The queen of the revue

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Movie
German title The queen of the revue
Original title La revue des revues
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 1927
length 2700 meters, at 20 fps 103 minutes
Rod
Director Joë Francys
script Clement Vautel
production Alex Nalpas
music Felix Bartsch
camera Jimmy Berliet , Maurice Guillemin
occupation

The Queen of Revue is a French film drama by Joë Francys from 1927. The silent film by the production company Les Films Alex Nalpas was based on a script by Clément Vautel . In the context of a game action is u. a. Josephine Baker can be seen as a dancer together with other stars of the variety stage.

action

The little seamstress Gabrielle lives in poor circumstances: the mother is in a bad mood, the father drinks. When she also loses her job in a clothing factory, she has had enough and finally wants to realize her lifelong dream: to become a dancer in a large variety show. First she wants to take part in a competition in which the woman with the smallest feet in France is being sought, but she misses the deadline. As a consolation, she buys a ticket for a cheap seat in the famous Moulin Rouge . There she met the actor Georges Barsac, who offered her a box seat for the “Palace” revue. In a scene from the fairy tale Cinderella, the actress - it is of all people who won the competition for the smallest foot - cannot put on her shoe; Gabrielle, on the other hand, who enters the stage at the request of the emcee, easily slips into it. The manager of the theater then hires her for the next “Revue des Folies” and Barsac at the same time. And he falls in love with her too ...

background

The photography was in the hands of Jimmy Berliet and Maurice Guillemin. The revue scenes in the film, which were created at the original locations in elaborate decorations, were partly colored by hand and partly with a stencil; Pathé had developed the process before the First World War, but it was still used into the 1920s. The game scenes are black and white or conventionally viraged.

The premiere for France took place on November 29, 1927 in Paris; The film came to Austria under the title “The Queen of Paris” in 1928. In England and America it was called Parisian Pleasures . It was also shown in Japan, there for the first time on February 14, 1929.

In France it was awarded by Edition Star Films and in Germany by Cando-Film Verleih . Here he also got the alternative title “The Cinderella of Paris”.

For the evaluation in Germany, director Max Obal shot a prelude and epilogue to the French recordings under the title “Die Frauen von Folies Bergères” with the German actors Margarete Lanner , Claire Rommer , Hilde Jennings , Carl Auer and Julius von Szöreghi ; Hermann Warm created the decorations, Felix Bartsch, the house music director in the Primus Palace, wrote the music for the cinema. The film was presented to the Berlin Film Inspectorate on December 16, 1926 and received under the censorship no. B.14 440 Youth ban.

The German version of La revue des revues was 6 acts and 1870 meters long. It was also shown in Austria, where it was shown in cinemas in Vienna from August 19, 1927 under the title “Ein Rutscher nach Paris”. The world premiere for Germany took place on February 9, 1927 in Berlin in the Primus-Palast as a screening in front of interested parties. With the exception of a fragment held by the Deutsche Kinemathek, the film must be considered lost.

reception

The film features hand-colored original scenes from the revue “La Folie du Jour” (The Madness of the Day), u. a. the infamous one in which Joséphine Baker dances naked except for a banana skirt. This “costume” became her trademark and Baker herself quickly became the most successful American entertainer in France. In addition to her, there are numerous other international dance acts such as those by Lila Nikolska , Stanisława Welska and Ruth Zackey , as well as the famous girl troupes of Lawrence Tiller and Gertrude Hoffman .

“In La revue des revues Baker performed the famous danse sauvage as Fatou in her banana belt. This dance consisted primarily of Charleston steps, high kicks, splits, and improved shimmying with erotic stomach and hip contortions. "(Bennetta Jules-Rosette p. 178)

In Germany, the government of Baden applied for a performance ban because of the 'demoralizing effect' that the dances of Joséphine Baker would have on the cinema audience; however, the application was rejected; only a youth ban was imposed.

“The physicality of Baker's dance was a scandal at the time” […] “And for racists, of course, it was proof that the 'negroes' are closer to monkeys.” (Stefan Frey).

