The Blue Express (1929)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The blue express |
| Original title | Голубой экспресс |
| Country of production | Soviet Union |
| original language | Russian |
| Publishing year | 1929 |
| length | 1,651 m (5 acts), at 19 frames per second 76 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Ilya Trauberg |
| script | Ilja Trauberg, Leonid Ijerichonow |
| production | Sowkino (Moscow) |
| music | Edmund Meisel |
| camera | Boris Chrennikov |
| occupation | |
| |
The Blue Express ( Russian Голубой экспресс Goluboi ekspress ) is a Soviet-Russian silent film that the director Ilya Trauberg shot in 1929 for the state production company Sowkino . The screenplay was written by director Ilja Trauberg and Leonid Ijerichonow based on a story by Sergei Tretyakov . The camera work was done by Boris Chrennikow . The film architects were Boris Dubrowski-Eschke and Moissei Lewin .
action
China in the 1920s: an express train intended to take travelers to Russia is waiting for its departure. As in the reality of society, the passengers on the train are divided into three classes: first class travels, accompanied with military honors, the British envoy; with him missionaries, diplomats, entrepreneurs. Sales representatives, citizens and scholars sit in the compartments of the second class. The common workers have to be content with the third class.
A pair of siblings have also settled here. Two Western Europeans are soon after the girl: rough fellows who quickly become intrusive until a scuffle develops in the course of which the girl dies. The dispute finally escalates into a revolt when coolies rise up against corrupt generals, exploiters and gun dealers in the wake . The soldiers who are accompanying the British ambassador can no longer control the situation; a government-loyal general seeks his salvation in a daring escape over the wagon roofs as the fighting escalates into first class, the British ambassador takes his own life in his desperation.
The Chinese officials are still trying to steer the train onto a siding, but this fails because of the solidarity of the railway workers. In the end, the train, liberated by the working class, drives straight up out of the picture in a bold attitude - into a revolutionary future.
background
In Russia, the film premiered in Moscow on December 20, 1929 . In America the film ran under the title China Express on March 8, 1930 with English subtitles by Michael Gold in New York City , New York. In Germany, the film started on October 20, 1930 in Berlin as Der Blaue Express . The film was shown in France under Le train mongol .
The film was distributed in Germany by Prometheus Film-Verleih und Vertriebs GmbH . Piel Jutzi took over the German version of the distribution . On August 27, 1930, it was available to the Berlin Film Inspection Agency under test number 26665 with a length of 1,583 m and was declared "not suitable for minors". At a second test date on April 22, 1933, the film was tested by the Berlin Film Inspectorate under test no. 6490 in a length of 1,590 m finally completely banned. The copy preserved in the Federal Archives (accession number: BSP 4563-6) has a total length of 1,651 meters.
In Austria , after 1930, 16 mm cine film copies were made and archived from the film for mobile use in worker education.
The avant-garde German composer Edmund Meisel , who had already composed highly acclaimed music for Sergei M. Eisenstein's Bronenossez Potjomkin in 1925 , wrote his own accompanying music for Goluboi ekspress in 1930 shortly before his death , which considerably increased the effect of the images.
Ilja Trauberg (1905–1948), born in Odessa , was the brother of Leonid Trauberg , Eisenstein's assistant director for the film October (1928) and most recently a member of the DEFA board . Sergei Tretyakov (1892–1937), as a theorist and practitioner, was in active exchange with Sergei M. Eisenstein, Vladimir Mayakovsky , Bertolt Brecht and other exponents of avant-garde art of the 1920s and 1930s.
reception
When it was shown in the Babylon cinema in Berlin , the “Russenfilm” was shown without being given ratings such as “artistic” or “people-educating”, such as the patriotic Prussian films that ran at the same time, e. B. Gustav Ucicky's The Flute Concerto from Sans-souci .
In the assessment of the Viennale it is said: “ Goluboj Ekspress […] draws on stylistic figures of Russian revolutionary film, but in doing so, like the policy of the Soviet Union at the time, turns towards East Asia and, in turn, will shortly afterwards inspire Josef von Sternberg in Hollywood to write Shanghai Express . "
Fritz Rosenfeld wrote in Vienna in 1929: “Ilja Trauberg [...] consciously follows Eisenstein's example. The stairs of Odessa reappear here, and even the famous assembly experiment of three stone figures photographed one after the other, which give the impression of a wary lion. But Trauberg also has his own good assembly ideas, such as the parable between the clashing buffers and the collision of social contradictions in the course, or the fading of the hands of the 'president' into threatening cannon barrels. "
Web links
- The Mystery of the Blue Train in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Голубой экспресс / Goluboi ekspress Russian cinema posters
- Le train mongol french cinema poster
literature
- Oksana Bulgakova: Matter and Sensations . (PDF) - Russian films in the USA in the early 1930s
- Karl Heinz Dettke: Cinema organs and cinema music in Germany. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1995, ISBN 3-476-01297-2 .
