The Lord of Love

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Movie
Original title The Lord of Love
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1919
length 70 minutes
Rod
Director Fritz Lang
script Leo Koffler
production Erwin Rosner
camera Emil Schünemann
occupation

Der Herr der Liebe is a German silent film drama from 1919. The film is Fritz Lang's second directorial work . He is considered lost.

action

“The owner of a castle south of the Forest Carpathians, a young magnate, has his lover Yvette, who appears as mistress in his castle. A young gypsy Stefana is her rival. A passing peddler is shown to Yvette, who is almost naked in a strange robe in which legs and breasts are visible and a few black stripes seem to be drawn across the bare body. Yvette shows this man by looking and moving that she should irritate him with her clothes.

Stefana has since found a scented handkerchief from Yvette and believes that this scent is the magic with which Yvette ties the magnate to herself and penetrates the lock to steal this spell. The magnate comes home with drunk friends, celebrates a drinking bout with them and finally leads the drunks to the sleeping Yvette's bed in order to “show” him “the drink” that can only “force” him.

At the party of a neighboring magnate, Yvette's lover is busy with the magnate's friend, who is also dressed in strange clothes, called Suzette: This dress is a dancer costume that reveals the upper body in the deep neckline. Yvette gets jealous. Yvette's lover wins large sums of money at the game. The magnate bets Suzette's property against the whole profit. But Yvette's lover loses this game.

In the meantime Stefana has broken into the castle and taken possession of a perfume bottle and Yvette's nightgown. The magnate, who is still under the spell of the dancing Suzette, finds Stefana dressed in a shirt and takes possession of her, secretly observed by the indignant Yvette, who decides to revenge.

The next day Yvette has the gypsy whipped out by the servant of the castle, lets the peddler come, gives himself up to him and sends him to the magnate to inform him of this. The peddler is then locked in a cellar.

After an excited discussion, Yvette is led by her lover to the peddler in the cellar. It appears that Yvette intends to test the degree of jealousy and the degree of anger of her lover. However, this lets the peddler go his way. Now Yvette wants to leave her lover, but he is begging for her love; when she rejects him, he strangles her and shoots herself on her corpse. "

- Carl Bulcke : censorship report of July 7, 1921

background

The production company was Helios-Film Erwin Rosner Berlin. It had an original length of 1,436 meters, about 70 minutes. Carl Ludwig Kirmse was responsible for the buildings .

The Berlin police issued him a youth ban (No. 43248), the premiere took place on September 24, 1919 in Berlin in the Richard Oswald-Lichtspiele.

For post-censorship, the length of four acts (Act I: 397 meters, Act II: 375 meters, Act III: 355 meters, Act IV: 189 meters) was shortened to 1,316 meters. On July 7, 1921, the film was then banned by the post-censorship (No. 3615). In response to a complaint from the Helios company, the film was examined again on July 25, 1921 (No. 99.21). Although the supervisory authority had no complaints about the entire film, it requested several changes. But since the producer Julius Sternheim , who was present at the censorship negotiations as a representative of the production company, categorically refused to comply with all other conditions, the ban was upheld.

The censorship under the chairmanship of Carl Bulcke stated “that the circumstances described are by no means untrue: the events take place“ south of the Forest Carpathians ”and it is known that in the border countries of this area, at least in earlier times, such a drastic lifestyle was common among the nobility of the country ” and “ that the popular portrayal of the film has literary counterparts, such as the novels by Maurus Jokai , which were read a lot in Germany 20 years ago ” , but also pointed out that “ the predominant Part of the population both the early moral conditions of Hungary and Galicia are just as unknown as the moral novels of these countries, and that the overwhelming part of the population is unable to recognize that the moral descriptions in this film want to depict conditions outside Germany. The uneducated part of the population, who today still has the main number of visitors to the cinema, sees the effect of such a film to its detriment only in the material, but in the present case in the crude erotic descriptions. The multiple appearances of half or almost completely undressed actresses must have just as demoralizing and brutalizing effect on this part of the population as the multiple allusions to sexual processes. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Lord of Love at silentera.com
  2. ↑ Censorship decision
  3. ↑ Film length calculator , frame rate : 18
  4. ↑ Censorship decisions in the archive of the German Film Institute