The Tiger of Esnapur (1959)

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Movie
Original title The tiger of Esnapur
Country of production Federal Republic of Germany
Italy
France
original language German
Publishing year 1959
length 96 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Fritz Lang
script Fritz Lang
Werner Jörg Lüddecke
Thea von Harbou (novel)
production CCC-Film ( Artur Brauner )
Rizzoli Film
Régina SA
music Michel Michelet
camera Richard fear
cut Walter Wischniewsky
occupation

The Tiger of Eschnapur is a German-Italian-French feature film by Fritz Lang from 1958. It is a heavily modified remake of the two-part silent film classic The Indian Tomb from 1921 and the film The Tiger of Eschnapur from 1938. It premiered on January 21, 1959 in Hanover in the Palast Theater. In March of the same year the sequel The Indian Tomb appeared .

action

The German engineer Harald Berger saves the temple dancer Seetha from a dangerous tiger on his way to the (fictional) Indian city of Eschnapur. In Eschnapur, where Berger is supposed to work, Prince Chandra rules, who gives Berger an emerald ring after his arrival because he saved the dancer. But Berger also fell in love with Seetha and also found out that she has European parents.

Seetha dances in front of the prince who wants to marry her and make her the new maharani . This does not please Prince Padhu, the brother of the late Maharani. Prince Ramigani, Chandra's half-brother, is secretly hoping that in the event of such a marriage the indignation of the priesthood, because he would like to gain power himself.

Padhu has Seetha kidnapped, but she is freed by Chandra. Berger secretly visits her in his lake palace, which Chandra learns. Although Ramigani insidiously kills Seetha's servant Bharani at a festival, Prince Chandra, observing another meeting between Berger and Seetha, can assure himself that the two have a relationship.

He throws Berger to the tiger, which has now been caught, but Berger can defeat the tiger. Together with Seetha he escapes from the palace of the Maharajah. His boss and brother-in-law Dr. Rhode, who has meanwhile arrived at the Palace of Chandra with his wife Irene, no longer meets him. Instead, Rhode receives the order from the Maharajah to build a tomb because the woman he loved has betrayed him.

Berger and Seetha are on the run from the chase that Chandra has sent after them. You get caught in a sandstorm and lie motionless.

background

The Lake Palace of Udaipur in Lake Pichhola

Fritz Lang returned from America in 1957 and received an offer from producer Artur Brauner to remake The Indian Tomb from 1921. Lang had already written the script at that time, but had to leave the direction to Joe May .

The plot of the new film no longer has much in common with the 1921 classic. Director Fritz Lang was particularly disturbed by the sentimentality inherent in Werner Jörg Lüddecke's script , and so he changed it many times in his own way. Lang, on the other hand, liked the possibility of staging architecture.

The outdoor shots were shot from October to November 1958 in the Indian state of Rajasthan , including at the Lake Palace in Udaipur . The film was first shown on German television on December 25, 1970 on ARD .

In the German theatrical version, Debra Paget from the USA was dubbed by Rosemarie Fendel , Paul Wagner lent his voice to Valéry Inkijinoff of Russian origin .

literature

  • Claudius Seidl: The German film of the fifties . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-453-86102-7

Reviews

  • Heyne Filmlexikon (1995): “ Fritz Lang's colorful remake of Joe May's film from 1938 is an adventurous, romantic fairy tale, dream cinema with bizarre undertones. Too slack for a 'real long' though. "
  • Lexicon of the international film : “ … naive-romantic fairy tale and lavishly equipped adventure spectacle in beautiful colors and sedate rhythm. Above all, the pale, often involuntarily funny actors and the concessions to the trivial romanticism in the German cinema of the 50s let the film at best reach the level of an entertaining show piece. "
  • Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz in Lexicon "Films on TV" (extended new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 817: "Exotic adventure in grandiose furnishings - kitschy trivial romance in the style of the fifties; not to be compared with Lang's earlier masterpieces." (Rating: 2 stars = average)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of release for The Tiger of Eschnapur . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2005 (PDF; test number: 18 834 DVD).
  2. ↑ The tiger of Esnapur. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed April 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used