The white desert

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title The white desert
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1922
length 6 files, 2145 m, at 18 BpS approx. 100 minutes
Rod
Director Ernst Wendt
script Ernst Wendt
Einar Bull
production John Hagenbeck Film AG
camera Mutz Greenbaum
occupation

The white desert is the title of a silent sensational and predatory drama that Ernst Wendt realized in 1922 for John Hagenbeck and his production company John Hagenbeck Film GmbH. He wrote the script together with Einar Stier.

action

The action takes place in Sweden and the northern polar region. The friends Björn and Sigurd end up under turbulent circumstances on the ship of the violent Captain Gaustad, which is going to catch seals. Events then roll over on the ship, and after intrigues, rape, mutiny and shipwreck, the rescued end up on pack ice. There they try, split into two groups, to get firm ground under their feet again. The group of “bad guys” gradually dies, while the “good guys” in the film, after surviving adventures like polar bear attacks, car chases etc., reach their home village with the help of the friendly and peaceful seeds, where the show comes down and at the end the two protagonists Sigurd and Björn can hug their wives (Karin and Liv).

background

The scenography was done by Einar Stier, who also worked on the script. The photography was in the hands of Mutz Greenbaum . The animals were directed by John Hagenbeck .

The film was the Reich Film Censorship on June 24, 1922 before and under approval number B.06083. On October 9, 1923, the Oberprüfstelle confirmed the approval under the number OA76, after the Braunschweig Ministry of Education had submitted an application to revoke the approval due to moral concerns.

The viraged and toned film premiered on July 14, 1922 in Berlin in the Primus-Palast. It also ran in Hungary, Denmark and Australia.

The white desert is one of several films from the so-called "Hagenbeck Sensations and Predator Film Series", which were reconstructed in 2016 by Stefan Drößler , director of the Munich Film Museum . Together with the Hagenbeck film Die Tigin , it was shown in 2016 at the International Silent Film Festival (32nd Bonn Summer Cinema, 11-21 August 2016). Günter A. Buchwald and Frank Bockius provided the musical accompaniment.

The film was shown at the 59th Lübeck Film Festival on Friday, November 4th, 2017 in the viraged version reconstructed by the Munich Film Museum, accompanied live by Goran Lazarevic (accordion) and Krischa Weber (cello, singing saw). In a new reconstruction, the film was shown on February 6, 2020 in the Munich Film Museum with the music composed by Peter Eisheuer and recorded on soundtrack.

reception

Joseph Roth wrote in the "Berliner Börsenkurier" of July 16, 1922 about the difficulty of combining dressage and game scenes:

“With the Hagenbeck films, it goes without saying that the animals are important, not the people. But since it is a film after all, that is to say, a dramatic story in which passions and fates of people are dealt with - passions and fates of animals cannot as long as the animals do not want to become actors - the animal scenes have to grow together organically with the actual film scenes - not be appended to them. But since Hagenbeck's animals are fabulous specimens, since the naturalness of a polar bear is a benevolent recreation after one has hardly got over the sweetness of an actress, this film is gratefully accepted despite organic weaknesses. The direction, even more so the photography - the snow, the sky, the sunset and the fog are ultimately more subject to the photographer than to the director - gave excellent results. "

John Hagenbeck himself wrote about his filming experience in The Milwaukee Journal on November 12, 1922:

"When we took the pictures for my last film The White Desert we built up ice and snow hills for the polar bears. They used them to slide down and were so happy in the game that we were hardly able to remove them from the scene. This incident confirmed to me once more my experience in making wild-animal photoplays. If we follow the natural instincts of an animal we are able to produce a film in which the animal is presented in its natural ways and its innate instincts. "

The critic Fritz Olimsky wrote about “The White Desert” as “Oly” in 1922: “With the help of Hagenbeck's zoo (seals, polar bears, arctic foxes, reindeer, etc.) this world is portrayed as real as it is gripping [...] This is how this film is made a sight. "

literature

  • Helmut Peschina , Joseph Roth, Rainer-Joachim Siegel: Three sensations and two catastrophes: feuilletons on the world of cinema. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2014. ISBN 978-3-8353-2532-6 , 400 pages.
  • Jens Priwitzer: The cinema as an educational institution. Review of: Peschina, Roth, Siegel: Three sensations and two catastrophes, at literaturkritik.de
  • Jörg Schöning: The company's business is exotic. The producer John Hagenbeck. In: Trivial Tropics. Exotic travel and adventure films from Germany 1919–1939. Ed. V. Hans-Michael Bock, Wolfgang Jacobsen a. Jörg Schöning. Munich 1997, pp. 111-123.
  • Jörg Schöning, Stefan Drößler (Editor): Program for the International Silent Film Festival August 11-21, 2016, 32nd Bonn Summer Cinema. Bonn 2016.
  • Ulrike Strauch: Let's go! Portrait Stefan Drößler, in: Bonner General-Anzeiger , July 31, 2016.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Report A. 76 of October 9, 1923.
  2. ↑ cf. square7.ch
  3. ↑ cf. IMDb / release info
  4. ↑ The production ran on August 18th in the arcade courtyard of the main university building to live music by Günter A. Buchwald (piano, violin & viola) and Frank Bockius (percussion). See Strauch, Bonner General-Anzeiger from July 31, 2016
  5. ↑ cf. Lübeck Film Festival and PDF
  6. ↑ cit. n. Schöning-Drößler (editor): Program for the International Silent Film Festival August 11-21, 2016, p
  7. ↑ cit. at the Lübeck Film Festival