The Hunt for Happiness (film)

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Movie
Original title The hunt for happiness
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1930
length 10 acts, 2640 meters, 96 minutes
Rod
Director Rochus Gliese
script Rochus Gliese,
Lotte Reiniger ,
Carl Koch
production Carl Koch for Comenius Film GmbH. Berlin
music Theo Mackeben
camera Fritz Arno Wagner
occupation

The Hunt for Happiness is the title of a German feature film that the set designer and director Rochus Gliese made for the Berlin-based Comenius Film GmbH in 1929/1930 based on a script that he wrote together with Lotte Reiniger and Carl Koch . The film featured international cast with the Russian actor Alexander Murski , the American Amy Wells and the French Jean Renoir and Catherine Hessling , with whom Reiniger and Koch were also private friends. “The Hunt for Happiness” was the screen debut for the German stage actress Hilde Körber .

The film contains animated shadow play scenes, which the animation specialist Berthold Bartosch executed with silhouettes by Lotte Reiniger.

The game within the game “consists of a series of 16 short episodes that show a man in various ways in the pursuit of happiness. In one of these episodes, happiness, symbolized by a beautiful woman with a cornucopia from which she impartially distributes flowers as a show of favor, enters a circus and rides bareback in front of the audience to show that she is doing without effort what other years of Need training. "

Reiniger and Koch also assisted Gliese with the sound direction when the film, which was started in 1929, was to be dubbed. it came out in 1930 as a sound film.

"Just as Gliese's film is about the decline of an outdated technology that is being replaced by a new one, it was itself at the transition from silent to sound film."

action

The showman Marquant travels to the annual markets with his peep box stage, but the audience's approval is waning more and more. Jeanne, his daughter and his assistant Mario want to remedy this by developing a completely new show with the help of modern projection. The old showman, who wants to stick to the traditional, has little understanding for this and throws both out.

The girl Cathérine from the shooting gallery has fallen in love with Mario. She found a patron for his ideas in the groundsman Robert. But when he steps too close to Cathérine, Mario beats him up and takes revenge by transferring the contract for the show to Marquant. He wants to close the show first, but then notices the audience's interest in it. He makes up with Jeanne and Mario. With their new program he is again successful at the fair.

background

Fritz Arno Wagner was in charge of the camera, Lotte Reiniger and Berthold Bartosch provided special optical effects . Alex Strasser was employed as a still photographer. The film construction came from Rochus Gliese and Arno Richter , Heinz Heger was the production manager. Richard Masseck was engaged as sound engineer for the dubbing . Carl Koch was in charge of production.

Exterior shots were shot in La Ciotat near Marseille, southern France, the interior scenes in the Grunewald studio in Berlin.

Theo Mackeben composed the film music , the lyrics for the hit song “Faithless Glück”, which was heard during the animated silhouette sequences and was also available on gramophone records, was composed by Karl Brüll .

Sound documents:

  • Faithless luck. Slow-fox from the sound film “The Hunt for Happiness” (Theo Mackeben - Karl Brüll) Ilja Livschakoff Dance Orchestra. Gramophone 23 335 (mx. 2925 BR), recorded in June 1930
  • Faithless luck, Fox Trot (Theo Mackeben) Theo Mackeben with his jazz orchestra, with refrain singing: Ultraphon A 418 (mx. 10 823), recorded in Berlin, March 1930
  • Faithless luck, Fox Trot (Theo Mackeben) [as "The Hunt for Happiness (song)"]: anon. Singer on WECO audio postcard No. 149 with portraits of Theo Mackeben & Lotte Reiniger

The film was submitted to the Berlin Film Inspectorate for censorship on May 3, 1930. The premiere, which "was staged with all means of propaganda", as Siegfried Kracauer noted, took place on May 27, 1930 in Berlin in the splendid "Marble House".

In the United States, the film was titled Chasing Fortune and The Pursuit of Happiness . In France it was called either La Chasse a la fortune or La Chasse au bonheur .

reception

The long-cherished dream project of the married couples Carl Koch / Lotte Reiniger and Jean Renoir / Catherine Heßling unfortunately turned out to be a drastic financial failure, for which the subsequent dubbing of the actually mute shadow scenes is now held responsible. The film was not distributed in Germany; only in England was the silhouette animation sequence shown by the London Film Society :

The Hunt for Happiness 1929/1930 - Feature film with a silhouette animation sequence - "Based on an idea by Lotte Reiniger and Alex Strasser" - Manuscript and direction: Lotte Reiniger, Carl Koch, Rochus Gliese - Camera: Fritz Arno Wagner - Shadow plays: Lotte Reiniger and Berthold Bartosch - music: Theo Mackeben - lyrics: “Faithful luck” - production: Comenius-Film, Berlin - 18 min., b / w.

