The enchanted day
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The enchanted day |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1944 |
| length | 76 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Peter Pewas |
| script | Renate Uhl |
| production | Production group Viktor von Struve for Terra Film |
| music | Wolfgang Zeller |
| camera | Georg Krause |
| cut | Ira Oberberg |
| occupation | |
| |
The Enchanted Day is a German feature film by Peter Pewas from 1943. It was banned by the National Socialist film censors and only had its world premiere abroad after the war.
action
Wheat blonde Christine Schweiger earns her living in a train station kiosk. She and her colleague Anni daydream about great love. Christine's mother would love to see her daughter marry the solid accountant Rudolf Krummholz, a staid pedant and boring man. But Christine doesn't really want to, she expects a lot more from life. Friend Anni is even more aggressive: She is fun-loving, perky and also likes to invent a lover. In any case, her “fiancé Maximilian” does not exist, she wants to make herself interesting with him.
One day Christine sees a man out of her kiosk who keeps his gaze on her from the train compartment for an unusually long time. In keeping with her romantic nature, she is immediately convinced that this stranger must be the man of her life. When flowers were given for her the following day, she had no more doubts: they must come from strangers. In truth, they come from someone else, the brave station master Wasner. Christine now watches the arriving trains in the hope that the strange man will reappear. One day he actually gets out of the car and introduces himself to her. His name is Professor Albrecht Götz, he is a painter by profession and he absolutely wants to paint her.
They arrange to go on a jaunt into the countryside for the coming weekend, and during a break the artist draws a sketch of Christine. Both escape an approaching thunderstorm by escaping to Götz's apartment. Both spend the night there together. In response to Christine's request, Götz explains that the bouquet did not come from him. Another illusion of Christine's shattered when the painter explains to her that his eyes fixed on her face were not aimed at her at all, but rather with tiny writing on the kiosk. He is afraid of going blind, so check his eyesight. Götz is a man who is no stranger to female acquaintances, and he seems, as Christine realizes, to be a real womanizer with nothing fixed in mind.
Christine is shocked. Was it all just an illusion? She feels like a cheap and stupid little girl. At a loss and desperation, she wanders through the city. When they get home, the dropped Krummholz is waiting for them, armed with a revolver. The little man she rejected is drunk and feels deeply humiliated. He shoots his future fiancée and Christine slumps. The saleswoman is seriously injured and taken to the hospital, where they are desperately trying to save her life. Albrecht Götz learns of this incident from the newspaper and rushes to her sick bed. When Christine wakes up again, he assures her that it is not a fleeting adventure for him.
Production notes
The Enchanted Day is the first full-length feature film by Peter Pewas, who also speaks the prologue . The film was based on the novel Die Augen by Franz Nabl , published in 1923 .
The production was shot from June 22nd to October 1943 in the Ufastadt in Babelsberg . The premiere was in Zurich in September 1947 , the German premiere took place on January 9, 1952. Previously, The Enchanted Day was also shown in Sweden.
The film had considerable problems with the Nazi censorship authority from the start and was shown to the Reichsfilmintendanten for the first time on July 6, 1944, and was immediately rejected in the version presented. “The censorship demanded constant changes” “About the artistic values of the film (this concerns both the direction and the acting of the actors) one spoke as negative as well as positive.” After endless back and forth and the imposition of numerous editing requirements, The Enchanted Day became Banned for good in October 1944. Obviously, Pewas' film seemed too experimental for Nazi cultural policy and detrimental to viewing habits in the Third Reich. Pewas' cameraman Georg Krause surprises with unusual shots and operates several times with fades and sometimes soft-focus filter images. It became "his most interesting work in the 3rd Reich."
The buildings were designed by Erich Grave , the costumes were made by Walter Schulze-Mittendorf .
The song "Schön ist der Frühling" is sung by Ingeborg Schmidt-Stein to the lip movements of Winnie Markus .
The Enchanted Day was shown again as part of the retrospectives of the Berlinals 1978 and 1981 .
Reviews
In Filmmuseum.at you can read: The Enchanted Day “is one of the most extraordinary works of German cinema of the 1940s: Sometimes you feel like the early sound film, whose assembly experiments and fragility are reminiscent, then suddenly you think a work of poetic realism to see. All of this goes well with the melancholy, dreamy nature of the film, with which he knows how to rave about love and the lack of it. "
The Lexicon of International Films writes: “The film from 1944, directed by Peter Pewas in an idiosyncratic and extravagant manner, aroused the displeasure of the Reichsfilmintendant Dr. Hippler because of the emancipatory roles of women in contrast to the dubious partnership behavior of men ”.
The film's large lexicon of people called The Enchanted Day a “lyrical, emancipatory women's story”.
Trivia
A film poster of the Enchanted Day can be seen in the film Die Freibadclique as a wall decoration in the attic of the protagonist "Uncle" when his friend "Knuffke" visits him at home.
Web links
- The Enchanted day in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The enchanted day at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ The playing time corresponds to the length of the post-war performance (2094 meters). When the censorship bill was submitted in 1944, the film was still around 2,700 meters long; this corresponds to a playing time of almost 100 minutes
- ↑ Ulrich J. Klaus: German sound films, 13th year 1944/45. Berlin-Berchtesgaden 2002, p. 242
- ↑ Deutsche Tonfilme, p. 243
- ↑ according to Bogusław Drewniak: The German Film 1938-1945. A complete overview. Droste-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1987, p. 555
- ↑ Der deutsche Film 1938-1945, p. 93
- ↑ 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 4: H - L. Botho Höfer - Richard Lester. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 481.
- ↑ The Enchanted Day in filmmuseum.at
- ↑ Klaus Brüne (Red.): Das Lexikon des Internationale Films, Volume 8, p. 4112, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1987