Escape from love or a danger to society
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Escape from love or a danger to society |
| Original title | En fare for samfundet |
| Country of production | Denmark |
| original language | Danish |
| Publishing year | 1916 |
| length | 55, 61 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Robert Dinesen |
| script | Mogens Falck |
| production | Ole Olsen for Nordisk Film Kompagni, Copenhagen |
| camera | Sophus Wangøe |
| occupation | |
| |
Escape from Love or A Danger to Society , often only under the short title Escape from Love , is a 1915 Danish silent film drama directed by Robert Dinesen with Valdemar Psilander in the lead role.
action
The respected doctor Prof. William Sheldon (Hildal) became a widower after only six months of marriage. When he is holding a mourning service at her flower-decorated coffin in his house, a strange man speaks to him. He calls himself John Payne (Robert Hamson) and asks the famous medic to help his daughter Alice (Edda), who is suffering from severe problems with her windpipe . Sheldon accompanies Payne to his house and at the last moment is able to save Alice from suffocation through a surgical operation. When Sheldon returned to his home, his property was on fire: One of the candles on the coffin had fallen over and set it on fire until the whole house caught fire. Sheldon then suffers a severe nervous breakdown and goes mad.
It has been a year since these events and Sheldon had to undergo psychiatric treatment. Now he is staying in a sanatorium for follow-up treatment. There he meets Alice, whom he rescued and who is on the verge of full recovery. One gets closer and tender bonds develop between Alice and her lifesaver, Sheldon. Alice has to realize that her professor is nowhere near as advanced as she is and is suffering from serious disorders. The memory of the burning coffin with his deceased wife lying in it triggered the compulsion to become a pyromaniac himself and to constantly start fires. Sheldon escapes his guardians once and begins to detonate again. When he is caught again, the prison management simply locks away the doctor, who has been branded as a hopeless case. But now Alice lets her deeply felt affection turn to her life saver of yore, and thanks to her selfless devotion and self-sacrificing love, William Sheldon can be freed from his anguish and fully recover. At the side of your future wife and her father you embark on a long sea voyage to finally get rid of the ghosts of the past.
Production notes
Escape from love presumably originated at the end of 1915 and was probably premiered in Germany the following year. In January 1917 there is evidence of a performance at the Kammerlichtspiele on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. In producing Denmark, En fare for samfundet , so the original title, did not start until January 28, 1918 in Copenhagen's Victoria Teatret. At this point in time, the main character Psilander had been dead for over ten months. The length specifications diverge between 1145 and 1253 meters.
The different role names depending on the source may be related to the fact that the Danish names were taken for the domestic audience and the English-speaking ones for the international cinema viewers.
For the much more morally strict United States and (tsarist) Russia, film endings were made that met their morality that a sinner and arsonist like Sheldon / Hildal should not set off into a new happiness without atonement. This ending provided that the professor, chased by the police, died in the fire the last time he was set on fire in a barn.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Black dream and white slave. German-Danish Film Relations 1910–1930 mentions the name “Prof. Erik Hildal "
- ↑ Black dream and white slave. German-Danish Film Relations 1910–1930 mentions the name "Eddy Hamson" on p. 156
- ↑ Black dream and white slave. German-Danish Film Relations 1910–1930 mentions the name "Robert Hamson" on p. 156
- ↑ Black dream and white slave. German-Danish film relations 1910–1930 . P. 156