The Hunt for Happiness was shown publicly only once in May 1930 in Berlin. The film critic Wolfgang Duncker reviewed the film as 'Mersus' in "Berlin am Morgen" on May 29, 1930.

The writer Thea Sternheim noted in her diary on May 27, 1930: “In the evening with Flechtheim in the Lotte Reiniger film THE HUNT FOR HAPPINESS, (the film) is, until Lotte Reiniger's touching silhouettes, of yawning boredom. Even the charm of a Hessling cannot counter this emptiness. "

literature

  • Rolf Aurich, Wolfgang Jacobsen (ed.): Mersus. The film critic Wolfgang Duncker. (= Film & writing. Volume 5). Publishing house edition text + kritik, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-88377-860-0 .
  • Ronald Bergan: Jean Renoir: projections of paradise. Overlook Press, 1994, ISBN 0-87951-537-6 , p. 102. (English)
  • Eva Chrambach: Cleaner, Lotte. In: New German Biography. Volume 21, 2003, pp. 370-371.
  • Raymond Durgnat: Jean Renoir. University of California Press, 1974, ISBN 0-520-02283-1 .
  • Hartmut Engmann (Ed.): Film music: A documentation. Ed. On occasion. a film study workshop on the 14th and 14th September 15, 1968 in Moers / Ndrh. Verlag Gielow, Munich 1968, DNB 456616543 , p. 52.
  • Heinrich Fraenkel: Immortal Film. The great chronicle. From the magic lantern to the sound film. Kindler, part of the picture by Wilhelm Winckel. Munich 1956, pp. 208, 300, 406, 429.
  • Siegfried Kracauer, Ingrid Belke: Siegfried Kracauer, Works Volume 6: Small writings on film. 1932-1961. Editor Inka Mülder-Bach. Suhrkamp publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-518-58336-0 .
  • Peer Moritz: Berthold Bartosch. In: CineGraph Lexicon for German-language film. edition Text + Criticism im Richard Boorberg Verlag, München 1984ff.
  • Jean Renoir: Renoir on Renoir. Interviews, essays, and remarks. Cambridge University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-521-38593-8 . (English)
  • Hans Scheugl, Ernst Schmidt: A sub-story of the film. (= Edition Suhrkamp. Volume 471). Volume 1, Verlag Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1974, p. 191.
  • Christiane Schönfeld (Ed.): Practicing Modernity. Female Creativity in the Weimar Republic. Contribution: Carmel Finnan. Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2006, ISBN 3-8260-3241-1 , p. 174 f. (English)
  • Tübingen leaves. Volumes 68-72. Publisher: Bürger und Verkehrsverein Tübingen e. V., 1981, p. 86.
  • Manfred Weihermüller, Rainer E. Lotz (Hrsg.): German National Discography: Discography of German cabaret. Volume 4, Verlag B. Lotz, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-9803461-6-1 , p. 961.
  • Friedrich von Zglinicki: The way of the film. History of cinematography and its predecessors. Rembrandt Verlag, Berlin 1956, p. 23 f.

Web links

Illustrations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Silhouettes animation sequences in Act 3, Act 9 and Act 10. On July 15, 1929, in a conversation with the “Film-Kurier”, Carl Koch said: “What matters to us is in the context of a silent plot, under Use of tricks to combine the possibilities of the absolute film with those of the feature film. "(Quoted from cinegraph.de)
  2. ↑ White, 1931, cit. according to cinegraph.de
  3. ↑ "This obviously did more harm than good to the film: apart from the silhouette play part, it is never shown again and is considered lost" (quoted from cinegraph.de)
  4. ↑ so filmportal.de
  5. ^ According to Carl Koch on July 15, 1929 in a conversation with the "Film-Kurier", quoted in after Peer Moritz, article 'Berthold Bartosch', in CineGraph Lexicon
  6. ^ Berlin, Am Königsweg 1 (later: 148), founded in 1924. See cinegraph
  7. ↑ cf. deutschlandradiokultur.de
  8. ↑ cf. dismarc.org
  9. ↑ cf. Lotz list , around 1930 (= RM .: 3.50)
  10. ↑ cf. Small writings on the film (3 v.), Page 363
  11. ↑ cf. Zglinicki p. 437 f.
  12. ↑ cf. Durgnat p. 62, Renoir on Renoir p. 267
  13. ↑ on the other hand, IMDb gives the »Deutscher Werkfilm GmbH« as the distributor for Germany
  14. ↑ Christel Strobel: Lotte Reiniger - The film pioneer and her silhouette films, at lottereiniger.de
  15. ↑ cf. Aurich-Jacobsen: Mersus, the film critic Wolfgang Duncker, here p. 85
  16. ↑ born Bauer, 1883-1971, was in second marriage with the playwright Carl Sternheim married
  17. ↑ cit. after Peer Moritz, article 'Berthold Bartosch', in CineGraph Lexicon