- Christian Dewald (ed.): "Proletarisches Kino in Österreich" published by Filmarchiv Austria (autumn 2007). Volume 1: Workers' film during the First Republic (working title). A research project of the Filmarchiv Austria in cooperation with the WIFAR - Vienna Film Archive of the Labor Movement.
- Hans Emons: Film - Music - Modernism: On the history of a changing relationship. (= Art, Music and Theater Studies, Volume 14). Verlag Frank & Timme, 2014, ISBN 978-3-7329-0050-3 , p. 71.
- Michael Hanisch: The Babylon. Stories about a Berlin cinema. With digressions. Berlin 2002, p. 13. babylonberlin.de (PDF)
- James zu Hüningen: Prometheus-Film-GmbH. In: Lexicon of film terms. filmlexikon.uni-kiel.de
- Herbert Ihering: From Reinhardt to Brecht - Four decades of theater and film. Volume 3: 1930-1932. German Academy of the Arts in Berlin. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1961, pp. 318, 429, 439.
- Sabine Gruber, Ulrich Ott u. a. (Ed.); Harry Graf Kessler : The Diary: 1926–1937. (= The Diary 1880–1937, Volume 9). Verlag Klett-Cotta, 2010, ISBN 978-3-7681-9819-6 , pp. 389, 1009.
- Brigitte Mayr, Michael Omasta: “Speed! Tempo! Tempo! ”- Fantasy machine and sound film war. In: Austrian culture and literature of the 20s. litkult1920er.aau.at
- Brigitte Mayr, Michael Omasta (ed.): Fritz Rosenfeld, film critic. Filmarchiv Austria publishing house, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-902531-27-8 .
- Lothar Prox: The one who composed with the eyes. The film musician Edmund Meisel. In: Booklet on Battleship Potemkin. The year 1905. Deluxe Edition, Transit Classics 2007.
- Gerd-Peter Rutz: Representations of film in literary fictions of the twenties and thirties. LIT Verlag, Münster 2000, pp. 195, 354, 357.
- Friedrich von Zglinicki: The way of the film. The history of cinematography and its predecessors. Rembrandt-Verlag, Berlin 1956, pp. 540, 549.
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. Bulgakowa p. 9: “In the late 20s – early 30s, New Yorkers could see the following films ... The Blue Express by Ilja Trauberg ...”
- ↑ Piel Jutzi biography at cinegraph.de
- ↑ cf. Dewald 2007, pp. 3–4, note 15. filmarchiv.at ( Memento of the original from April 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF): “Propaganda films originally shot on normal film (35 mm film) are copied onto cine film. They are expanding the narrow film archive, which is growing rapidly despite scarce funds through purchases and in-house production. At the beginning of the thirties, the educational center was also able to secure a distribution and rental monopoly for Russian films copied onto cine films. "
- ↑ cf. see Prox p. 10–12.
- ↑ "Meisel was one of the few filmmakers who saw tremendous opportunities in the sound film. The last work, made immediately before his death, was the music for the Soviet silent film THE BLUE EXPRESS (1930). ” Arte.tv November 27, 2007 ( memento of the original from April 9, 2014 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.
- ↑ Large cinema on Bülowplatz opposite the Volksbühne, built by Hans Poelzig , opened on April 11, 1929, with over 1280 seats in the stalls, tier and boxes. It had a permanent cinema orchestra with 16 musicians led by Pasquale Perris , plus a two-manual cinema organ from the Frankfurt organ building firm Philipps, played by the Amsterdam organist Peter Palla , cf. Dettke pp. 278-289, 358.
- ↑ cf. M. Hanisch, 2002, p. 13: "The Prussian films were" artistic "and" popular education ", the Russian films" Feuertransport "and" Goluboj ekspress "[The Blue Express] by Ilja Trauberg were neither one nor the other ... ”
- ↑ Program of viennale.at
- ↑ Fritz Rosenfeld ( Memento of the original from April 8, 2014 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. , Vienna 1929.
