The strange bird
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The strange bird |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1911 |
| length | 45 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Urban Gad |
| script | Urban Gad |
| production | German bioscop |
| camera | Guido Seeber |
| occupation | |
| |
The Foreign Bird , subtitled A Love Tragedy in the Spreewald , is a German silent film in three acts by Urban Gad from 1911.
action
The Englishwoman Miss May traveled to the Spreewald with her father Sir Arthur, Herbert Bruce and her companion Miss Hobbs . Actually, according to the father's will, the trip should end with May and Herbert's engagement. However, May falls in love with the Spreewald boatman Max and rejects Herbert's proposal of marriage.
Not only Max's bride Grete and his mother are critical of the relationship between May and Max. Arthur is also against the relationship. When May flirts with Max once more, Arthur not only plans to leave immediately, but also May's forced engagement, which is now locked in her room. She secretly sends Max a message, climbs out of her window and escapes with her lover. First they drive in a boat , then flee through the forest thicket, before the exhausted May, left alone by Max for a moment, slips exhausted, falls into the water and drowns. Her body is later found surrounded by water lilies on a sandbank. In the end, your corpse slides in a boat through the Spreewald.
production
The strange bird was the fifth German film that Asta Nielsen made for Deutsche Bioscop. All of the scenes were shot on site in the Spreewald in August 1911 , with the props brought in from Berlin and open-air studios set up.
The film was examined by the censors on October 30, 1911 and a youth ban was imposed. This was mainly due to a scene that the critics called “piquant”, in which Asta Nielsen takes off her shoes and stockings to push the stuck Spreewaldnachen.
A preview in front of more than 300 invited writers, members of the press and art critics took place on November 3, 1911, whereby the tenor of this performance was reproduced in advertisements for the film as “The most wonderful of cinematographic film art”. The 974 meter long film was premiered on November 11, 1911 at the same time in five Berlin Union film theaters.
The film is remarkable, among other things, because it contains "for the first time [in the history of film melodrama] a direct causal link between the tragic death of the heroine and the rigid social hierarchical conventions that are forced upon young lovers".
criticism
In their reviews, contemporary critics particularly emphasized the advantages of the medium of film over the theater, so the film had "the lifelike staging ahead of the theater, the rustling trees of the Spreewald, the wonderful light reflections - the magical glow of the moonlight is particularly beautiful - , the splashing of the water, the finding of the corpse between the water lilies, the idyllic farmhouses. ” Shortly after the special screening, the Vossische Zeitung wrote that the film was“ excellently worked through in the details ”and“ in the description of the Spreewald nature full of atmospheric magic ” . Although the plot is simple, it is "excellently developed psychologically, so that you can hardly miss the spoken word".
In retrospect, the film was praised on the one hand: "Guido Seebers camera work, his handling of landscape shots and images of the rural world, which was sensational for the time, made this film a great cinematic experience." , however, called "the exterior shots, the alternation of atmospheric landscape images with game scenes [...] the largest and for the time surprising assets of this film."
literature
- Ilona Brennicke, Joe Hembus: The strange bird . In: Classics of the German silent film: 1910–1930 (= Citadel film books ). Orig-Ausg., 1st edition Goldmann, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-442-10212-X , p. 185 .
- Klaus Lippert: The strange bird . In: Günther Dahlke, Günter Karl (Hrsg.): German feature films from the beginning to 1933: a film guide . 2nd Edition. Henschel-Verl, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-89487-009-5 , p. 12 f .
- Renate Seydel, Allan Hagedorff: The strange bird . In: Asta Nielsen. A picture biography. Your life in photo documents, self-testimonies and contemporary reflections . 2nd Edition. Henschelverlag, Berlin January 1, 1984, p. 58-60 .
Web links
- The strange bird in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The strange bird at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ The strange bird . In: Günther Dahlke, Günter Karl (Hrsg.): German feature films from the beginning to 1933: a film guide . Henschelverl. Art u. Gesellschaft, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-362-00131-9 , pp. 12 .
- ↑ a b c Der Kinematograph , November 8, 1911, ZDB -ID 575137-8 .
- ^ Advertisement in the Berliner Tageblatt , November 25, 1911.
- ↑ Werner Faulstich, Helmut Korte: Fischer film history: From the beginnings to the established medium 1895–1924 (= Fischer film history . Volume 1 ). FISCHER Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 978-3-596-24491-1 , pp. 242 .
- ^ Vossische Zeitung , November 4, 1911.
- ↑ The Stranger Bird . In: Thomas Kramer (Ed.): Reclams Lexikon des Deutschen Films . Reclam, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-15-010410-6 , pp. 110 .
- ↑ Jürgen Labenski, Dieter Krusche: The strange bird . In: Lexicon of the movies. From silent films to today. Phillip Reclam jun., Stuttgart January 1, 1977, p. 59 .