Stepping off the path

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title Stepping off the path
Country of production German Empire
original language German
Publishing year 1939
length 100 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Gustaf Gründgens
script Georg C. Klaren
Eckart from Naso
production Gustaf Gründgens for Terra-Film, Berlin
music Mark Lothar
camera Ewald Daub
cut Johanna Schmidt
occupation

The Step from the Path is a German feature film by Gustaf Gründgens based on the novel Effi Briest (1895) by Theodor Fontane . Gründgens wife Marianne Hoppe embodied Effi, a woman between two men, played by Karl Ludwig Diehl and Paul Hartmann . The film is considered to be Gründgen's most famous and most ambitious cinema production.

action

Germany during the imperial era, towards the end of the 19th century. Effi Briest is a happy, young woman from a good family. She is a boisterous, free-spirited being who knows what it wants and expects from life. Her open, whirlwind manner opens the heart of the much older Baron von Instetten, a rising civil servant. Effi also takes a liking to the handsome Rittmeister, who completely corresponds to her image of a fine, cultivated and “dashing” man. She was all the happier when one day the baron asked for her hand. Effi is only 17 years old when she becomes the district administrator in Kessin. But Effi's first experiences as "Frau Rittmeister" quickly throw her back to the ground of reality. Her husband is rigid and careful about formalities, and she is often alone in the huge house that has now become her home and at the same time is very strange, because Gerd von Instetten takes his obligations as a high official very seriously. Eventually she becomes the mother of a daughter named Annie. However, it does not diminish the feeling of loneliness and uselessness.

Things only change when Effi takes the major a. D. gets to know Crampas. Crampas is a friend of her husband, but otherwise completely different: less formal and stiff, but a fun-loving charmer and daredevil. It starts to crackle between the two, they write love letters and begin a tender affair. One day Instetten revealed to his wife that he had been promoted to privy councilor and that both would have to move to Berlin. Effi then immediately terminated contact with Crampas. Meanwhile, six years have passed. During a stay at Effis' spa, Instetten discovers the love letters his wife has received from Crampas. He then challenges his former friend to a duel - the way they dealt with things like that in those circles back then. Crampas dies in this trade of honor, and Instetten has to be behind bars for three months, since duels are prohibited by imperial decree. After his release, however, he rises to the position of Ministerial Director. He cuts the connection with Effi; Instetten files for divorce and the two of them never see each other again.

A difficult time now begins for Effi, who is socially ostracized because of her long-ago "misstep": she lost one man in a duel, the other turned away from her because of his inherent arrogance and defamation, and she is finally no longer welcome in her parents' home either. To make matters worse, her own child was finally taken away from her by court order and given to her ex-husband, and she is not allowed to visit Annie because of her “moral misconduct”. Without hope, her mental and physical decline begins. Roswitha Gellenhagen, Effi's maid, managed to snatch Annie out of the clutches of Instetten for one afternoon, thus enabling mother and daughter to meet again. But Baron Instetten has alienated Effi from his own child and turned the once fun-loving tomboy who was a little Effi Briest into a perfectly shaped, rigid, seven-year-old young lady. This girl is deeply alien to Effi. She soon fell seriously ill, whereupon Roswitha asked for the pharmacist and doctor Dr. Gieshübler sends. But it is too late. Gieshübler was able to bring about the reconciliation between Effi and her parents, but she died a little later at home.

Production notes

The film title comes from Ernst Wichert's play "A Step From the Path", which is performed in Fontane's novel by the good society in Kessin, directed by Major Crampas and with Effi in the female lead. Wichert's play is, however, a comedy .

The step from the path was filmed from the beginning of September to November 1938 in the Ufastadt zu Babelsberg. The outdoor shots were made in northern Germany and on the Zeesen estate near Berlin owned by director Gründgens. The production costs amounted to a moderate 973,000 RM . The ten-act passed the Nazi film censorship on February 3, 1939 and was banned from youth. The first performance of The Step on the Path took place on February 9, 1939 in Berlin's Capitol Cinema . In the same year 1939 the film could also be seen in Denmark and the USA. The youth ban in Germany was lifted after censorship on November 30, 1942. The television first broadcast took place on July 4, 1960 on GDR television.

