The glass ball

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Movie
Original title The glass ball
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1937
length 86 minutes
Age rating FSK not specified
Rod
Director Peter Stanchina
script Fritz Rau
Mila Rau
production Otto Ernst Lubitz
music Hans Carste
camera Ernst Wilhelm Fiedler
cut Gottlieb Madl
occupation

The Glass Ball is a German feature film made in the last two months of 1936 and directed by Peter Stanchina . Albrecht Schoenhals , Sabine Peters , Hilde von Stolz and Paul Henckels play the leading roles in this detective melodrama.

action

The Viennese banker Dr. Fritz Sylten loves his young, beautiful wife more than anything. Nina Sylten throws her husband's money out the window with her hands full, without the banker being able to bring her to reason . The banker's circle of friends whispered meaningfully, but nobody asked him about it. The first person who dares to give him his opinion is his brother Franz, who was away from home for a long time and has only recently returned. Fritz Sylten doesn't think much of his brother Franz, since he thinks he can hardly do anything with what he thinks are obscure plans. Franz Sylten has come back to ask his rich brother to give him money for a pearl necklace that his mother left him. Even before he left, his brother had given him 60,000 schillings . Since this money was spent on his experiments, he offers his brother the necklace, which is worth 100,000 shillings, as the equivalent of another 40,000 shillings. The banker flatly refuses his brother's request, even though this exact sum has just been handed over to him by a bank clerk.

Fritz Sylten meets Axel von Schack for a card game that same evening. Sylten came with the firm intention of taking as much money as possible from Schack. This actually loses an enormous amount. The banker knows that the handsome man is his wife Nina's lover and desperately wants to ruin him. On the same evening, 40,000 schillings were stolen from Fritz Sylten's apartment. One puzzles who the thief was. As the banker's servant saw Axel von Schack in the villa, von Schack was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison . Although Fritz Sylten knows the perpetrator, he is absolutely silent. It is just one thought that moves Axel von Schack from now on: to find a way to escape. And then the time has come, a truck that he secretly jumps on drives to Vienna. When he gets in touch with Nina, he is depressed to find out that she thinks he is the culprit. He manages to escape to America . But no matter what he starts there, it's crowned with failure until the day he meets Trix, a fascinating personality. Trix would like to win him over to a variety show he invented that has never been seen before. He invented a death loop through which a ball rolls, then floats freely in the air for a moment and flows into another death loop at the same speed. Von Schack, who thinks he is finished anyway, makes himself available for the experiment and an experiment on the large model is started. The experiment succeeds, the sensation is perfect. The "glass ball" rolls. With their double death loop, both are now the sensation of every variety theater in the world. Trix and Axel, who now calls himself Fred Parker, have been on the road together for many years, but completely ignore private interests. But they both avoid one city - Vienna! When Fred Parker fell in love again for the first time after his disappointment with Nina, with Nelly, an art protectionist, and she received an engagement in Vienna, he persuaded Trix that they would also perform there with their death ribbon. He doesn't want to let Nelly go alone because he is sure that he has found the woman of his life.

Of course, Nina also becomes aware of the posters that announce her appearance and that are displayed on all of Vienna's advertising pillars . And already at Fred's first appearance, she rushes into his dressing room. She tells him that her husband killed himself a long time ago and that he destroyed a piece of paper on which his brother Fritz had told him that he had taken the 40,000 schillings. Nina only wants to rehabilitate him when he comes back to her. This is not an option for Axel (Fred) . When he tells her that he is engaged to Nelly and genuinely loves her, her feelings for him turn to hatred. Axel is finally talking to Trix. At the same time, Nina puts Nelly under pressure with the threat that she will bring Axel (Fred) back to prison.

When Nelly found out the evening before the performance that an arrest was imminent, she saw only one way out, she wanted to shoot Nina. Axel, who has just started his death run, when he sees Nelly storming onto the stage, suspects, like Trix, what she is up to. Trix manages to hit Nelly's weapon in a direction where it cannot cause any damage. But Axel, who cannot do anything, is so unfocused that he crashes.

He is badly injured. Even so, the police insist on an arrest. Trix doesn't let his friend down and admits that he took the money that night. And Nina also knows that she has lost Axel forever.

Production notes

The shooting took place between the beginning of November and the end of December 1936 in Berlin and Vienna .
The film premiered on March 25, 1937 in Munich . The Berlin premiere took place on April 13, 1937. On October 9, 1967, it ran for the first time on television, namely on Deutsches Fernsehfunk 1 (state television of the GDR).

It is a production of Atalanta-Film of Bavaria Film . Sound system: Tobis sound film . Otto Gülstorff and Hans Minzloff acted as architects .

Erica Balqué , married to Helmut Käutner since 1938 , played her first film role here, a cigarette girl.

The music title played in the film is called It comes as it must come .

criticism

"Old German melodrama, played passably and full of improbabilities."

- Lexicon of international film

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The glass ball. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used