Don Juan is getting married
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Don Juan is getting married |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1909 |
| length | about 9 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Heinrich Bolten-Baeckers or Franz Porten |
| script | Heinrich Bolten-Baeckers |
| production | Alfred Duskes |
| camera | Charles Paulus |
| occupation | |
| |
Don Juan Marries is a short, German silent film grotesque from 1909 by Heinrich Bolten-Baeckers .
action
A maid finds out from an advertisement in a newspaper that her former lover is about to get married. While she is walking around confused with her laundry basket, she is getting angry and angry, this useless "Don Juan" has obviously betrayed her and at one point left her out in the rain. She teams up with two other, socially superior women who have also appeared in front of the registry office as a result of reading the same advertisement. These ladies, too, were evidently abandoned by this very man at some point. A plan is forged: Why not just kidnap the faithless Don Juan in his wedding carriage on the way to the wedding? The laundress is the driving force and the head of this plan, which is ultimately put into practice. But the "Baron von Herzensknicker", as he has been baptized, can free himself from the room in which he is being held by a trick: knowing that his "hostage-takers" are watching him through the keyhole, he fakes suicide by hanging and theatrically lets his tongue hang out. When the ladies storm into the room in shock, don Juan scurries past them, locks the door behind them and locks it. Now women are prisoners.
The bride has long been missing her future husband, who has not come in view of his abduction. A funny man who jumped on the kidnapped don Juan's carriage knows a little later where he is being held and is ready to tell the bride where the missing person is for a corresponding fee. You drive to the house where the kidnapped is supposed to be ... and just miss yourself. Because don Juan immediately set off to get to his bride's apartment. But since this is not present, he tries to penetrate there in an unconventional way. The police arrested him as a suspected burglar and took him to the station. There he must now sit in handcuffs. Soon the groom receives company from his bride and the tipster. Both were also observed and arrested by the police as they got over the garden fence to don Juan's prisoner hiding place. At the guard, the bride and groom embrace while the man who advised the bride of the kidnap's whereabouts restlessly insists on his payment. Since this does not take place, he escapes the police unceremoniously by jumping out of the window. When the loving bride and groom can finally feel unobserved, they hug each other and spend the wedding night on the cot.
Production notes
Don Juan Marries was made in the spring of 1909 in the Duskes film studio in Berlin's Markgrafenstrasse 94, was censored on April 26, 1909 and was premiered in the same month in Berlin's Apollo Theater . The film was 281 meters long.
The film was also called Der Herzensknicker . Kurt Dürnhöfer was responsible for the film construction. On February 6, 1914, in memory of the Austrian Giampietro, who died at the end of December 1913, the film was also released in Austria-Hungary under the title Don Juan's Wedding .
The core scene of the burlesque, the grooms hunt, which develops like an avalanche, is triggered by the bride waiting for her future husband. The bridal entourage, dressed in their smart Sunday best with tails and top hats, starts moving slowly, then gains speed until everyone runs after the kidnappers behind the carriage. Cyclists, playing children and old women are drawn into the vortex of movement, and the hunt for Don Juan soon takes on a dynamic of its own that can hardly be stopped.
The motif “brides chasing grooms” has been a popular comedy ingredient since the early days of the silent film (especially famous thanks to Buster Keaton's Seven Chances of 1925) and was used again and again well into the sound film era (for example in a massed form in 1999 in the comedy Der Junggeselle ).
Reviews
“Given the great popularity of Giampietro in all Berlin circles, especially for the Berlin cinemas, this film is likely to become a sensation, a first-rate hit, because 'Giampietro im Kientopp' every Berliner will want to see and must have seen . "
“That is the whole gorgeous, cheerful person as we knew him on stage and who made us laugh many tears. The sketch is only 350 meters long. We will soon regret that it is no longer. It was also Giampietro's first attempt at film, and it was to be followed by larger shots that death destroyed. A shame, forever a shame !. (...) The little bit is played with exuberance by everyone involved. "
“This film is historically interesting for two reasons: First, because the operetta star Giampetro, who was at the height of his fame at the time, won over to the film, and then because the“ Don Juan ”theme is tackled in a“ modern ”way. Giampetros Don Juan is a contemporary bon vivant whose preparations for marriage are disrupted by three graces of his bachelor days and by the "Club of Marital Enemies" from his circle of friends. "
“The entire plot is recorded without superfluous accessories. The comedy is heightened by the speed at which the action unfolds. In this respect, the film shown as a bouncer once again emphasized the performance in the Apollo Theater that the press described as a mixture of revue and cabaret. (…) While… the plot of the game still largely refers to moments of entertainment theater, in Don Juan Marries it is above all the radicality of the speed with which the plot runs and the two camera movements that are typical of the young film medium. To that extent it is a product of the transition on the way to developing one's own film language. Bolten-Baecker's early attempt to establish film as an art form , married Don Juan , was continued in a large number of film adaptations, some of which were classical theater material, which representatives of the cinema reform movement appeared to be an attack on culture. "
“Josef Giampietro, the main actor in DON JUAN HEIRATET, plays the converted maniac with dandy noblesse. The castration of the hero, already announced in the title paradox, is fulfilled in the darkest of ways. The exiles band together and hunt down Giampietro in a wild hunt. The symbolic castration of a suicide attempt can save him from the maenads, but the state authority, which ends the general turmoil, locks Giampietro and his bride in prison, completing the metaphor of the marriage prison. "
“The film is a German version of the slapstick comedy of the man persecuted by brides. (...) The scene is not only reminiscent of the American role models, but also anticipates the absurd comedy of the uproar of the funeral procession of " Entract ". "
literature
- Wolfgang Mühl-Benninghaus: Don Juan Marries and The Other - two early cinematic theater adaptations; in: Grenzzüge: das Theater und die other Künste, p. 91 on google.de/books
Individual evidence
- ^ According to Gerhard Lamprecht: Deutsche Stummfilme 1903-1912, p. 43
- ↑ according to censorship card 1909