In the film, the singer Marietta Tripelli, played by Elisabeth Flickenschildt , recites the Sapphic Ode by Johannes Brahms and the French folk song Auprès de ma blonde . Flickenschildt did not sing himself, however; she was voiced by Gerty Molzen .

The costumes were created by Gründgens' confidante Traugott Müller , who also designed the film structures implemented by Franz Koehn . Eduard Kubat took over the production management. Rudolf Schaad and Ulrich Erfurth were Gustaf Gründgens' assistant directors.

Effects and cinematic consequences

According to Drewniak, the film provoked a stormy demand for Fontane's novel and also led to the fact that the novel was reprinted in an abridged version by the Frankfurter Illustrierte and the Preußische Zeitung in Königsberg on the occasion of the film's release.

In 1944, on the occasion of Fontane's 125th birthday, two more Fontane film adaptations were commissioned with The Old Song and The Dumb Guest .

Further films of Briest were made in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955 (as Rosen im Herbst ), in 1970 in the GDR with Angelica Domröse and again in the Federal Republic in 1972/73 (premiered in 1974) under the direction of Rainer Werner Fassbinder with Hanna Schygulla in the title role.

Award

  • "Artistically valuable" rating

Reviews

The contemporary criticism as well as the one after 1945 dealt intensively with Gründgens' first literarily engaged screen production. In the year of its premiere in 1939 alone, there were numerous reviews in papers such as the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung, BZ am Mittag, DAZ, Frankfurter Zeitung, Hamburger Tageblatt, Kölnische Zeitung, Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung and the Völkischer Beobachter. Below is a small selection before and after 1945:

“So it works! - That is the nice insight that you take home from Gustaf Gründgens' first film of your own production. So it is still possible to make a high-quality film within German production. So it is really possible to show good taste in the cinema to the broadest sections of the people - best taste from the first meter of the opening title to the end. It actually works without cheap sentimentality and tones enthusiastic about effects. And it's even going well. "The Step From The Path", this film based on Theodor Fontane's "Effi Briest", is the best successful film adaptation of anybody ever seen. "

- National newspaper of February 16, 1939

"... a long-time highly esteemed Fontane adaptation."

- CineGraph : Gustaf Gründgens. Delivery 1, D 1

“... one of the most important films from the Nazi era. (…) Gustaf Gründgens renounced cheap effects of duel scenes, deaths, etc. in the film. Effi Briests's husband did not become a caricature of a pedantic official, and his opponent was not a type of unscrupulous seducer either. Both appeared human and even sympathetic. "

- Boguslaw Drewniak: The German Film 1938-1945 . A complete overview. Düsseldorf 1987, p. 495 f.

The lexicon of the international film says: "One of several film adaptations of the Fontane novel Effi Briest , here in a solidly staged pre-war version that emphasizes the emotional immediacy of the depiction instead of the social background."

In the large Personenlexikon of the film is to be read in the biography Marianne Hoppe: "In 1938 she was among Gründgens a fine spiritual interpretation of Effi Briest Fontane in its adaptation The step of the way ."

Only the Nazi ideologues around Alfred Rosenberg had considerable reservations for completely different reasons. In June 1939 it read:

“A further prominent treatment of subjects and themes of the 19th century would inevitably lead to the impression that we were stuck with our problems and concerns in the 19th century or that our time in film lacks a strong artistic driving force, the subjects and problems to see with new eyes and a new consciousness. "

- National Socialist monthly books , hrgg. by Alfred Rosenberg. June 1939, p. 74 f.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. Ulrich J. Klaus: Deutsche Tonfilme, 10th year 1939. P. 166 (089.39), Berlin 1999
  2. ^ Boguslaw Drewniak: The German Film 1938-1945 . A complete overview. Düsseldorf 1987, p. 496
  3. ↑ Stepping off the path. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 21, 2015 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  4. 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 4: H - L. Botho Höfer - Richard Lester. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 53.

literature

  • Daniela Fischer: Fontane's “Effi Briest” on the screen. A parent-child relationship through the ages . Master thesis. University of Augsburg 2011

Web links