The wrong Dimitry

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Movie
Original title The wrong Dimitry
UT: A Tsar's fate.
Six acts according to history
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1922
length 82 minutes
Age rating FSK youth ban
Rod
Director Hans Steinhoff
script Hans Steinhoff
Paul Beyer
production Hanns Lippmann
camera Helmar Lerski
occupation

The false Dimitry (subtitle: Ein Zarenschicksal. Six nudes freely based on history ) is a German silent film from 1922 directed by Hans Steinhoff . The main roles are occupied by Alfred Abel , Agnes Straub , Eugen Klöpfer and Paul Hartmann . Steinhoff's interpretation is based on the historical events as presented in Pushkin's play as well as in Schiller's drama fragment Demetrius and Hebbel's drama fragment .

action

Tsar Ivan's reign draws to a close around 1584, and the ruler worries about not having a suitable successor. His eldest son Fedor, devout and mainly interested in ringing large church bells, shows little interest in the office. Ivan's seventh wife Marfa would like to see her underage son Dimitry on the throne of the tsar, which she is trying to arrange with the help of Boris Godunov . When the ruler's imminent end was prophesied by his court astrologer, he installed five boyars , including Godunov, and determined that they would exercise power until his son Fedor came of age.

Immediately after Tsar Ivan's death, Godunov began his preparations to sit himself on the Tsar's throne. A letter from Marfa, actually addressed to the council, was leaked to him by the boyar Bitjagov. In it she complains about Godunov, who banned her from the court. When Bitjagov tells of the fact that he saw Dimitry and his friend Grigory aiming arrows at his likeness, Godunov uses this as an opportunity to give the order to kill the boys. Bitjagow is horrified and doesn't know what to do now, especially since Grigory is his son, who comes from his relationship with Dimitry's wet nurse Anna. A relationship that he has to keep strictly secret for professional reasons. Since Bitjagov does not know how to circumvent Godunov's order, he actually has Dimitry murdered during the Spring Festival in Uglich. However, his own son Grigory is spared and taken to Poland, where he is safe for the time being. Before that, Grigory was hung the cross that belonged to Dimitry. The voivode Mischek finds the boy in front of his castle. In a letter he is threatened not to try under any circumstances to find out the boy's origin. The cross that he carries will, at the right time, solve the riddle of his parentage.

In Moscow, preparations are being made for the funeral services for Ivan's son Fedor, who has surprisingly passed away, when news is received that Dimitry has been murdered. Godunov then immediately proclaimed himself the new tsar. He also has the audacity to ask Marfa to marry him, as he hopes this will strengthen his position. When she refuses, Godunow banishes her to the Chudova monastery. But Bitjagov, who helped Godunov come to power, also experienced a bitter disappointment, instead of receiving thanks, he had him thrown into dungeon. The boyar swears that if an opportunity presented itself, he would take revenge. Since Godunov exercises his power with great ruthlessness, people all over the country have a hard time under his iron knot. When Bitjagov managed to escape the dungeon after many years, he was already very weak and marked by death. He learns from the voivod Mischek that he raised his son Grigory with a lot of love and that he is in love with Mischek's daughter Marina. However, Marina is already engaged to another man who has cursed Grigory as a bastard, whereupon this has left his house head over heels. Bitjagow feels his end is near and swears to Mischek that Grigory is the Tsar's son Dimitry, who was not murdered at the time. So he wants to take revenge on Godunov.

At the same time, Grigory clashes with Count Jaro Lenski in a tavern near the Polish army camp, who turns on the dancer Nastja clumsily. When Grigory is then overwhelmed by soldiers, Nastja manages to free him from Lenski's tent. They flee together and after a while encounter Mischek's army. Then, to Grigory's surprise, something extraordinary happens: he is told that he is the son of Tsar Ivan. Mischek promises Grigory his support in the fight against the usurper Godunov. And all of a sudden Marina discovers her love for Grigory too, now that he's in such an influential position. With this fact Grigory completely forgets that there is a woman who really loves him, Nastja. The news that the tsar's son is alive is quickly making the rounds of the country. Godunov's desperate attempts to refute that Dimitry is still alive come to nothing, especially since Marfa, whom he has ordered back from the seclusion of the monastery, is resisting his pressure. Confident that the Polish army has now taken the city, she assures that she will publicly recognize Grigory as her son Dimitry. However, it makes it a condition that Godunov must be killed.