“Director Joë Francys has incorporated a variety of original recordings of dancers from the variety theater into the story of the rising star Gabrielle. Sometimes it is easy to get lost while watching and believe that you are watching the shows in front of the glamorous Art Nouveau stage sets with the young Parisian girl's bright, enthusiastic eyes. The dancers' legs swinging uniformly in the air and filmed by the camera sometimes convey the revue as part of a mass culture. Even then, critics stated that the individual was abolished in it. But the film also shows other, far more individual dances in which the individual artists form the focus of the show. Joséphine Baker, however, only makes a few appearances in the film. But it is impressive when the Charleston dancing artist, whose performances are considered wild, parodic and unrestrained, can be seen in real life (and in color). ”(Constanze Geißler, AVIVA-Berlin )

"For the most part Director Joe Francys shoots the dance sequences with a static, medium-long shot (nearly always cutting off the dancers' feet!). Occasionally there's an overhead angle shot as well, but it's not until the last two dance numbers where he uses close-ups and different angles, which helps cinematically, but losses the audience perspective achieved by simply anchoring the camera in the front row. During the framing story, Francys actually shoots under the high-kicking legs of the dancers as they practice. And it should be noted that there is a smattering of dressing-room nudity. "(Kevin M. Wentink).

"The plot is strictly disposable, but for anyone interested in artifacts of the Jazz Age, La Revue des Revues is a breathtaking feast of costumes, dance numbers, and dazzling stage designs, presented in over a dozen routines as lavish as they are (in retrospect) garishly amusing. Baker is certainly the headliner here, but other performers make up a roster of Parisian stars of 1927, including Russian dancer Lila Nikolska, the Tiller's Follies girls, and the illustrious Madame Komakova. There's a bit of peek-a-boo nudity, but otherwise this is good, clean fun. "(Jeff Shannon, 2007)

“'La Revue des Revues' captures a moment of profound cultural transformation as if in amber. All of the acts in the film are fabulously costumed on spectacular sets, but the music doesn't swing, and La Baker aside, neither do the dancers. This show does not speak to the modern viewer, nor would it speak much longer to the audience of its own time. There was a new thing coming from across the sea, a new music, a new dance, a whole new popular culture. ”(Raymond Owen, January 6, 2011)

Restoration, re-performance

Eric Lange and Serge Bromberg of Lobster Films spent ten years combing archives around the world for material to bring “La Revue des Revues” back together completely. The greatest help was a copy from the Danish Film Institute ; The archives of Gaumont-Pathé and Lenny Borger, who edited the subtitles, made further contributions. In 2005 they submitted their restoration work.

"The Queen of Revue" was broadcast on German television on December 29, 2005 at 1:10 am by the ARTE cultural channel. The new musical accompaniment came from the world music group Taranta-Babou .

The film publisher of the specialists worked together with ARTE and in 2006 released the film on DVD with absolut Medien with optional subtitles in English, German and Danish.

On July 2, 2012 at 8 p.m. the film was shown as part of the event Scenes from an Exhibition - 85 Years of the German Theater Exhibition Magdeburg 1927 , musically accompanied by the group Die Augenzeugen .

