The Tired Death
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The Tired Death |
 | |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1921 |
| length | 2306 m / approx. 83 - 105 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Fritz Lang |
| script | Thea von Harbou , Fritz Lang |
| production | Erich Pommer |
| music |
Giuseppe Becce , Karl-Ernst Sasse Sr. , Peter Schirmann (original music), Wilfried Schröpfer (ZDF version, 1983) |
| camera |
Erich Nitzschmann , Hermann Saalfrank , Fritz Arno Wagner |
| occupation | |
| |
The tired death is a German feature film by Fritz Lang from 1921.
The “German folk song in six verses”, so the subtitle, is the romantic-tragic story of a young woman who calls her husband back from death.
action
A young couple comes to an inn in a small town. A mysterious stranger sits down at their table. In flashbacks, you learn that he has bought a piece of land close to the cemetery and surrounded it with a high wall that has neither windows nor doors. When the woman leaves the dining room and comes back shortly afterwards, her groom has disappeared. She learns that he has gone away with the stranger and tries to follow his tracks. When she got to the wall of death, she saw ghostly figures walking through the wall, including her lover. She tries in vain to hold on to him and then faints. The pharmacist finds her and takes her home with him. In an open book she reads the saying of Solomon: "Love is as strong as death". She finds a bottle with an elixir and drinks it. Then she is moved back to the high wall and now climbs up a high staircase to the gate of death.
The woman is admitted when she dies: he leads her into a dark hall in which the lights of the people burn, flicker and go out when their hour comes. Death explains to her that he is actually tired of killing - but since he has to obey God , he cannot help it.
Nevertheless, he gives the woman an opportunity to get her husband back: if she can save one of three lives whose lights are already flickering, she should get her bridegroom back. These three episodes are oriental (revenge of the believers), Venetian (murder at the carnival ) and Chinese (imperial tyrant). In all three cases she tries to save her lover, but she always fails.
As a last chance, death offers to bring her husband back to life by bringing him another life within an hour. The woman tries to persuade the old, the poor and the sick, but no one wants to give her their miserable life. Finally, the city's hospital is on fire - the residents are fleeing. But a baby was left behind. The woman wants to save the baby and runs into the burning hospital. There, death offers her the last chance by leaving the child to die. But she makes a different decision, saves the child and sacrifices herself for the baby. In this way she is united with the beloved in her own flame death.
criticism
“Fritz Lang's silent film is an expressionistic-romantic depiction of fate motifs, which, although not stylistically uniform, has an effect mainly due to the rich image design. Worth seeing as a film historical document. "
“Fritz Lang's folksong-like, thematically simple parable of love that is stronger than death, filmed in 1921, in extraordinarily expressive pictures of great beauty. All film fans should have seen this work. "
Remarks
The buildings of the film come from Walter Röhrig (German part), Hermann Warm (oriental and Venetian part) and Robert Herlth (Chinese part). The oriental and Chinese art objects were made available by Umlauff's World Museum . The buildings were erected on the film grounds in Babelsberg .
The film is an adaptation of the German fairy tale Der Gevatter Tod , which appeared as early as 1812 in the children's and household tales of the Brothers Grimm in place 44 (KHM 44); Ludwig Bechstein took it over in his German book of fairy tales as Gevatter Tod (1845 No. 20, 1853 No. 12).
In this film, Lang also takes up the traumatic experience of the First World War , which made death “tired”.
The official seat of death is depicted monumentally - his house is surrounded by a 15 m high rock wall. Only those who are called by death can enter.
In the “Chinese episode”, Lang used a trick that was very elaborate for the time with a giant model of the sorcerer's boots through which an army of tiny people marched. These and other tricks, for example the magic carpet, were the model for the film The Thief of Baghdad (1924, directed by Raoul Walsh ), shot in Hollywood .
The scene in which the woman tries to persuade the poor and the infirm to die is particularly impressive in order to get her lover's life back from death: Even when they are old and they are in a bad way, people hang on to life and don't want a minute give away from it.
Tradition and restoration
No theatrical copy of the German theatrical version from 1921 has survived, only copies from the 1930s onwards have survived. Since these were made on black and white film material, nothing is known about the virage of the original version.
A digitally restored version of the film, which was made by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation under the direction of Anke Wilkening, was shown for the first time on February 12, 2016 at the Berlinale. Viraging is based on preserved viraged copies of other Decla films. Since the music of the premiere is also considered lost, a new film music was composed by Cornelius Schwehr on behalf of ZDF / arte .
literature
- Ilona Brennicke, Joe Hembus : Classics of the German silent film. 1910-1930 . Citadel Movie Books. Goldmann, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-442-10212-X , pp. 72-78.
- Rudolf Freund: The tired death. In: Günther Dahlke, Günther Karl (Hrsg.): German feature films from the beginnings to 1933. A film guide. 2nd Edition. Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-89487-009-5 , pp. 56-58.
- Frieda Grafe among others: Fritz Lang. Carl Hanser Verlag, Vienna / Munich 1976, ISBN 3-446-12202-8 , pp. 87-88.
Web links
- The tired death in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The tired death at filmportal.de
- Project: The Tired Death . In: Murnau Foundation
- Anke Wilkening: The tired death - about the film and the restoration . In: Murnau Foundation
- Elmar Krekeler: Probably the most beautiful resurrection since Lazarus . In: Welt.de , February 12, 2016
- Topic special "Fritz Lang: The tired death" at Bertelsmann
Individual evidence
- ↑ The tired death. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed June 1, 2017 .