The Prodigal Son (1934)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The lost Son |
 | |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1934 |
| length | 80 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Luis Trenker |
| script | Luis Trenker, Arnold Ulitz , Reinhart Steinbicker |
| production | Paul Kohner |
| music | Giuseppe Becce |
| camera |
Albert Benitz Reimar Kuntze |
| cut |
Waldemar Gaede Andrew Marton |
| occupation | |
| |
The Prodigal Son is an emigrant drama by Luis Trenker from 1934, set in the mountains, the Alps , and in the big city, New York . It was shot in the Dolomites , on the Arlberg and in the streets of New York.
action
Tonio Feuersinger, the reckless son of an old farming family, lives a little varied life in his South Tyrolean homeland. At the celebration after a ski race that he and two comrades from his village won, he met the American millionaire daughter Lilian and her father, who donated the main prize. Her father sees the ancient sun mask of the Rauhnacht King at a wood carver and wants to buy it. Because it is not for sale, he orders a copy of it. Lilian hires Tonio and his friend Jörg to climb the summit. Suddenly the snow gives way when climbing a steep ridge. Tonio falls on one side, Lilian and Jörg on the other. Tonio, Lilian and Jörg manage to get up under the most difficult high alpine conditions. Tonio and Lilian get away unscathed, but Jörg dies. Because of this misfortune, Lilian and her father leave early. Now that he has got to know the “big wide world” in the person of Lilian, Tonio wants more of life and out of the alleged confinement of mountain seclusion. He quickly ignored all warnings from the villagers and a few weeks later left his familiar home and his girlfriend Barbl.
After arriving in New York, he goes to the millionaire's address. The butler sees the simply dressed man and denies the family. In the big city metropolis, all of his lofty dreams vanished in an instant. Tonio cannot find a job at first, no matter how hard he tries. Because he has no more money, he is thrown out of his attic room. Through another homeless person, he finally finds work on the construction site of a skyscraper. His experience in mountaineering and his head for heights are an advantage when he has to work at great heights on the steel girders. After losing this job, he begins to go into neglect. He sneaks through the streets in torn clothes and sees a lot of misery in the streets and tenements. Hunger is his constant companion. One day he steals bread from a market to breastfeed him. A policeman chasing him sees the emaciated figure greedily devouring the bread and walks away. The Salvation Army sings to the charitable distribution of food, in front of which a long line has formed .
Eventually he finds a job in Madison Square Garden . In a boxing match he is a boxer's helper in a corner of the ring. When his opponent boxed unfairly and knocked out the referee, he jumped into the ring. During a short boxing match, he beats him to the cheering of the huge crowd. Lilian, who is sitting in a box with her family and friends, recognizes him immediately. He now leads a carefree life among the rich of the city. Tonio is now getting to know the other side of America, seeing the rich and beautiful who live in luxury at grand parties. Lilian loves him and confesses her love to him. His gaze falls by chance on the copy of the sun mask. Suddenly everything goes through his head. He realizes that this land of social contradictions and injustices cannot be his home, that the cold around him threatens to overwhelm him. He realizes that he cannot live in a big city and he remembers the promise he made to Barbl.
He returns to his home village on December 24th. He sees the old, familiar local customs, the carol singers , the figures masked during the Rauhnacht and the burning piles of wood from the solstice celebration . His father invited the villagers to his barn to celebrate the Rauhnacht. The unmarried girls walk past the Rauhnacht King, who chooses one of them as his bride, in special festive garb and with carved masks. Barbl therefore does not want to take part in this festival. But when she learns that Tonio is in the village, she takes her festive robe out of a chest and puts it on in a hurry. Tonio wants to pick her up and discovers the open chest. Now he knows which dress she is wearing. He borrows a wooden mask and runs to the barn. There he approaches Barbl purposefully and takes her in his arms. After a discussion, both go to Christmas mass. The word of the old village teacher has come true: "Whoever never leaves, never returns home!"
Production notes
The film was being planned under the working title Solstice . It was the last German production of the German branch of the Hollywood production company Universal Film and at the same time the last production activity of the Jew Paul Kohner, who was no longer well-liked in the German Reich, Adolf Hitler .
