The pride of the company

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Movie
Original title The pride of the company
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1914
length approx. 47 minutes
Rod
Director Carl Wilhelm
script Walter Turszinsky
Jacques Burg
production Paul Davidson
for PAGU, Berlin
camera Friedrich Weinmann
occupation

The pride of the company is an early, German silent film comedy by Carl Wilhelm from 1914 with Ernst Lubitsch in the leading role.

action

Siegmund Lachmann is a small employee with two left hands. When one day he demolished his boss's shop due to his clumsiness, the boss fired him. Siegmund is desperate and plays with the idea of ​​killing himself. Since it dies badly on an empty stomach, he decides to have a bite to eat first. After that he feels much better and all thoughts of suicide are gone. Now he makes a completely different decision: Siegmund wants to set off for new shores and seek his luck in the great metropolis of Berlin and dare to start again.

As the rascal that he is, he pretends to be more than he actually is - hardly having arrived in the capital. A fine fashion salon gives him a chance and hires him as one of his salespeople. Soon the hearts of the female employees fly to him, the shy but shrewd Gernegroß. His boss's daughter also makes advances for him, and Siegmund is already imagining life as the son-in-law of a rich man in the most beautiful colors. But his boss is not exactly enthusiastic about the prospect of having to welcome Lachmann to the family soon. And therefore Siegmund is put out again.

Siegmund, tired of the eternal setbacks, now takes a different path to finally make a career and find happiness. He puts an advertisement in the newspaper: "Wanted to marry into a fashion salon". He is all the more surprised when, of all people, his old boss answers this ad. It takes a while until Siegmund finally conquers the lady of his heart and has all the concerns of his future father-in-law.

Production notes

The company's pride arose in the early summer of 1914 in the Union Film Atelier in Berlin-Tempelhof . The film, which consists of three acts and an epilogue, premiered on July 30, 1914 in the UT Kurfürstendamm (press presentation) and had its mass start in January 1915. At this point in time, the participating actor Victor Arnold had been dead for three months.

The great public success of the comedy Die Firma heirat ( The Company Marries) , which premiered six months earlier , allowed the producing PAGU and director Wilhelm to take the decision to shoot this similarly stored material The Pride of the Company with largely the same crew .

criticism

The film received a very friendly reception from the film critics at the time and was often understood as a further development or unofficial continuation of the Wilhelm Lubitsch comedy The Company is Getting Married .

In the photo stage you can read: "The story can also be:" The story of an apprentice "or" The company is getting married "(Part II), because we see the same apprentice Siegmund Lachmann, who was also involved in the successful clothing industry back then. Posse mastered the situation so confidently: it was the capable Ernst Lubitsch who got married on Thursday night in front of a forum of 1000 invited in Berlin's UT in Friedrichstrasse. - Walter Turszinsky and Jaques Burg, under the direction of Carl Wilhelm, spun the funny thread 1500 m further, and so in three acts and an epilogue all the original and characteristic passed before us, what those around Hausvoigteiplatz so interesting. Delicious subtitles give the thing the real spice, and the delicious music ideas put together with great skill and wit by the director Glücksmann very cleverly underline the funny thing in which (as once in May) the flicker artists Marthe Kriwitz, Victor Arnold and Albert meet Paulig rally around Lubitsch, so that the thing succeeds with talent, humor and taste. "

The cinematographer wrote: "The farce is a highly amusing counterpart to the film" The Company Marries ", which was received with great acclaim at the time. (...) The plot is extremely entertaining and rich in spicy punch lines; the actors all solved their task excellently and often created very natural, often caricatured underlined types from the kingdom of Mercury. Special mention should be made of Ernst Lubitsch in the role of the apprentice Siegmund Lachmann, who often unleashed resounding amusement. "

As expected , the Yiddish humor of its German-Jewish makers, seen both in The Company Marries and in The Pride of the Company , was sharply criticized under National Socialism and castigated in anti-Semitic style as "alien to the Germans". Oskar Kalbus wrote about this in 1935: “On the other hand, it must seem quite incomprehensible to us today that during the difficult times of the war the cinema audience cheered an actor who behaved with alien naughtiness in every situation: Ernst Lubitsch. In the film “The Company Marries” (1914) he, a little provincial, rises to the dizzying heights of the clothing power, and in “Pride of the Company” (1914) we follow the career of an apprentice who in turn comes from the provinces comes to the capital and becomes the boss's son-in-law as a vigilante clerk. "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lichtbild-Bühne, No. 48, from August 1, 1914
  2. ↑ Der Kinematograph, No. 397, August 5, 1914
  3. ^ Oskar Kalbus: On the becoming of German film art. 1st part: The silent film. Berlin 1935. p. 34

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