The wonderful lie of Nina Petrovna
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The wonderful lie of Nina Petrovna |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1929 |
| length | 102 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Hanns Schwarz |
| script | Hans Szekely |
| production | Erich Pommer |
| music | Maurice Jaubert ; Willy Schmidt-Gentner (at the world premiere) |
| camera | Carl Hoffmann |
| occupation | |
| |
The Wonderful Lie of Nina Petrovna is a German film drama from 1929 . It tells the dreary life of the mistress of a rich colonel in tsarist Russia, who tries to break out and fails.
action
Nina Petrovna, Colonel Teroff's mistress, watches the cavalry departing from the nearby barracks on the balcony of her house. She throws a rose into the squadron, which happens to be caught by the young cornet Michael Silief. The two meet again at a ball. Colonel Teroff immediately recognizes the affection of the two for one another and burns with jealousy. Although he intimidates Silief as a higher-ranking officer and threatens Nina to lose his favor, he can no longer prevent the love between the two. Nina leaves the secured existence of Colonel Teroff and lives in a poor apartment. The two indulge in the illusion of pure love that renounces demands and possessions. The cornet is increasingly neglecting its service. When Nina's debts pile up so that she cannot pay the electricity bill, Michael begins to play, as his pay is not enough to secure Nina's existence. The colonel, his rival, who wants to destroy Michael, catches him playing cheat, which means that Michael is now in his hand. Nina wants to save her lover and changes "forever" back to the Colonel so that he spares him. She tells her lover the lie that she finally wants to live again in the luxury that he cannot offer her. Michael, who does not see through the lie and does not know that it has saved him, leaves her deeply disappointed. Nina says goodbye to her lover in the same way that she first met him. Standing on the balcony, she waits for the cavalry to depart. Again she throws a rose at her lover, whom he ignores; she falls on the path and is trampled by the horses' hooves. The colonel, who believes he has reached his goal, finds her lying on the bed in his villa the next day. Believing that she was asleep, he throws the flowers of the container on the woman lying down until he realizes that she is dead. She had poisoned herself.
background
The shooting took place from November 1928 to January 1929. Robert Herlth and Walter Röhrig created the film structures, René Hubert created the costumes. Alexander Arnstam was present as an artistic advisor. According to the censorship bill (April 5, 1929), the film received the rating “artistically valuable”. The UFA feature film, originally 102 minutes long , premiered on April 15, 1929 in Berlin's Ufa-Palast am Zoo .
The uniform of the regiment on horseback does not correspond to that of Russian Cossacks , but that of a Prussian Guard Cuirassier regiment .
reconstruction
“Thanks to the National Film Archive in London , the film that Hanns Schwarz constructed around Brigitte Helm was rediscovered decades ago and presented to film fans and lovers of old silent films. The copy was relatively complete in terms of its content structure (even if the score by Maurice Jaubert indicated the lack of a few minutes), but unfortunately in very poor condition. It had scratches, splices and missing sequences - all defects that indicate an often-used rental copy. Thanks to the collaboration of the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation , the film archive of the Federal Archives Berlin / Koblenz and arte , most of the materials could be researched. Result: The two original camera negatives of the German and foreign rental versions were found - among other, less important elements - in the film archive of the Federal Archives. The comparison of these two negative materials with the previous restorations made it possible to determine the differences and, in particular, the incompleteness of the negative of the German distribution version and the version of the National Film Archive. After the comparison was completed, the sequence of scenes and the montage of the film could be reconstructed. The newly reconstructed version is closer to the original version than the old version - not only because it is longer, but also because the montage corresponds to the score by Maurice Jaubert. "
criticism
- “Just a lengthy love melodrama”.
- “So you can say that in the case of THE WONDERFUL LIE OF NINA PETROWNA, not only has the film's narration been restored, but also its plastic and formal values. Hence a comprehensive restoration that gives us a great film back. "
literature
- Michael Töteberg: Metzler Film Lexicon . Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-476-02068-1
Web links
- The wonderful lie of Nina Petrovna in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The wonderful lie of Nina Petrovna at filmportal.de
- The wonderful lie of Nina Petrovna ( memento from February 23, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) at murnau-stiftung.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b murnau-stiftung.de ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ cinema.de
