The lion hunt
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The lion hunt |
| Original title | LøvejAGEN / LøvejAGEN on Elleore |
| Country of production | Denmark |
| original language | Danish |
| Publishing year | 1907 |
| length | 11 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Viggo Larsen |
| script | Arnold Richard Nielsen |
| production | Ole Olsen for Nordisk Film Kompagni, Copenhagen |
| camera | Axel Sørensen |
| occupation | |
| |
The Lion Hunt is a short Danish silent film from 1907 by and with Viggo Larsen .
action
Two helmeted, bearded, European big game hunters in snow-white suits stalk through the African jungle. You will see several ostriches, a zebra and a hippo. One of the two hunters catches a small monkey with his bare hands. Then they play with a baby gorilla on the floor. After tethering their mule to a small palm tree, the whites let their black tracker follow a lion trail and follow him along the way. All three of them set up camp in a tree-lined square. Before the hunters go to sleep with a blanket on, they both light a cigarette.
At night the white gentlemen are frightened from their sleep. A lion has approached the camp dangerously and killed a goat. The pack animal of the two big game hunters was also caught. A lion is taking a bath in the open water when one of the two Europeans approaches. He points his rifle and shoots the animal. The archer triumphantly leans his rifle butt on the body of the dead animal (which suddenly lies on the edge of the bank with dry fur). To do this, he lights a cigarette again.
Suddenly it is said from the off that a second lion trail has been found. Both hunters stalk the animal and also shoot this lion (whose death is not shown in the picture this time). Then the two men begin to skin the big cat. When the hunters disappear into the forest thicket, the black servant follows them, pulling the two lion skins behind him. And again a cigarette is lit to triumph, this time the tracker is also offered one. The two hunters proudly present their lion skins attached to high wooden pegs.
Production, background, history of origin
The lion hunt is 11 minutes and 25 seconds long and was made in the late summer of 1907. Shortly before that, Nordisk producer Ole Olsen had bought two decrepit lions from Hamburg's Tierpark Hagenbeck for the high sum of 5000 Danish kroner in order to use them for shooting this film in front of the camera to be shot. The premiere of the film took place in the same year, an exact date cannot be determined with certainty. On November 16, 1907, a German performance in the Belle Alliance Theater in Altona can be verified. Also in 1907 the lion hunt could be seen in Sweden.
Olsen used his own film Isbjørnejagt (The Polar Bear Hunt) as a template for LøvejAGEN . At the beginning of 1907 he had bought a polar bear, released it in the frozen Öresund and had this animal shot in front of the camera. The short film turned out to be a huge box-office success, prompting Olsen to come up with the idea of trying the same principle again in a magnified form in a lion film. But this time animal rights activists had prepared themselves and ran a storm of protest against the project. In addition, the Danish Justice Minister Alberti had the killing of the animals prohibited by a court decision. Because Olsen did not adhere to it, the Danish premiere was delayed until November 11, 1908.
The film was shot on an island in the Roskilde Fjord and in a piece of forest that was transformed into a primeval forest with exotic plants. In order to make the African atmosphere believable, director Larsen cut shots with the exotic species from the Copenhagen Zoo mentioned above into the short storyline.
Because Olsen defied the court orders and had the lions shot, his license to run his cinema was revoked and he was also charged with animal cruelty. Cinematographer Axel Sørensen , who captured the killing of the animals on celluloid, was locked in a prison for a day. After the court case against Olsen ended in an acquittal, The Lion Hunt could also be performed in Denmark. Here, too, the short film was an enormous success. Olsen was able to sell a total of 259 copies of his film across Europe.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Manfred Behn (Red.): Black dream and white slave. German-Danish film relations 1910-1930. A CineGraph book. Munich 1994, p. 137