The plague in Florence

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Movie
Original title The plague in Florence
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1919
length 73 minutes
Rod
Director Otto Rippert
script Fritz Lang
production Erich Pommer
music Bruno Gellert
camera Willy Hameister ,
Emil Schünemann
occupation

The plague in Florence is a German film set during the Italian Renaissance from 1919 in the form of a late medieval custom painting. Directed by Otto Rippert .

action

Julia, a courtesan of great beauty, comes from the sensual and extravagant Venice to the pious, morally strict Florence . The church in its ascetic piety, with its processions and pilgrimages, controls everyday life. On the secular side, the old council of the ancients, obeying strict moral principles, rules the city. He is led by Cesare. Julia's beauty is a great temptation for the most moral of the dignitaries. The Church suspects the arrival of the female temptation from laid-back Venice. Soon the powerful Cesare can no longer resist Julia's charms and his attractive son Lorenzo also falls in love with the young courtesan. Cesare realizes too late that he is uninhibitedly at the mercy of Julia's seductive arts. Like a loving old fool, he sneaks into Julia's house to be close to her. But she rejects him and gives herself to his son. When Cesare tries to seize them by force, his filius rushes at him. Julia's beauty threatens to ruin both of them when a life-and-death struggle ensues. At the last moment, the old man leaves Lorenzo and walks away.

So soon the morals in Florence loosen up. With their celebrations, the young people of the city make the house of the cheerful Venetian a place of joy and vice, lust and lust. Grudgingly, the church must recognize in the person of the mighty cardinal that it threatens to lose the battle for morality and decency. But the cardinal doesn't want to give up. Together with the vengeful Cesare, he causes the council of the elderly to accuse Julia as a heretic and to subject her to torture. In the middle of one of her lavish parties, Julia is abducted by armed thugs. Lorenzo, however, reacts quickly. He called the people together to end the ecclesiastical and state despotism of the city leaders, the decreed Florentine hostility to the senses. In anger, the crowd storms the palace of the ancients, Lorenzo in the lead. His father opposes him. Lorenzo swings an ax and blows it down on his father and competitors for Julia's favor.

The rule of the Venetian temptress has now begun. The church is defeated, its priests flee. Moral decline has also found its way into the houses of God, they too serve only as a refuge for debauchery and physical love. When one day Julia is to be crowned the Queen of Love of Florence at a festival, a dark-looking figure appears in a monk's habit to stop the hustle and bustle. A strong voice stands out from the hustle and bustle and threatens: "Woe to you, Florentines! Woe to you, Sodom and Gomorrah ! If you don't believe me - the stones will speak for me!" But the thousands of voices of the cocky festival goers only laugh at him; him: the holy hermit with his mission. Then the dark man leaves again.

Only Julia has not gotten the darkling out of her head since then. He's so completely different from any other man she's met here. She wants him, longs for his rough, barren nature. On a hunt, she appears in front of his cave. Even the hermit, his name is Francis, has not been able to forget the courtesan. He struggles hard with himself, caught between his faith and convictions on the one hand and the longing for the beautiful “sinner” on the other. Francis prays to his God - but carnal lust wins. The next morning Julia proudly presented her new conquest to the authorities of Florence: Francis. His first victim is also his rival, Lorenzo, whom he strangles with his own hands in Julia's room.

Florence has now finally degenerated into a place of vice and unrestrained moral decline. The Pope has long since put the city under the curse . Then "the stones begin to speak", as Francis predicted with ominous prediction. The ghost of death arrives, the plague , and places a gray-yellow shroud over the depraved population. Francis closes the city gates to avert the danger. Vain. The people continue to dance, as if out of their minds in a death rush. Francis demands a miracle from God. Heavenly signs of flame appear on the wall: " Mene tekel upharsin! Checked , weighed, and found too easy! " Francis recognizes his guilt. The city is to be punished by God for its fall into sin and he, the converted Francis, will be his instrument. He sneaks through the catacombs in front of the city walls to atone and henceforth to care for the plague sufferers.

But the epidemic also afflicts him (cf. Black Death ) and now it is clear to him: he himself was chosen to punish Florence. Through the catacombs he staggers back into the pit of sin and bursts right into Julia's latest extravagant festival. Intoxicated by the state of irrepressible love, the courtesan recognizes him. When she rushes to him and wants to throw herself on his chest, her eyes are fixed with shock: behind him, the converted lover, the head of a phantom stretches grinning: the plague. A few more steps and Julia sinks to the floor. The guests tear apart, but in the next instant they die. The last of them, Francis, who converted from Saul to Paul, dies and sinks down on his Juliet. And the death of the plague, happily fiddling on the violin, passes the corpses to the left and right of his path and leaves the festival palace of sin to continue his work elsewhere.

production

Shooting began in June and ended at the end of September 1919. The seven-act film premiered on October 23, 1919 in the Berlin Marble House Cinema.

The main actor Theodor Becker had interrupted his guest tours for the upcoming filming at the beginning of June 1919 and used the preparatory phase for the film for an appearance at the Schauspielhaus Berlin , where he successfully played Coriolanus in the Shakespeare play of the same name .

The greatest assets of this Renaissance picture sheet are the extensive, medieval and very impressive film structures perfectly captured by Willy Hameister and Emil Schünemann , which are populated by a huge army of extras. Hermann Warm was responsible for the studio buildings in the Lixie studio in Berlin-Weißensee , building officer Franz Jaffé and Warm designed the exterior decorations on the market square. Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig did the painting.