So it happens that Grigory and Marina celebrate a big wedding party and they are cheered by the people. Marfa reminds Grigory of his promise to see that Godunov is killed. However, Marina, who only wanted the position at the side of an influential man, turns back to her former fiancé and lover. But it gets worse: the boyars, seeing their influence waning, instigate an uprising and free Godunov from prison. Then they overthrow Grigory, who fights fiercely but cannot do anything against the overwhelming odds. And Nastja is there again and tries everything to help him, but in the end she can't do anything. All she has left is to kneel at Grigory's corpse with his mother Anna and to endure the way he is mocked by the masses even in death.

production

Filming

The shooting took place from mid-May to the end of August 1922 in Staaken and in the airship hangar there. The film was produced by Gloria-Film GmbH (Berlin) on behalf of Universum-Film AG ( UFA ), Berlin. It was distributed by the UFA subsidiary Hansa-Filmverleih. The film, which had the working title Demetrius , has a length of 6 acts equal to 2,694 meters (Austria 2,642 meters). The restored version is 2,042 meters long, equivalent to 82 minutes at 22 frames per second. On December 13, 1922, the film was subject to a "youth ban" under test number B.6838. Walter Reimann was responsible for the film structures, the equipment and the decorative facilities . The buildings he was by Alfred Young supports and Hans Lueck. Most of the costumes were loaned from the Dresden State Opera. Thirteen copies of the film were in circulation in Germany in 1923, three of them in Berlin.

background

Ludwig Hartau was originally intended for the role of Iwan and Nastja Aud Egede Nissen for the role of Nastja Aud .

Due to the positive reviews and the quality of his debut film Clothes Make People , the producer Hanns Lippmann became aware of Steinhoff and brought him to Berlin for three productions. The name Lippmann stood for Gloria-Film, a subsidiary of UFA , which had the reputation of being the “jewel in the crown of UFA”. At the beginning of the 1920s Steinhoff was the third stage director (after Leopold Jessner and Karl Grune ) to be signed by Lippmann. For Steinhoff, this commitment was a stroke of luck in so far as he would have loved to have shot a historically set story when he founded his film company Volvo-Film. The film adaptation he had in mind about Boris Godunov , Tsar and Grand Duke of Russia, was too expensive for such a small film studio.

In the Film-Kurier of June 24, 1922, Hans Steinhoff commented on his film as follows: “Demetrius is ... not a character tied to any lost past; the adventurer [sic] and unconscious, therefore so deeply tragic deceiver, surrounded by the shimmer of mystery, is of timeless appeal and as eternal as it is modern. Not a figure for which we only get sympathy in a roundabout way - the fatefulness of his downfall has something fascinating for us, which perhaps justifies the huge effort with which we have the boldness to bring this film out. ”Steinhoff went on to say that not only the intellect by the Demetrius subject, for the filming of which he used the historical sources, was attracted, no, even the film eye indulged in the fantasy of bringing the architecture of the Rurik era, not yet shown in the film, onto the screen. He feels the Demetrius film "as a ballad pulsating in passionate rhythms with subtle undertones of unreal fairytale-like".

publication

The world premiere of The False Dimitry was on December 15, 1922 in the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin on the occasion of a charity performance for the benefit of the support fund of the Reich Association of the German Press. The first performance in Vienna took place on April 4, 1924. It also launched in cinemas in Finland, France and Poland. Its English title is: The False Dimitri .

history

The false Dimitri (also "false Demetrius" or "pseudo-Dimitri") was for a short time the Russian tsar in 1605/1606 as Dimitri II. His reign falls into the time of the Smuta or "Time of Troubles", a time in the history of Russia between the end of the Rurikid dynasty with the death of Fyodor I in 1598 and the beginning of the Romanov dynasty with the rise of Michael I. is in 1613. Dimitri, who appeared in Poland around 1601, claimed to be the allegedly murdered youngest son Ivan the Terrible , Dimitri Ivanovich , whom his mother, Ivan's last wife Maria Feodorovna Nagaya, had hidden from Boris Godunov. However, his opponents claimed that his real name was Grigory Otrepyev and that he was a monk from the Chudov Monastery. After a lost battle, Dimitri was only saved by news of Boris Godunov's sudden death. In a revolt instigated by Vasily Shuisky , Dimitri was murdered on May 17, 1606. Shuisky became the Russian tsar from 1606 to 1610 after his murder. There were two other people who pretended to be Dimitri Ivanovich.

Boris Godunow was Russia's ruler for the mentally retarded Tsar Fyodor I from 1584 to 1598 and Tsar and Grand Duke of Russia from 1598 to 1605. Godunov died unexpectedly on April 23, 1605, probably after a stroke.

The story of Tsarevich Dimitri Ivanovich is a key element in the opera Boris Godunov by Modest Mussorgsky , which is based on a drama by Alexander Pushkin. There are also fragments of the drama by Schiller and Hebbel.

criticism

In the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger of December 18, 1922, Steinhoff was certified to be a director who “not only had a sense for the cinema”, but who was noted in every scene that he was trying “to meet the legitimate demands of the capitalists with the equalize justified demands of art ”. It also said: “He is a conscious artisan and thus becomes a film artist. In Walter Reimann, however, he had an extraordinarily talented and skilled employee ... who, with his amalgamation of realistic construction and prospectus, will undeniably have a great future. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Horst Claus: The wrong Dimitry Das Bundesarchiv Filmblatt 3 at bundesarchiv.de
  2. ↑ The wrong Dimitry dhm.de