The joyless alley
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The joyless alley |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1925 |
| length | 148 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Georg Wilhelm Pabst |
| script | Willy Haas |
| production | Michail Salkind , Romain Pinès , Sofar-Film-Produktion GmbH |
| music | Max German |
| camera | Guido Seeber , Curt Oertel , Walter Robert Lach |
| cut | Mark Sorkin |
| occupation | |
| |
Die joudlose Gasse is a silent film by the director Georg Wilhelm Pabst , shot in Germany in 1925 and premiered on May 18, 1925 in Berlin . It is the best-known film adaptation of a work by Hugo Bettauer and also one of the first films to be assigned to the New Objectivity trend .
action
The film is set in 1921. In Melchiorgasse in a poor district of Vienna, there are only two wealthy people besides impoverished citizens and the ragged proletariat : the butcher Josef Geiringer and Mrs. Greifer, who runs a fashion salon with an attached nightclub. The wealthy citizens of Vienna are drawn to these. Attached to the night club is the hour hotel "Merkl", in which u. a. Women use sexual services to pay off the loan they took out from Frau Greifer.
While some get rich through stock fraud, others fall into poverty. Meanwhile, rich woman Lia Leid is murdered. In the end it turns out that this deed was committed out of jealousy by Marie, who sunk into the street girl "Mizzi".
At the end of the film, Else desperately kills the butcher because he doesn't want to give her meat, and the poor residents of the street turn against the rich after hearing strange noises from the nightclub. You start throwing stones. The building ignites, Else and her unemployed husband die in the flames, but they can still reach their child through the window and save them. So it becomes the "child of Melchiorgasse". In the end, there is only hope of ever getting out of this alley for Grete Rumfort. Your relationship with an American Red Cross officer offers the prospect of a better life.
background
The joyless street turns away from expressionist imagery and towards the post-war reality marked by inflation . The plot of the film Die joyllose Gasse runs in several parallel levels that are interwoven and merge at the end.
The film, based on Hugo Bettauer's 1924 novel, was made in just five months. The author and work were politically highly explosive at the time: right-wing politicians and the press denounced Bettauer's works, even his "extermination" was demanded. The writer was murdered before filming was finished.
The buildings come from Hans Sohnle and Otto Erdmann .
The film established Georg Wilhelm Pabst's reputation as a leading director of German film realism. The still strong impact of the film today is due not least to the fact that the plot is carried out by the three brilliant actresses Asta Nielsen, Greta Garbo and Valeska Gert. By the way, the only film in which Asta Nielsen and Greta Garbo appear together.
Versions and reconstructions
Despite a happy ending , which, contrary to the literary original, was shot as a concession to the producers and the audience, the film was censored and shortened in many countries . The version, which was shown at the premiere in Berlin in 1925 , was 3738 m long. The night before the premiere, Pabst and his film editor Mark Sorkin removed "some important scenes" that the cinema owner had criticized.
Due to the first censorship on May 25, 1925, only a relatively small number of pictures were lost at around 3.5 to 4 meters (around 7.5 seconds, based on 25 pictures / second). Upon request, a further test was carried out in the following year, after which only 3477 meters remained. As a result, there were many different versions of the film that differed not only in length but also in the sequence of scenes. In England the film was banned at all.
Several attempts have been made in Germany to reconstruct the film, with the aim of getting as close as possible to the original version, i.e. that of the premiere. The first attempt goes back to Enno Patalas , who in 1989 in the Munich Film Museum cut a version from three surviving copies of the film that was closely based on the screenplay of Mark Sorkins.
From 1995 to 1997 the second reconstruction took place in the Munich Film Museum under the direction of Jan-Christopher Horaks , in which all known negative films were used, as well as all available material from which information about the correct sequence of the scenes and the subtitles emerged. The resulting reconstruction of the film is about 3000 meters long.
literature
- Hugo Bettauer : The joyless alley. A Viennese novel from our day (= Ullstein book 37147 Ullstein work editions ). With an afterword by Murray G. Hall . Unabridged edition. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1988, ISBN 3-548-37147-7 .
- Jan-Christopher Horak: The case of the joyless alley. A reconstruction in the Munich Film Museum. In: Ursula von Keitz (Ed.): Early film and late episodes. Restoration, reconstruction and re-presentation of historical cinematography (= writings of the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Society. Vol. 6). Schüren, Marburg 1998, ISBN 3-89472-305-X , pp. 48-65.
- Ursula von Keitz: Foreword. In: Ursula von Keitz (Ed.): Early film and late episodes. Restoration, reconstruction and re-presentation of historical cinematography (= writings of the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Society. Vol. 6). Schüren, Marburg 1998, ISBN 3-89472-305-X , pp. 7-10.
- Gerald Koll: Pandora's Treasures. Concepts of eroticism in the silent films by GW Pabst (= Discourse Film. Library. Vol. 14). Diskurs-Film-Verlag Schaudig & Ledig, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-926372-64-8 (also: Kiel, University, dissertation, 1996).
- Christiane Mückenberger: The joyless alley. In Günther Dahlke, Günter Karl (ed.): German feature films from the beginning to 1933. A film guide. 2nd Edition. Henschel-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-89487-009-5 , p. 115 ff.
- Michael Pabst: The joyless alley. In: Wolfgang Jacobsen (Ed.): GW Pabst. Argon, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-87024-365-1 , pp. 137-150.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The original score was lost in Madrid, where Max Deutsch taught from 1934, when the Spanish Civil War broke out (see Primavera Driessen Gruber : Traveltalks in Music. From Mahler's Songs of a Traveling Journeyman to Eisler's Hollywooder Song Book and beyond. In: Johannes F. Evelein (Ed.): Exiles Traveling. Exploring Displacement, crossing Boundaries in German Exile Arts and Writings 1933–1945 (= Amsterdam contributions to modern German studies. Vol. 68). Rodopi, Amsterdam et al. 2009, ISBN 978-90-420-2540- 0 , pp. 239-264, here p. 254).
- ↑ filmportal.de