literature

  • Herbert Birett: Silent film music. Material collection. Friends of the Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin 1970.
  • Jorge Dana, Niki Kolaitis: Color by Stencil. Germaine Berger and Pathécolor. In: Film History. To International Journal. Volume 21, Number 2, 2009, pp. 180-183.
  • Anne Dreesbach: Tamed savages. The display of “exotic” people in Germany 1870–1940. Campus Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-593-37732-2 , pp. 56, 111.
  • Margrit Frölich, Reinhard Middel (Ed.): No body is perfect. Body images in the cinema. (= Arnoldshainer Film Talks. Volume 19). Schüren, Marburg 2002, ISBN 3-89472-419-6 . (schueren-verlag.de)
  • Stefan Gerbing: Afro-German activism. Interventions by colonized people at the turning point of the decolonization of Germany in 1919. (= Civilizations & History. Volume 6). Verlag Peter Lang, Bern (CH) 2010, ISBN 978-3-631-61394-8 , pp. 32-33 and 138.
  • Susanne Gretter: Josephine Baker, 105th birthday on June 5, 2011. at fembio.org
  • Bennetta Jules-Rosette: Josephine Baker in Art and Life. The Icon and the Image. University of Illinois Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-252-07412-7 , pp. 178-179. (English)
  • Reinhard Klooss, Thomas Reuter: body images. Human ornaments in revue theater and revue film. Edited by Axel Honneth, Rolf Lindner and Rainer Paris. German by Thomas Lindquist and Susi Buttel. A publication of the discussion group “Communication Relations” within the Syndicate authoring and publishing company. 1st edition. Syndikat, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-8108-0140-2 , pp. 49, 64–65, esp. P. 71, note 69.
  • Astrid Kusser: Enjoyment of work and anger to dance in (post) Fordism. In: Body Politics. Body History Journal. Volume 1, No. 1, 2013, special issue "Fordism". online at www.bodypolitics.de | urn: nbn: de: gbv: 547-201300108
  • Johannes Löhr: Munich's fear of the banana dance. In: [Münchner] Merkur online. February 13, 2009. (merkur.de)
  • Rainer E. Lotz: Black People. Entertainers of African descent in Europa and Germany. Lotz, Bonn 1997, ISBN 3-9803461-8-8 . (English)
  • Frank Sawatzki: Black Treasures. A conversation with the music archaeologist Rainer Lotz. In: The time. Nº 49/2013 of December 12, 2013. (zeit.de)
  • Collection of German-language articles about Josephine Baker 1926–1928 in the magazine Die Bühne. No. 173 at grammophon-platten.de with illustrations and 2 sound samples.
  • Reinhard Zachau (Ed.): Topography and Literature: Berlin and Modernism. (= German-language contemporary literature and media. Volume 4). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlag, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-86234-059-0 , pp. 81–82, 84–85.

Web links

Illustrations

  • First performance poster from 1927 for the film "The Women of Folies Bergères" (1926) by Cando-Film, Germany. Poster design Atelier Georg Pollak: Margit Sidonie Doppler-Kovacs, Austria 1927. Printed by A. Reisser, Vienna. Size approx. 281 × 125.8 cm. ( img.ofdb.de ; plakatkontor.de accessed June 8, 2014)
  • Cinema poster from Austria "The Queen of Paris" 1927. (29.media.tumblr.com)

Artist

Color technique

items

  • "Revue once and now" from 'Revue of the Month' Volume 1.1926 / 27, no. 4, February, p. 352 digital.slub-dresden.de (German National Library Leipzig)
  • “The Queen of Revue” at Film.at (film.at)
  • “The Queen of Revue” at Moviepilot.de (moviepilot.de)
  • “The Queen of the Revue” at arte.tv (arte.tv)
  • Constanze Geißler: The Queen of Revue - With Joséphine Baker , review from 16.

