The Headless Rider (1921)

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Movie
Original title The headless rider
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1921
length 280 minutes
Rod
Director Harry Piel
script Lothar Knud Frederik
Max Bauer
production Harry Piel for Metro-Film GmbH, Berlin
camera Georg Muschner
occupation

Der Reiter ohne Kopf is a three-part German adventure and sensational film from 1921 by and with Harry Piel .

action

As is often the case in Piel films, the plot is largely irrelevant and completely subordinated to (for these times) sensational performances (action) and breakneck performances (stunts).

The plot can no longer be completely reconstructed: the adventurer Harry Peel is looking for a missing millionaire. In the following three parts, he goes from one sensational involvement to the next. He always has to escape dangerous situations and seemingly hopeless situations when searching. Sometimes he jumps out of a window onto a tree and from there back to the ground, sometimes he rushes over roofs in a car and then falls into the water with the vehicle. In a sawmill it is almost split in two, then ends up in a cage with hungry lions and is almost crushed by a falling ceiling. At the end of the first part, Peel finds the millionaire he is looking for - meanwhile dead. Incidentally, the eponymous rider without a head, initially as an infantry without a horse, intervenes.

In the second part Peel has to fight with a lion in the circus and in all seriousness finds a testament in his disheveled mane in this duel. As an artist you fire him as a living cannonball, then he is literally sacked by his opponent, slips through a trapdoor and there - once again - meets lions. Incidentally, the headless rider appears again, who has actually switched from infantry to horse and means a lot of challenges for Peel. The title character is a "real guy", drinks and shoots like a real Wild West, and causes Peel a lot of trouble in the third part too, until the hero of the story turns everything for the best in the finale.

Production notes

With Der Reiter ohne Kopf , Piel achieved his final breakthrough as an action hero in German film in the spring of 1921 and was soon given the label “the German Douglas Fairbanks ”. This sensational film was an outstanding success with the public. Then Piel founded his own production company, Harry Piel Film Co. mbH, in the same year 1921.

The individual episodes of this film trilogy were entitled The Death Trap, The Mysterious Power and Harry Piel's Most Difficult Victory . Starting with the first part on March 24, 1921, the next two episodes were shown in the following month (April 8 and 12). The premiere theater was always the capital city Schauburg.

The length of all three parts - two two acts and one three acts - had a total length of around 7800 meters and thus a playing time of an estimated four and three quarters of an hour.

The shooting of the three-part film began in the second half of 1920. The film was filmed in the Jofa studios. Harry Piel produced for Metro Film. The studio buildings were designed by Willi A. Herrmann . Walter Zeiske served as manager .

A large part of the stunts was done by the then 23-year-old variety artist Hermann Stetza , who collected 500 Reichsmarks a month for his performance in Piel films . Until then, Piel had always claimed to do all of the stunts himself. At the beginning of 1921 there was a heated argument between Piel and the press in this regard. As Hans Richter reported in the cinema letter , Piel had to admit the following after much back and forth: “It is not he who creates the sensations, but an artist in his place. You can't blame him for that, only if he claims, as he is supposed to have done, that he did everything himself, then that's unfair. In the end, it doesn't matter to the audience who is in mortal danger, whether it's Piel or a substitute for Piel, at least the Schauburg was packed in the first two parts, which were even extended and the audience was with what Piel as director gave him showed agree. This means that Piel knows his audience and that there are many, very many people who like to watch sensational films. ”When Piel first came across the pure L'art pour l'art with Dangerous Traces , where he played a completely normal carpenter -Action film to give his adventure films a new direction, Stetza left Piel's company.

Reviews

The artistically completely unambitious entertainment multi-part, which is considered to be the epitome of Pielsch action films, was hardly noticed by critics interested in film art.

Hans Richter wrote briefly and succinctly in one of his cinema letters: "We do not want to value this type of film as art, but as variety and then it must be said that it is really sensational."

Another contemporary critic of Pielscher's productions of those days came to similar conclusions: “Harry Piel works in an American way: five somewhat coherent acts, but each an amazing sensation. Brilliant climbing games, jewelry thefts, well-trained police dogs, breathless pursuits with real Jiu-Jitsu, falling deaths from the roof onto the pavement, jumping from the fourth floor into the water and, above all, car arts ... plus horse races, women's wrestling ... a little undressing and nude shots, and speed - man has a very good conversation even without a head. "

In 1935, Oskar Kalbus ' Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst described the principle of Pielscher Films, which he was to apply and persevere regularly and consistently until the late 1930s, as follows: “Even in the sensational films of the war, Harry Piel was the“ man without Annoy". He has always remained the same, who carries out his sensations with his peculiar mastery of elegance and bravura. In all of his films it is part of his personal bad luck that criminals always pursue him, or else he is the liberator of persecuted innocence. Women especially like that. That is why Harry Piel was one of the most popular actors on the German screen in the silent film era. "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 6: N - R. Mary Nolan - Meg Ryan. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 237.
  2. ↑ Kinobrief (Kino) issue 58 from April 1921, p. 7 f.
  3. ↑ Hans Richter (ed.): Kinobriefe (Kino), issue 58, Berlin April 1921, p. 8
  4. ↑ Criticism in logbuchliteratur.de ( Memento of the original from June 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.logbuchliteratur.de
  5. ^ Oskar Kalbus: On the becoming of German film art. 1st part: The silent film. Berlin 1935. pp. 89 f.

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