The magic belt
The magic belt is a German documentary that was shot for propaganda purposes by the Image and Film Office BUFA in the Mediterranean Sea on board the SM U 35 in spring 1917 . His spectacular shots of shipwrecks, especially of the British steamer Parkgate or the British schooner Miss Morris , have been shown in documentaries to this day (2013).
content
The U- 35 submarine under Lieutenant Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière arrives at neutral and enemy merchant ships after leaving the Austro-Hungarian naval port of Pola in the spring of 1917. While the commander dismisses the neutral ships after a negative check for contraband , the enemy ships are either blown up with explosive cartridges or sunk with torpedo shots or artillery fire after the crew has been dismantled .
Historical context, production, transmission
Due to the international protests against the unrestricted submarine warfare the BUFA intended for a film about submarine warfare according to the production prize regulations to strengthen the German position for propaganda. It is unclear who shot the footage.
The film material was edited in the summer of 1917 and then it was distributed. The film did not even come close to the success of Graf Dohna und seine Möwe , which had been shot shortly before with the support of BUFA on board the auxiliary cruiser SMS Möve in the Atlantic .
After the First World War, the magic belt was performed in abridged versions with changed subtitles in France , Great Britain and the USA . An abridged version was published in Germany in 1921 under the title On a long-distance journey with U 35 . In the 1920s, sequences or even just scenes or shots of the film were randomly assembled with other material for new films.
The original copy was only returned to the Federal Republic of Germany from a confiscated inventory in 1965 and was in poor technical condition. In 2000, a version restored by the Imperial War Museum in collaboration with the Federal Film Archive was released on DVD .
In 1980 the film was analyzed by the contemporary historian Walther Hubatsch and his colleagues and the plot was compared with the war diary of U 35 . It turned out that the assembled recordings did not always correspond exactly with entries in the KTB and that some scenes were apparently arranged.
literature
- News for town and country ( Oldenburg ), advertisements for the Wall-Lichtspiele from December 7th and 11th, 1917.
- The magic belt , in: CineGraph - Hamburg Center for Film Research, Hamburg (ed.): Cast off! Maritime cinema in Germany and Europe 1912–1957 , Hamburg a. a. 2006, pp. 110-112.
- Marine Officer Association / German Marine Institute (ed.): "U 35" in the Mediterranean (film documents on the history of the German Navy, Part I: Imperial Navy 1907–1920. From the holdings of the Koblenz Federal Archives, edited by Walther Hubatsch), o. O. 1980.