 February 2006, online at AVIVA-Berlin .de, accessed on May 1, 2020

  • marco: “The Queen of the Revue” at molodezhnaja.ch October 11, 2012 molodezhnaja.ch (here 12 colored screen shots from the film)
  • Joséphine Baker at steffi-line (steffi-line.de)
  • unknown: About Pathécolor Films. The Multi-Color Stencil Process Described. In: Supplement to KINEMATOGRAPH WEEKLY, dated 11th December 1924 cinerdistan.co.uk (accessed June 9, 2014)
  • unknown: Jelizaveta Nikolská de Boulkin (1904–1955) at Prostor: architektura, interiér, design, Praha prostor-ad.cz (czech)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “Creating the stencil-colored prints was delicate work for which only women were hired.” Germaine Berger, who started at Pathé as a 14-year-old girl in 1911, recalled in an interview she gave Jorge Dana in 1984, cf. muse.jhu.edu
  2. ↑ Pathécolor / Pathéchrome, cf. Peter Ellenbruch, Lexikon der Filmbegriffe, zauberklang.ch and imdb.com : “It should be noted that the color is not the 2 strip Technicolor process but is either created through hand tinting or more likely through a stencil tinting process called Pathécolor / Pathéchrome . You can tell that it is a tint versus being a color print as you can see many scenes where the color either doesn't line up the actual outlines of the image or where only certain areas of the screen are tinted. "
  3. ↑ filmaffinity.com
  4. ↑ cf. Imdb / releasedates
  5. ↑ imdb.com
  6. ↑ a practice of dealing with foreign originals that persisted even into the beginning of the sound film era. So were z. B. American revue sound films (such as The Hollywood Revue of 1929 under the title “We switch to Hollywood”) introduced in a similar way with German actors in fringe events.
  7. ↑ cf. Birett, silent film music p. 123 for B 14 440 - VIII 474.
  8. ↑ cf. Birett, sources kinematographie.de , difarchiv.deutsches-filminstitut.de
  9. ↑ cf. World premiere poster by the renowned Viennese graphic artist Margit Sidonie Doppler-Kovacs
  10. ↑ filmportal.de
  11. ↑ “The Deutsche Kinemathek's fragment contains only one scene from this film, occurring after the 11th title of the 5th act (identified via the censorship card, ref number ZK B 14440, available in the Kinemathek's 'Schriftgutarchiv')." (Jeanpaul Goergen, Deutsche Kinemathek, December 10, 2008); see. lost-films.eu
  12. ↑ As a result, it also became stimulating for hit poets, cf. Text passage “completely without shirt and socks / and with oiled curls / banana bells on the belly ...” from the foxtrot “Yes at the Hottentots” (music by Richard Fall, text by Dr. Fritz Loewy / Loehner- “Beda”) at youtube.com
  13. ↑ Jim Hoberman: By the late '20s, Baker was the toast of Montmartre, the personification of "le jazz hot," and the high priestess of primitivism, as well as the highest-paid entertainer in Europe.
  14. ↑ cf. Received film fragment SDK_00469-N_17 from the Deutsche Kinemathek at lost-films.eu
  15. ↑ born as Catherine “Kitty” Gertrude Hayes (1885–1966), married Hoffman (n), cf. engl. Wikipedia Gertrude Hoffmann (dancer)
  16. ↑ In addition to Munich, Joséphine Baker was banned from performing in Prague, Vienna and Budapest, cf. on this Gerbing p. 33 note 116, Löhr 2009: "Because of an expected" violation of public decency ", the city of Baker issued a performance ban for the German Theater on February 14, 1929" ; In Vienna the Catholic Church even had special services held "as a penance for serious violations of morality, committed by Josephine Baker".
  17. ↑ cf. Censorship report No. 38 of the Film-Oberprüfstelle Berlin from January 31, 1929 at difarchiv.deutsches-filminstitut.de : "The dance of the negress is grotesque, but free of lust and lacks sexual stimulus."
  18. ↑ cit. after Löhr 2009.
  19. ↑ Constanze Geißler: The Queen of the Review - With Joséphine Baker , review on aviva-berlin.de, accessed on May 1, 2020.
  20. ↑ digitalsilents.com
  21. ↑ La Revue Des Revues (1927) (DVD) ( Memento from September 4, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ) on: tower.com
  22. ↑ Josephine. ( Memento of August 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) at: raymondowen.com
  23. ↑ kinolorber.com
  24. ↑ Constanze Geißler: “The band Taranta-babu has the music for the silent film with stencil-colored scenes! Recorded in 2005. Their genre of world music - a lot of saxophones, trombones and drums - covers the revue of the 20s with an unusual modernity. "
  25. ↑ The Queen of the Revue. ( Memento from January 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) on: digitalvd.de
  26. ↑ that is Gerald Rabe, guitar and Andreas Gentzsch, drums; see. forum-gestaltung.de
  27. ↑ on this name cf. Jürg H. Meyer © 2010 at fotointern.ch