An invisible man walks through the city
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | An invisible man walks through the city |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1933 |
| length | approx. 105 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Harry Piel |
| script | Hans Rameau |
| production | Harry Piel for Ariel-Film, Berlin |
| music | Fritz Wenneis |
| camera | Ewald Daub |
| cut | Alwin Elling |
| occupation | |
and in small roles Erwin Fichtner , Ellen Frank , Heinrich Gotho , Fritz Greiner , Charles Willy Kayser , Philipp Manning , William Huch | |
An Invisible Man Walks Through the City is a German science fiction film comedy by and with Harry Piel from 1933. It premiered on September 29, 1933.
action
Taxi driver Harry is anything but particularly successful in his job. His life changes from one moment to the next when one night he is chauffeuring a strange passenger who is obviously being followed by the police. When the law enforcement officers have caught up with Harry's taxi and stop, the mysterious stranger rushes out of the back and disappears into the darkness of a forest. He leaves behind a larger suitcase, which Harry intends to keep for the time being, as the passenger owed the transport price. Back home, curiosity wins, and Harry opens the trunk. Inside is a device with a strange helmet construction and all sorts of wires. As Harry fiddles with it and puts on his helmet, he realizes that it has suddenly become invisible from one second to the other.
With his friend Fritz, a waiter with whom he shares an apartment, he tries out the effect of the part and amazes his roommate. Harry has a brilliant idea: How about if you made a lot of money with the device? On the racetrack through manipulation? Said and done. Harry sells his taxi and uses the device to build an invisible barrier on the course obstacle, in front of which all horses shy away and stop for his benefit, but incomprehensible to the spectators. Only Harrys Zossen, a rather lame mare, on whom no one else has bet and who wins a considerable quota for his stake, crosses the finish line. Harry is pretty rich now ... and soon going crazy. He puts on a noble thread, buys a sleek car and a lock that goes with it.
For friend Anni, the inexplicable wealth overnight is a problem, as she believes that Harry is going down the wrong path. She doesn't even want to accept his financial support for her starving flower shop. Defiant-headed Harry then gets involved with the glamorous actress Lissy Verhagen, whom he had chauffeured many times. She moves in with him at the castle and has no problems whatsoever using his money to boost her theater career. However, Fritz also wants something from the big cake and steals Harry's device. Soon there is not much money left and thus the unfaithful Lissy is gone. Now Harry is tracking down Fritz, who, as an invisible man, is robbing a bank completely unnoticed.
During the wild chase that followed, Harry clamped himself against the back of the car. Fritz shoots wildly to shake off the pursuers. In the case of a zeppelin that is used for advertising purposes over Berlin's air, the car comes to a standstill. On board Harry is now taking his ex-boyfriend Fritz properly. During the fight, however, Harry falls backwards from the passenger gondola of the flying zeppelin and plunges endlessly into the depths. He wakes up ... in his bed. Everything was just a bad dream. But the strange device with a helmet is still there. At the police station it turns out that it is only a new pilot helmet that enables blind flight. Its inventor had fled his taxi because he believed he was being followed by gangsters. Now that he has the good piece in his hands again, he proves to be generous and settles the debts that weigh on Anni's flower shop. Nothing stands in the way of a future together between Harry and Anni.
Production notes
An Invisible Man walks through the city was filmed from the beginning of July to mid-August 1933 and premiered on September 29, 1933 at the Berlin UFA Theater on Kurfürstendamm. Occasionally the film was also sold under the title Mein ist die Welt .
The film constructions come from Willi A. Herrmann . Alfred Greven was in charge of production. The futuristic gimmicks worn by Piel were created by Hans Rütten.
Reviews
The Österreichische Film-Zeitung summed up after the Berlin premiere: “The new Piel film (...) brings the clever design of an idea that is new and particularly suitable for the film. It is about the subject of making a person invisible, which in this film is in is treated in an exciting, amusing way. "
After the National Socialists had massively poisoned his film " The Secret Agent ", shot in the winter of 1931/1932 , which tried to shake up the dangers of the use of poison gas in war, the Völkischer Beobachter wrote about An Invisible Man Goes Through the City of the NSDAP- New member (April 1933) Piel: "a very decent and well-made film".
Oskar Kalbus found In The Becoming of German Cinematic Art: The invisible human being who, under the protection of a cloak of invisibility, becomes the ruler of his environment, is an old literary theme, starting with the Nibelungenlied to the novel The Invisible by HG Wells . Harry Piel modified the grateful idea of this novel in his own way in his film "An Invisible Man Goes Through The City". (...) The American horror film " Frankenstein " occurs involuntarily when the invisible man haunts the room, when the table and chairs are moved by magic, when words and lines are suddenly written on a letter without anyone in or in the room soft sand footsteps appear, but no feet. All of this is photographed in great artistic style.
The Lexicon of International Films writes: “Utopian sensational adventure; noticeably outdated and not very eventful, but still amusing due to Harry Piel's amiable portrayal. "
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ World premieres according to IMDb
- ↑ "An invisible man walks through the city". In: Österreichische Film-Zeitung , October 7, 1933, p. 4 (online at ANNO ).
- ↑ It was said: “ATTENTION! Misuse of the sensational film for pacifist propaganda! Harry Piel as a 'secret agent' for anti-gas advertising. Germans are fed up with being smeared with utopian fraternization tendencies and other questionable issues in the film and perceive all these attempts as a degradation of their person and their German honor. "
- ↑ logbuchliteratur.de ( Memento of the original from June 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Oskar Kalbus: On the becoming of German film art. Part 2: The sound film. Berlin 1935. p. 61
- ↑ An Invisible Man walks through the city in the Lexicon of International Films , accessed on November 24, 2013.
