The Hradschin's magic lamp

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Movie
Original title The Hradschin's magic lamp
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1916
length 53 minutes
Rod
Director Walter Schmidthässler
script Robert Reinert
production German bioscop
occupation

The Hradschin's Magic Lamp is a fantastic German silent film from 1916 by Walter Schmidthässler .

action

The old Jew Nathan, as completely destitute, has to leave his home one day and goes to Prague with his beautiful daughter Rahel. On the way there, father and daughter come to a ruined castle, where Nathan discovers a mysterious inscription that arouses his interest. Nathan can see from the letters that there is a hidden corner in a temple on Prague Castle Hill, the Hradschin, in which a miraculous lamp hangs. The light of this lamp tracks down all gold and all treasures in this world. But whoever would get hold of this magic lamp would cause corruption. Indeed, Nathan discovers the magic lamp, but does not dare to remove it from its ancestral place because he fears the prophesied damnation. He escapes fearfully from the place of temptation and finally collapses, exhausted, in a side street. In her distress Rachel who accompanied him knocks on Rabbi David's door. This helps the two and is almost in love with shock when he first looks into Rachel's face. In the following years he helps Nathan to establish a new existence and finally asks him for the hand of his daughter, who has also fallen in love with the rabbi. After the upcoming Passover feast , the marriage is to take place.

One day a stranger comes along who sees Rachel at the window and is immediately struck by her beauty. He enters and practically begs Nathan for his daughter's hand. Nathan still thinks about the magic lamp and makes a nefarious deal: if he, the stranger, could get him the magic lamp from the Hradschin, then he could marry Rahel. In fact, the stranger goes into the castle temple and steals the lamp, although he has been forewarned that he, too, would suffer eternal damnation. After Nathan finally holds his much sought-after lamp in his hands, he hands over the hand of the rather unwilling Rachel to the stranger. Rabbi David is completely perplexed when he learns that his bride-to-be has in the meantime been passed on to another man by the bride's father. With the magic lamp in hand, Nathan, the unwise, goes into the catacombs, eagerly looking for treasures that he actually finds. Meanwhile the stranger brings Rachel to his castle in the hope of gaining her love there. But she doesn't want to be his wife at all, pushes him back and runs out of the castle back to his father's apartment, which Rahel finds locked. Suddenly thus homeless, the girl knocks on David, who grants her entrance. A little later, the stranger also showed up there and got back the future woman he had promised him by his father. The rabbi realizes that the stranger's love for this girl is so overwhelming that he actually surrenders it. Rahel only reluctantly joins the stranger. He is tireless in his efforts to prove his love for this woman, and very gradually Rahel thaws towards him and reciprocates his feelings.

Meanwhile her father got hopelessly lost in the treasure hunt in the catacombs and can no longer find the way up. Days of great despair pass, and Nathan is on the verge of starvation when the rabbi finds him unconscious. The young man had gone looking for Nathan out of concern and only now found him. David urgently advises him to bring the magic lamp back to its place of origin in the hope that this will lift the curse. Nathan has an understanding, but first returns to the castle ruins to study the cryptic inscription very carefully. Trembling, he reads the following words: "If the perpetrator repentantly brings back the sanctuary, the temple collapses on him, bury him!" Nathan rushes to the stranger with the lamp in his hand and asks him to bring the lamp back, but his child with him in order to spare him the predicted, cruel fate. Rachel, who knows nothing about the fulfillment of the prediction, lets herself be carried away by her loved one with a broken heart. But when the young woman learns what is about to happen to her lover, she tears herself away from her father and hurries to the place where the stranger is just hanging the lamp back. She throws herself into the arms of her lover, then the temple walls fall down and bury the couple under them.

Production notes

The Hradschin's magic lamp was probably made in 1915 in the Bioscop studio in Neubabelsberg (studio recordings) and on site in Prague (external shoots). The 1400 meter long film had four acts and was premiered on June 10, 1916.

classification

The considerable success that Deutsche Bioscop had achieved in 1915 with the first Golem film and which was to make a great national and international impression, prompted the same production company to produce further fantastic fabrics. The same team (director Schmidthässler, leading actor Bergen) shot after Die Wunder Lampe des Hradschin in autumn 1915 And knowledge is death and, at the beginning of 1916, the no less fantastic story The Trödler von Prag .

criticism

“An outstanding good film, the fantastic plot, excellently presented, exerts the greatest impression. This impression is heightened by a truly artistic direction that creates images before our eyes that are a real pleasure to look at. Well-chosen images of the city of Prague with three-dimensional sharpness crown this director's masterpiece. "

- Cinematographic review of April 2, 1916. p. 45

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Some sources such as Gerard Lamprecht's German Stummfilme, Volume 1915–1916, p. 179, state that Emil Albes was the director and that the film was simply called The Magic Lamp during the production phase