For Fritz Lang , Die Pest in Florenz was one of his last assignments as a screenwriter for another director.

The costumes were supplied by F. & A. Diringer from Munich

criticism

In the photo-stage you can read: "The seven chapters told by Fritz Lang from the" Italian Renaissance "show in amazing pictures that testify to an extraordinary sense of style and an understanding of art, the moral corruption of medieval Florence and the punishment that inflicted on the fun-loving city came last in the form of the plague. […] Theodor Becker lent the fanaticism of his gaze and an ecstatic restrained anger to the hermit Franziskus, a Paul who became a Saul and later again a Paul. The fact that St. Francis and his temptations (which are actually attributed to St. Anthony) were relocated to the Savonarola epoch, allowed the Roman catacombs to Florence and a few other historical boldnesses, was forgiven because the director was just doing this Exceptional achievements and, for example, in the forest-darkened cave of the hermit, through which his visions haunt, offered masterly things. Otto Rippert has shown an ingenious hand here. "

The first international film newspaper reported on the premiere performance as follows: “Magnificent pictures (building officer Jaffé is responsible for the exterior, painter Warm for the interior design) for the whole wild fight: the Piazza del Signorii with the heavy palace, with the airy, graceful Loggia del Lanzi. . . The procession of the enemies of all beauty passes by, the priest tenants of heaven. And the penitents meet earthly love: the courtesan from Venice, carried by Mohren - symbol of Venus and the beauty that freely gives itself away. And then fate rolls by through the six chapters, the fate of the city, the people and the priestess of Venus. . . . The beautiful Marga Kierska plays as if she were giving away what is her very own. The parquet feels it, because the tragedy is not yet fully developed when the box in which the beautiful woman is sitting is filled with precious flowers. Otto Rippert, perhaps the most deserving of the evening, modestly defends himself before the ovation desired by the crowd. Friends pull him "into the daylight", next to Kierska and the others. And now the applause is storming. "

The trade journal Der Film also found words of praise throughout after the premiere: “The evening of the premiere in the Marmorhaus was an event. Once again the German film industry proved here that it is determined to take on the competition against foreign countries with all its might and that its chances are quite good. The film, divided into seven chapters by the author Fritz Lang, takes us through varied, atmospheric scenes to Florence at the time of the Renaissance. True-to-style costumes, right down to the smallest detail of the time, colorfully animated festival scenes, large-scale mass pictures, dramatic events captivate the eye from beginning to end and once again prove the excellent organizational talent and highly developed artistic sense of director Otto Rippert. A huge army of well-disciplined extras, under his purposeful, energetic direction, put on crowd scenes against which one almost forgets to see theater here - like the most vivid truth, the pictures that roll in front of us in a skilful arrangement appear to be. "

The film's large lexicon of people called The Plague in Florence an "opulently illustrated [...], costume and equipment-intensive [...] renaissance picture sheet".

Heinrich Fraenkel's Immortal Film believed that he recognized Fritz Lang's thematic preferences in the film: “It is generally very characteristic of Lang that the subject of his later world-famous films can be found in the very first works. The topic of the "femme fatale" can already be found in The Plague in Florence and The Woman with the Orchids ... "

Oskar Kalbus ' Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst (Vom Becoming German Film Art) pointed out the enormous effort involved in the production of this equipment spectacle: “Otto Rippert commissioned the well-known Berlin building officer Jaffé and the painter Warm, in the soft image of Berlin, entire districts of the 'Queen of Northern Italian Cities' in historical and architectural fidelity for the film “Pest in Florenz” (1919). Hundreds of German builders bravely got to work and created the Palazzo Vecchio, the former seat of the Signoria, with its high watchtower, the battlements and the historical coats of arms on the outdoor area of ​​the Berlin Ufa studios. Jaffé built the Palazzo degli Uffizi next to the Palazzo Vecchio, which was once created by the painter Vasari (1560–74). The Uffizi was partially flanked by the famous Loggia dei Lanzi and its graceful architecture was underlined by the huge arched halls of the loggia. These central buildings were framed by numerous other palaces and magnificent buildings, and this created a development space for 10–15,000 extras. In these magnificent buildings the moral corruption of medieval Florence and the punishment that fell upon the life-thirsty city in the form of a terrible plague were to be depicted. The focus of the plot is a Circe (Margarete Kierska) and the hermit and fanatic Franziskus (Theodor Becker). "

literature

  • von Keitz, Ursula: Exuberant sensuality and deadly furor. The historical moral film PLAGUE IN FLORENCE (1919) and its iconography of the turning point. In: Filmblatt, Vol. 17, No. 50 Winter 2012/13, pp. 21–33.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lichtbild-Bühne No. 43 of October 25, 1919, p. 14
  2. ^ First Internationale Film-Zeitung No. 42 of October 25, 1919, p. 33.
  3. ↑ Der Film, No. 44 of November 2, 1919. P. 44.
  4. ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 6: N - R. Mary Nolan - Meg Ryan. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 546.
  5. ^ Heinrich Fraenkel: Immortal Film. The great chronicle from the Laterna Magica to the sound film. Kindler Verlag Munich 1956. p. 141
  6. ^ Oskar Kalbus: On the becoming of German film art. 1st part: The silent film. Berlin 1935. p. 44