On November 1, 1933, Trenker embarked in Cherbourg on the German passenger ship Bremen for New York in order to record the documentary street impressions required for The Prodigal Son with a hidden camera in the coming weeks . In impressive scenes that captured shattering poverty and mass unemployment, he and his cameraman created images that, certainly in the interests of the Nazi regime, documented the dramatic dark sides of the United States, which was praised as the 'Promised Land' by numerous people willing to emigrate. This supposedly soulless society, whose values are based exclusively on dollars and cents in Trenker's film, is countered by the director at the beginning and at the end of dream-lost beautiful images of wintry, snowy and festively illuminated alpine landscapes, which in turn seek to insinuate that the familiar home with theirs Plain but honest people are preferable to the (human) cold strangers in the urban jungle.
The world premiere of The Prodigal Son , which had already passed the censorship on June 29, 1934, did not take place in Stuttgart until September 6, 1934 . The Berlin premiere was on October 3, 1934.
In 1934 the film received the rating "artistically particularly valuable".
The 21-year-old leading actress Maria Andergast made her film debut here.
Herbert Ploberger , who made his film debut here, designed the costumes, Fritz Maurischat and Hans Minzloff the film structures. Fred Lyssa was the film's line producer. Klaus von Rautenfeld made his debut as a camera assistant at The Prodigal Son .
At the Biennale in Venice , the film won the 1935 Cup of the Italian Ministry of Folk Culture for the "ethically important foreign film".
The Allied military governments banned the screening of the film in Germany in 1945. The reason for this must have been the image of American realities at the time of the New Deal under Franklin D. Roosevelt , which the USA perceived as too negative , but possibly also the National Socialist blood-and-soil ideology of the blessing of the native soil.
Trenker himself commented on the idea behind The Prodigal Son as follows: "For years I had wanted in my heart to somehow make the subject of the lost son of the mountains artistically. I wanted to tackle a modern epic of this kind, and I worked all day and night, week after week after the completion of the “rebel” on this thought. […] And I went freshly from the mountains to New York, the city of seven million, the metropolis, the city of skyscrapers, the dollar billionaires and the most miserable hungry people, the Cosmopolitan city of all races and languages, the metropolis of all light and shadow - that was the contrast that I was looking for and wanted, and not a ridiculous story of jealousy! That was the contrast to the dreamy, quiet mountain nest, where the simple wooden plow was still valid and barren Life of the farmer struggling for his daily bread, but who, in his lack of needs, is greater and freer than the rich slave of millions of dollars The line of the plot was internalized in the basic ideas of the mountain farmers' faith, their love for the mountain home in general, in contrast to the stony metropolis, whose ultimate meaning can only be chaos, the downfall ... "
criticism
The film's large personal lexicon called The Prodigal Son an “earthly homeland drama” and also wrote about the film: “The story of a young man (Trenker) who leaves his alpine home to seek fortune in America, in view of the mass unemployment there fails and finally returns home, remorseful, to the mountains, was not particularly well liked by the new brown rulers, mainly because of their intense religiousness. "
For Bucher's encyclopedia of the film, Trenker's The Prodigal Son was "his best film". He succeeded there "in describing the misery that a ski instructor who has come to America goes through, cruelly realistic images of the effects of the global economic crisis ... as the American feature film consistently avoided."
The website of the film magazine Cinema found: "Trenker's film symbolizes the forlornness of the individual through the contrast between the house canyons of Manhattan and the majestic Dolomite mountains" and called The Prodigal Son a "masterpiece by the Tyrolean auteur filmmaker"
"A Heimatfilm garnished with landscape shots from the Dolomites, whose convincing camera work contrasts the majestic mountains with the urban canyons of New York and makes the forlornness of the individual obvious."
See also
Web links
- The Prodigal Son in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The prodigal son in filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b The prodigal son. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 14, 2017 .
- ↑ Luis Trenker: My best stories, Herbig (1982), p. 297f.
- ↑ Original quote from Oskar Kalbus: On becoming German film art. Part 2: The sound film. Berlin 1935, p. 115.
- ^ Film archive Kay Less
- ↑ a b Kay Less : The large personal dictionary of the film . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 8: T - Z. David Tomlinson - Theo Zwierski. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 45.
- ↑ cit. after Kalbus: On the development of German film art. P. 114 f.
- ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 1: A - C. Erik Aaes - Jack Carson. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 94.
- ↑ Bucher's Encyclopedia of Films, Verlag CJ Bucher, Lucerne and Frankfurt / M. 1977, p. 785.
- ↑ The prodigal son in cinema.de