The Karamasoff Brothers (1920)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title The Karamazoff brothers
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1920
length 105 minutes
Rod
Director Carl Froelich
script based on the novel of the same name by Fyodor Dostoyevsky .
production Maxim Filmges. Ebner & Co., Berlin
camera Otto Tober
occupation

and Dimitri Buchowetzki , Else Eckersberg , Carl Zickner , Dolly Eichelberg , Hans Senius , Franz Cornelius , Ferdinand Robert , Charlotte Krüger , Rudolf Senius

The Karamasoff Brothers is a German silent film from 1920 by Carl Froelich based on the novel of the same name by Fyodor Dostoyevsky .

action

The story is told of the old brawler and drunkard Karamasoff and his unequal sons and the whore Gruschenka, who causes strife in the family. Dimitri Karamasoff wants to marry his bride Katharina, called Katja. For this he has to deposit the amount of 3,000 rubles in his Moscow regiment . Dimitri doesn't have that much money and so travels to his father to ask if he can give him this sum. However, his father, who owes his son money, is unwilling to do so. Rather, the old man only has women in mind. He is particularly fond of the pretty prostitute Gruschenka. He really wants to marry her.

Dimitri tries to influence his father through Gruschenka. But the whore makes fun of him. In a turbulent argument that takes on more and more pleasurable traits, both fall on each other. But Gruschenka does not reciprocate Dimitri's feelings and instead plays with him. Dimitri Karamasoff, on the other hand, is unfaithful to his Katja at this moment and succumbs skin and hair to the immoral whore. In the meantime, Katja has found the 3,000 rubles she needs. When she hears that Dimitri is having an affair with the well-known whore, she is deeply affected, but still wants to marry her fiancé. At the station she waits in vain for Dimitri, who, contrary to his approval, does not come. Then Katja leaves alone.

That same evening, old Karamazoff is found dead in his apartment. Dimitri is immediately suspected of having murdered his father. The presumed reason: jealousy because Gruschenka refused to give up the old man, who was generous towards her. Dimitri's younger brother Ivan tries to prove his innocence, but is unsuccessful. In a trial, Dimitri is found guilty of murder and exiled to Siberia , where he is subjected to forced labor. The real culprit, however, is a disgusting, grouchy figure named Smerdjakoff. This has long since evaded his indictment and conviction by hanging himself the day before the start of the trial.

Production notes and background

The Karamasoff brothers came into being in the winter of 1919/20. It had a length of seven files at 2,388 meters, about xx minutes.

The cinematograph reported twice about the shooting at the end of 1919. The seven-act film premiered on April 20, 1920 in the UFA-Palast am Zoo and was banned from young people. This work by Froelich is considered to be the second film adaptation of the Dostoevsky novel and the first to be made outside of Russia.

The film was shot in the Maxim-Film-Atelier at Blücherstraße 32. The Russians in exile Dimitri Buchowetzki and Ronald von Boschitzko, who have just arrived in Germany, worked as advisors on this film. The film structures were designed by Hans Sohnle .

With Fritz Kortner , Emil Jannings , Werner Krauss and Hanna Ralph , Froelich was able to dispose of an excellent and unusually large star ensemble. While this time Kortner played the old libertine Karamasoff, a good ten years later he played his son Dimitri in Fedor Ozep's sound film version The Murderer Dimitri Karamasoff (1930).

criticism

Hans Wollenberg wrote in the Lichtbild-Bühne :

“A group of artists set themselves the task of conveying to the people through the film tape how Dostoyevsky saw and recreated the world. It takes courage and - awe and a sense of responsibility. The creators of this film have owned all three. That gives them great credit. The recomposition of the word epic into the picture epic was successful - without desecrating the grave of the great Russian.
It must have been a tremendous dramaturgical achievement to carve out of the novel, which flows broadly like the floods of the Volga, what a series of events on film produced. To breathe Dostoyevsky's Slavic soul into the photographed events of the soul was the gigantic task of the silent art of representation. The group of artists who submitted to her was select. She gave the pictures Dostoyevsky's mood. This work has what the film mostly lacks; that which separates the work of art from the handicraft: from it flow those rhythms that float between the photographed things: soul.
The actor Jannings recreated Dostoyevsky's Dmitrij. He made one suffer exactly what Dostoevsky made the reader of his work suffer. Shattering to the deepest depths, he lives before our eyes the tragedy of the decent, refined-thinking, unstable, careless to the point of vulgarity, yet so loving, honest boy. Every woman; who gets to know him, his decency compels to love. Who doesn't know such a Dimitrij? - […] Kortner is the old, wild Lump Karamasoff. Werner Krauss: Smerdjakoff, his natural son. A cabinet piece; worthy of Dostoevsky, who knew people with their internal contradictions like no one else. Smerdjakoff: grew up under kicks. Helpful and malicious, good-natured and malicious, stupid and smart; a sick brain, a sick body: epileptics. This is how you experience him through Werner Krauss. [...]
The individual performances sounded harmoniously together in a large, solemn, eerie chord. Recklessness and generosity, lust for the world and godliness, meanness, vice and suffering flood past in 7 acts. Much of what Dostoyevsky's epic emanates is captured in these files. The basic salary, the basic mood of the 'Karamasoff Brothers' is unadulterated by the linen wall. And with that a high, a beautiful, a difficult goal has been achieved. "

Paimann's film lists summed up briefly and succinctly: “Material and game excellent. Photos and scenery very good. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Film length calculator , frame rate : 18
  2. ^ Photo stage. Vol. 13, No. 17, from April 24, 1920 ( ZDB -ID 536617-3 ).
  3. ↑ Paimann's film lists. No. 220, from June 18 to 24, 1920.