The doll

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Movie
Original title The doll
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1919
length 66 minutes
Rod
Director Ernst Lubitsch
script Hanns Kräly ,
Ernst Lubitsch
production Paul Davidson
for projection group "Union"
camera Theodor Sparkuhl
occupation

The Doll is a German silent film by Ernst Lubitsch from 1919. It is based on Alfred Maria Willner's German translation of the French operetta La poupée by Edmond Audran , freely based on motifs by ETA Hoffmann .

content

Baron de Chanterelle feels his end is near. Since he wants to prevent his sex from dying out prematurely, he has it announced that all the virgins in the village should come together so that his nephew Lancelot could choose a wife among them. The local women are enthusiastic, their fiancée less and least of all Lancelot, who does not want to marry under any circumstances. Before he knows it, 40 (young) women willing to marry chase him through the whole village. He manages to hide and ask for the way to the next monastery .

There is no celibate life in the monastery: The monks are fat from feasting and Lancelot also comes to the monastery when the monks are having a sumptuous meal. He is let in, but has to make do with a dry piece of bread. Days later - Lancelot is still living in the monastery - the monks are almost bankrupt because of their lifestyle. In the newspaper they read an open letter from Chanterelle to Lancelot: he should go back to his uncle and get married. He would also pay him 300,000 francs as “compensation” . The monks convince Lancelot to marry. If he didn't want to marry a woman, he could marry a doll. After some hesitation, Lancelot agrees.

He goes to the doll maker Hilarius, who has just created a doll in the image of his daughter Ossi. In contrast to the daughter, the doll doesn't make faces, but can dance and say hello like a real woman, for example. While Hilarius shows Lancelot dozens of deceptively real dolls, Hilarius' young apprentice dances impetuously with the new doll, whose arm breaks in the subsequent fall. Ossi feels sorry for the boy and offers to imitate the doll until he has repaired the arm. Because Lancelot does not like the dolls presented, because he wants one with character, Hilarius shows him the doll that has just been completed - in reality the real Ossi. Lancelot spontaneously decides to buy it, receives a “doll's wedding dress” and instructions for use, as well as good advice on caring for the doll. Ossi takes note of all this with horror and the apprentice is also deeply depressed.

Baron de Chanterelle once again feels the end is near and the legacy sneaks are already populating his house when Lancelot appears with Ossi and Chanterelle spontaneously heals. The wedding is set. Meanwhile, Hilary's assistant confesses that instead of the doll, the real Ossi is at Lancelot's side. Hilarius's suddenly gray hair suddenly stand on end.

The wedding between Lancelot and Ossi takes place and Ossi plays her doll role well. Lancelot receives the promised money from Chanterelle and goes to the monastery with Ossi. There the monks want to put her in a broom closet, but Ossi manages to outsmart her so that she ends up in Lancelot's bedroom. He uses it as a clothes rack and dreams at night that Ossi is alive. When he wakes up, Ossi assures him that he is actually alive, but Lancelot only believes it when she is frightened by a mouse. Both flee from the monastery and finally find themselves on a bench, where they happily embrace and kiss.

Meanwhile Hilarius has tried in vain to get to the monastery. He steals all the balloons from a balloon seller and lets himself be blown into the sky, but the journeyman shoots the balloons, which gradually burst. Hilarius sinks to the ground and lands right in front of the kissing couple. Before he can be indignant, Ossi and Lancelot show him their marriage certificate: Both have "genuinely" married again. Hilarius is now free of his worries and his hair promptly turns black again.

production

The film was shot in the Ufa Union studios, Tempelhof near Berlin . The premiere of the film took place on December 4, 1919 in the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin .

In retrospect, Ernst Lubitsch himself described the film as “pure fantasy; most of the backdrops were made of cardboard, some even made of paper. To this day I consider this film to be one of the most imaginative that I have ever made. "

criticism

Contemporary critics praised the doll ; Lubitsch “cleverly used and opened up a number of old, funny ideas here, adding many new ones of his own. He lets the romance of the fairy tale world emerge in delightful pictures, unfortunately only occasionally slipping into the mischievous. "

The Catholic film critics rated the film as a "disgrace": "The plot of this work, which proves the low point of our contemporary cinema with a sad example, is nothing more than an outrageous mockery of the Catholic religious life."

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Lubitsch: Review of July 10, 1947. In: Hermann Weinberg: The Lubitsch Touch . Dover, New York 1977, pp. 264-265.
  2. ↑ Oh .: The doll . In: Lichtbild-Bühne, No. 49, December 6, 1919.
  3. ^ Criticism in the Aachener Volksfreund . Quoted from: Martin Proskauer: The doll . In: Film-Kurier, No. 28, February 3, 1920.