, they spin in different directions like the turret of an armored car. When the parquet became excessively slippery after the cake fight, Charlie's movements became even more eccentric, as if he were walking on roller skates, turning his stick like a lever on a gearshift. (Bilton p. 98)
“In his role as the vagabond, Chaplin represents an underdog that the audience can sympathize with. As the underdog, he is overlooked by society. It is this status as outsider that is key to Chaplin's success at social commentary. Like the court jester or the Shakespearean fool, the tramp can point out society's idiosyncrasies without being persecuted. Not only is he not chastised for his critique on society, he is applauded with laughter. " (A. Miller, 2009)
Re-performances
At the 15th Rostock Silent Film Night in the Nicolaikirche, Der Graf was shown on October 10, 2010 together with Chaplin's films Behind the Screen and The Champion . Dirk Wüstenberg accompanied the organ.
Under the motto “Experience cinema like almost 100 years ago”, it was performed at a silent film concert for children in the Potsdam Film Museum on August 3, 2012 together with Der Feuerwehrmann . The film was accompanied on the Welte cinema organ, a "powerful sounding instrument that can replace 30 musicians".
The culture channel Arte broadcast the film on December 24, 2013 on German television, accompanied by music by Donald Sosin.
Several publishers have meanwhile put Der Graf on DVD.
literature
- Alan Bilton: Silent Film Comedy and American Culture. Palgrave Macmillan Publisher, Basingstoke, Hampshire 2013, ISBN 978-1-137-02026-0 . (English)
- David Gerstein: Charlie and the Iconic Construct of Class. In: cartoonresearch.com 1995. (English)
- Fritz Hirzel: Chaplin's shadow. Report from a forensics agency. Kaleidoscope, Zurich 1982.
- Lewis Jacobs: The Rise of the American Film. A critical history. Verlag Harcourt, Brace 1939, pp. 226–247, esp. 234. (English)
- Babette Kaiserkern: Charlie is dancing. In: Potsdam's latest news. April 28, 2008.
- Kenneth S. Lynn: Chaplin - His Life and Times. Simon & Schuster, New York 1997, ISBN 0-684-80851-X ; Cooper Square Press, New York 2003, ISBN 0-8154-1255-X ; Carl Bennett: Book review. (online at: silentera.com ) (English)
- Roger Manvell: Chaplin. Verlag Hutchinson, 1975, p. 98. (English)
- Paul Merton: Silent Comedy. Random House Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-1-4090-3566-4 , pp. 85, 89, 102, 110. (English)
- Autumn Miller: A Tribute to the Tramp. An Analysis of the Comedic Contributions of Charlie Chaplin. In: Yahoo Contributor Network. May 11, 2009. (English)
- James L. Neibaur: Early Charlie Chaplin. The Artist as Apprentice at Keystone Studios. (= G - Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series). Verlag Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland / USA 2012, ISBN 978-0-8108-8242-3 , pp. 212, 223, 226. (English)
- Steven J. Ross: Hollywood Left and Right. How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics. Oxford University Press, 2011. (English)
- Raoul Sobel, David Francis: Chaplin: genesis of a clown. Quartet Books, 1977, p. 205. (English)
- Jeffrey Vance: Mutual - Chaplin Specials. Adapted from his book Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema. New York 2003. (English)
- Friedrich von Zglinicki: The way of the film. History of cinematography and its predecessors. Rembrandt Verlag, Berlin 1956, pp. 515, 517-520.
Web links
- The count in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- The Graf as a complete film in theInternet Archive
Illustrations:
- Announcement of the Mutual Co.
- Advertisement for Mutual Co. in Moving Picture World , September 23, 1916
- Mutual Co. movie poster 1916
- Still image (Chaplin with Campbell and customer)
- Still image (Chaplin and Purviance)
- Still image (poster with Campbell, Chaplin, Kelley, Purviance and White, colored)
- Still image (Charlie hides in the dining elevator)
- Image of Charles Chaplin without a mask
- Image of Eric Campbell without a mask
- Picture of the filming from Picture-Play , December 1916 (Chaplin with his cameramen, right: Rollie Totheroh)
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. Zglinicki p. 519.
- ↑ cf. WaverBoy, entry # 285, May 29, 2007 Archive link ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ) 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.
- ↑ The films of THE CHAPLIN ESSANAY-MUTUAL PROJECT have been restored by: La Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna and Lobster Films, in collaboration with Film Preservation Associates and Chaplin Office .
- ↑ cf. imdb.com [1] and Serge Bromberg, August 1, 2013 [2]
- ↑ cf. tumblr.com [3] (anon., April 9, 2013): ... social satire. The rich people are all presented as totally naive and easily taken by Chaplin and his boss's tricks. Even when they're displaying awful table manners or other uncharacteristic “unrefined” behavior, they never question the ruse until The Tramp gets drunk and starts throwing cake everywhere ...
- ↑ Article "The most famous man in the world", cf. textlog.de [4]
- ↑ cf. Merton pp. 85-86.
- ↑ cf. stummfilmnacht.de [5]
- ↑ cf. astoria.de Archive link ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 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.
- ↑ cf. arte.tv archive link ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 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.
- ↑ cf. Dr. Achim Lewandowski: DVD Recommendation No. 7 - Films with Charlie Chaplin [6]
- ↑ cartoonresearch.com ( Memento of the original from September 11, 2015 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.
- ↑ (online at: pnn.de )
- ↑ (online at: voices.yahoo.com ) ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ (online at: charliechaplin.com )
