The Dance of Death (film)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title The dance of death
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1912
Rod
Director Urban Gad
script Urban Gad
production German Bioscop
for PAGU
camera Guido Seeber
occupation

The Dance of Death is a German silent film in three acts by Urban Gad from 1912. It is one of the director's fragmentary films.

action

Engineer Burk has worked hard to finally create a home for his young wife Bella. However, when a boiler explodes, Burk is seriously injured and is now a nursing case for weeks.

Bella meets the composer Czerneck from her music teacher. He persuades her to let him train her as a singer. They rehearse together and soon Bella can earn money on stage for family maintenance. She accepts an engagement and travels with Czerneck at her side to different cities, where she plays the lute, sings and dances on stage.

Bella enjoys great success, but Burk becomes suspicious and jealous. Bella swears eternal loyalty to him; Czerneck loves Bella, but his attempts at seduction are rejected by her and his love escalates into a frenzy. He forges a letter to Burk that is supposed to suggest his wife's infidelity. Bella finds the letter and is passed out with exasperation. At a rehearsal she performs the song from the dance of death , composed for her by Czerneck , a kind of sensual snake dance . When Czerneck then rushes at her furiously and wants to rape her, she stabs him to death after a brief scuffle. She kisses the dead man and is then arrested by the police.

production

After the success of the first Asta Nielsen / Urban Gad film series in 1911/12, Deutsche Bioscop had its own studio built in Neubabelsberg for shooting further Nielsen films . The dance of death was the first film that was made in the “Glashaus” in Neubabelsberg, the origin of today's Babelsberg film studio . The shooting took place in February 1912 within a few days.

The dance of death was banned by the censors on July 15, 1912, so the love and belly dance scenes in Act 2 and the murder in the final scene of Act 3 were not allowed to be shown in front of a young audience. In some cases, however, local censors circumvented the ban and performed the full film, which the film critics emphasized negatively: “Are we too dull or too naive? With us the youth can be seen everywhere, for example in the last few weeks in the dance of death . It seems that the local censorship is exercised quite laxly, since such a piece has often been approved for everyday performance, to which all ages and national classes crowd [] An adultery drama! "

The dance of death had its premiere on September 7, 1912 as the first film of the Asta Nielsen / Urban Gad series 1912/13 in Berlin. The film has been handed down in fragments. A copy of 427 meters (around 23 minutes) long has been preserved in the Gosfilmofond Moscow; the original film was 905 meters long (around 60 minutes). The original script for the film is in the Danish Film Institute .

criticism

In a letter to the editor of the magazine Lichtbild-Theater , a viewer criticized the film on November 21, 1912:

“Even if the representation is very good and the artist knows how to touch all the nuances of the soul, one has to deny this drama a deeper value. This whole plot of this piece borders on backstairs literature and does not show us in the picture the beautiful and solid that cinematography should actually represent. "

The Danish public also criticized Asta Nielsen's films as immoral with regard to the dance of death at the end of 1912, the German magazine Bild und Film reported on the public discussion in Denmark:

“Asta Nielsen, the world-famous ' Duse des Kientopps' is portrayed as the main representative of the dangerous direction of 'sensual films', and it becomes her whole way of awakening the sensuality of the audience through body contortions of a very questionable kind, as well as that of The school she has thus created in all of Europe is called reprehensible in the highest sense. "

literature

  • The dance of death . In: Ilona Brennicke, Joe Hembus: Classics of the German silent film 1910–1930 . Goldmann, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-442-10212-X , p. 225.
  • The dance of death . In: Karola Gramann, Heide Schlüpmann (ed.): Nachtfalter. Asta Nielsen, her films . Volume 2 of Edition Asta Nielsen . 2nd Edition. Filmarchiv Austria publishing house, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-902531-83-4 , pp. 75-82.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Malwine Rennert: From the market . In: Bild und Film , No. 2, 1, 1913, p. 26.
  2. ↑ Heide Schlüpmann, Eric de Kuyper, Karola Gramann, Sabine Nessel, Michael Wedel (eds.): Impossible love. Asta Nielsen, her cinema . Volume 1 of Edition Asta Nielsen. 2nd Edition. Filmarchiv Austria Verlag, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-902531-83-4 , p. 465.
  3. ↑ Heide Schlüpmann, Eric de Kuyper, Karola Gramann, Sabine Nessel, Michael Wedel (eds.): Impossible love. Asta Nielsen, her cinema . Volume 1 of Edition Asta Nielsen. 2nd Edition. Filmarchiv Austria Verlag, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-902531-83-4 , p. 199.
  4. ↑ Quoted from: Renate Seydel, Allan Hagedorff (ed.): Asta Nielsen. Your life in photo documents, self-testimonies and contemporary reflections . Henschelverlag, Berlin 1981, p. 73.
  5. ^ Protest against Asta Nielsen . In: image and film. Journal of Photography and Cinematography , December 1912.