The devil's church
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The devil's church |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1919 |
| length | 66 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Hans Mierendorff Friedrich Degener |
| script |
Adolf Paul based on his novel |
| production | Friedrich Degener |
| occupation | |
The Devil's Church is a German film adaptation by Hans Mierendorff from 1919.
action
"The content of the strip is as follows:
A wealthy farmer lives with his young and beautiful wife in a happy marriage, which is only clouded by the fact that the marriage has so far lacked children. The farmer thinks about it, lies in a haystack and has the following dream:
The devil sneaks through the village and wants to win over the small village church. The small village church burns down, the parish advises where the new church should be placed.
The devil lays a heavy stone in front of the parishioners, it is decided to carry this stone through the village and build the new church where the bearer of the stone has to lay it because it has become too heavy for him. That also happens, the stone is laid down in front of the threshold of the house that belongs to the dreaming farmer and the farmer is asked to sell his homestead to the community so that the church is to be built there.
The farmer gets into serious conscience because he promised his father on his deathbed not to sell his homestead. De Teufel has now approached the beautiful farmer's wife, who grieves that her marriage lacks the blessing of children. The sensual woman throws herself into the arms of the devil, with whom she disappears into the forest. During the adultery she is committing, the farmer's homestead burns down. The farmer sees this as a warning from God and promises the pastor of the village to donate his homestead to the community. He had only promised his father not to sell the homestead, but that would not stand in the way of giving the homestead away. The farmer's wife appears and wants to terminate this donation agreement.
The pastor has observed that the peasant woman is being persecuted by other men because of her beauty and warns her. The peasant woman feigns humility; the pastor is so touched by her beauty that he kisses her. The devil concludes the following contract with the pastor: He, the devil wants to build the church, the church should belong to him as soon as the pastor at the altar denies the divine command. The pastor accepts the contract. A glorious new church stands there overnight, the pastor, with the crucifix in his outstretched hand, goes out with his congregation to banish the devil from the church.
The devil stands in front of the altar and does not want to leave. The beautiful peasant woman appears before the pastor in an alluring form, and the pastor has to confess that he is entangled in sinful love for this woman. The parish wants to assault its pastor, the pastor, obsessed with his passion, claims that human passion is willed by God and therefore cannot be a sin. The community is ready to believe its pastor.
In the meantime, the Lord God comes striding from the sea dressed as a beggar and wishes to be admitted to the church. He was the Lord God, he wanted to live in the church. A beggar rejects him, believing it to be a beggar or a deranged person. The Lord God goes his way, the devil triumphs: the whole community now belongs to him, the pastor has denied his God. The one standing outside the door was God. Let the whole church be now.
The farmer now awakens from his tormenting dream and sleepily realizes that it was all just a dream: the old church is intact, his beautiful wife is loyal to him as always, the venerated pastor of the village appears and wishes the couple a blessed year. "
background
The production company was Lucifer-Film Co GmbH Berlin. The artistic direction (production) was subject to Friedrich Degener . The original length was 1,359 meters and five acts in about 66 minutes.
The premiere took place in November 1919.
censorship
The Berlin police issued a youth ban (probably in 1919) (No. 43404), the Munich police banned it completely (No. 36630, 36631, 36632, 36633).
On June 10, 1921, the film was reviewed again, this time in a version of a prelude and four acts. (Prelude: 154 meters; Act I: 214 meters; Act II: 230 meters; Act III: 248 meters, Act IV: 308 meters), so a total of 1,334 meters. The Berlin Film Testing Center banned him entirely (No. 2581).
In response to the immediate complaint, the film was reviewed again on June 21, 1921, the ban was lifted, but a youth ban was imposed (No. B 78.21 and No. 2581).
Carl Bulcke, as chairman of the film supervisory board, ruled:
"The preliminary decision banned this strip of images for three reasons:
It must hurt people who have a religious feeling that a pastor can succumb to the snares of a beautiful woman and excuse sin as something human and forgivable.
Second, the same feeling must be hurt by the fact that God himself appears in human form in this picture strip.
Thirdly, the strip of images is suitable to have a demoralizing effect, because its content praises unlimited sexual freedom and pays homage to the worldview that only evil rules the world.
The complainants justified their complaint with the fact that in art and reality the incident was all too often encountered, that a high-ranking person and why not a pastor succumb to love for a woman. The figure of the Lord God is often enough to be found in churches in an even more naive form than that shown here in the picture strip and such a representation has never caused offense. Thirdly, the worldview that the world is ruled by evil is not only clad in a fairytale-like form in the present case, but also refined through artistic effects in such a way that a demoralizing effect is not recognizable.
The board did not deny this appeal. The content of the picture strip deals with a topic that is common in all cultural countries in the form of legends and fairy tales in Scandinavian literature, especially in the great poems of Selma Lagerlöff (sic!) And Björnsterne Björnson . The stories and legends of Selma Lagerlöff, in which the devil, the figure of God, the Virgin Mary and Christ act, intervene in human events.
The present work, the work of the well-known Swedish writer Adolf Paul , is an expression of the same emotional world, human passion, sexual love, the power of sin in a thoroughly realistic representation with supernatural events and the fable of the plot in the guise of a fairy tale or legend surrounds. This effect of the fairytale and the legendary is intended and achieved in the present case.
The viewer sees that it is the real figure of the devil who seduces a beautiful peasant woman who entangles a simple and simple village pastor in a passion that leads an entire community to erroneous belief. This effect is, moreover, given in an entirely artistic form, and the pessimistic worldview, which in the end always triumphs over good in life, is an honest and elegant expression of a poetic conscience.
The board was of the opinion that a demoralizing effect could not be recognized in the entirety of the representation, because the figure of God was represented acting in human form.
It is not true, as the first decision explains, that it contradicts the Christian religious conception to give a human face to the concept of the deity that cannot be grasped with human senses; it is rather an accusation of the fine arts through past centuries to the present Time to portray the figure of God enthroned above clouds, the figure of God in the vicinity of the Holy Spirit and Christ. Such a representation in the picture strip can just as little hurt a religious feeling as such representations of the fine arts have not done so far. This is all the less so since the short pictures in the picture strip, in which the figure of God is shown, depict a venerable old man who walks the world as a beggar, as the viewer is familiar with from children's fairy tales.
According to § 1 of the Film Act, the admission of a picture strip may not be refused because of a tendency towards ideology as such. The ideological tendency of the strip at hand, the pessimistic view of the power of sin, could therefore not be countered by banning the strip. This world view is of course shown in a passionate form and occasionally realistic representation, but it must not be forgotten that according to the content of the picture strip, the events described are the dreams of a simple man and that after the plot has been built up, the viewer will find the solution to the fable in Must recognize peace and pleasure. "
Nevertheless, the performing arts of "Agnes Straub as a straw-blonde seductress" and a certain "sultry eroticism" of the censorship seemed unsuitable, so that a youth ban was decided.
Web links
- The Teufelskirche at The German Early Cinema Database
- The Devil's Church at filmportal.de
- The Teufelskirche in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Film length calculator , frame rate : 18
- ↑ Censorship decisions in the archive of the German Film Institute
- ↑ The Devil's Church at stummfilmkonzerte.de
Remarks
- ↑ The list of actors on the film portal was deliberately not added here, as neither detectives nor editors appear after the content of the film
- ↑ The plot comes directly from the censorship report, including typing errors and inconsistencies, and was written by Carl Bulcke .