The Pied Piper (film)

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Movie
Original title The Pied Piper
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1918
length 64 minutes
Rod
Director Paul Wegener
script Paul Wegener
production Paul Davidson
for PAGU, Berlin
camera Frederik Fuglsang
occupation

The Pied Piper , also known as The Pied Piper of Hameln , is a German silent film from 1918. It is the last part of Paul Wegener's fairy tale film trilogy in the late phase of the First World War .

action

The famous, old folk tale is told about the Pied Piper of Hamelin .

One day in the 13th century a traveling minstrel came to the small town of Hameln to free the citizens from an animal plague. And in fact he succeeds in chasing all the rats and mice out of Hamelin with his flute and drowning them in the Weser . But when the city leaders want to cheat the minstrel out of the promised wages, he returns to town. This time he lures all the children away from the city with his flute playing in a disguise.

Production notes

The Pied Piper was created towards the end of the First World War. The film was shot around Bautzen and in Hildesheim , the studio recordings were made in the Ufa Union studio in Berlin-Tempelhof . With this film, the director and leading actor Wegener concluded his small series of film adaptations of German sagas and folk tales, which he began in 1916 and which he staged in the leading role.

Like the two previous fairy tales Rübezahl's Wedding and Hans Trutz in the land of milk and honey , The Pied Piper was produced by Paul Davidson's PAGU on behalf of UFA . The first performance was on December 19, 1918 in the Berlin UT Lichtspiele Nollendorfplatz .

As in the previous fairy tale films, Wegener's then wife Lyda Salmonova played the female lead. The film structures are made by Rochus Gliese . The future silhouette specialist Lotte Reiniger created the title silhouettes. Walter Lehmann was here his film debut as manager .

The rats shown in the film that follow the minstrel out of town were “rats” made of wood. Working with trained animals had proven impossible. Instead, they made wooden rats and filmed them using the stop-motion method.

Reviews

Lotte H. Eisner wrote in her book The Demonian Canvas : “Wegener never succumbs to this tendency towards noble kitsch, perhaps because he once shot his fairy tale films in a real natural landscape. So he created pictures of the purest poetry, like that of the mayor's daughter in the RATTENFÄNGER VON HAMELN, this little virgin with the gothic protruding body, who surrenders to the dance on a light-flooded slope to the sound of the magic flute, while on the real lawn she surrenders to the sun weave a golden net. "

In Reclam's film guide it says on Wegener's saga and fairy tale films: “As a director, Wegener remained true to the subject area once opened. The Golem (Co-R: Henrik Galeen, 1914), Rübezahls Hochzeit (1916), The Pied Piper of Hameln (1918) and The Golem, How He Came into the World (Co-R: Carl Boese, 1920), live from the Unreality, from the world of legends and fairy tales. This is where the roots of Expressionism and - if you want - escapism of German film of the twenties lie. "

Oskar Kalbus ' Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst (Vom Werden German Filmkunst) commented on this very complex topic: “Paul Wegener first gave us' Rübezahl's Wedding '(1916), a lyrical folk picture book that made children's jubilation and happiness - even for the most blasé of big city dwellers - a present. Here too, Wegener shows new art again. New in the material and in the execution, in which all the achievements of modern direction have been used. Then came the “Pied Piper of Hameln” with the tingling rats and mice filling all the rooms - a material that cannot be found in a more cinematic way. Wegener also went his own way with his fairy tale film 'Hans Trutz im Schlaraffenland' (1917). For the adults he dressed all kinds of wisdom in fairy tales. Here, too, Wegener is great as an actor because he never puts his person in the foreground, but always only serves the whole. "

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Pied Piper in Filmportal.de.
  2. ↑ Press archive 2013 in tuebingen.de
  3. ↑ The demonic canvas, hrgg. v. Hilmar Hoffmann and Walter Schobert. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1980, p. 159.
  4. ↑ Reclams Filmführer, by Dieter Krusche, collaboration: Jürgen Labenski. P. 12. Stuttgart 1973.
  5. ^ Oskar Kalbus: On the becoming of German film art. 1st part: The silent film. Berlin 1935. p. 63.