Travelers (film)

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Movie
German title Traveling people
Original title Les Gens du Voyage
Country of production Germany
France
original language German
Publishing year 1938
length 109 (Germany) 108 (France) minutes
Age rating JMK from 16
Rod
Director Jacques Feyder
script Jacques Viot
Jacques Feyder
Bernard Zimmer (dialogues)
production Helmut Schreiber for Tobi's film art
music Wolfgang Zeller
camera Franz Koch
Josef Illig
cut Wolfgang Wehrum
occupation

Itinerant people is a Franco-German film drama from the circus milieu of 1938. Directed by Jacques Feyder play Hans Albers and Françoise Rosay the leading roles.

action

The Barlay Circus is a walking company and travels from town to town. One day a man jumps on one of the wagons and hides there. It's Fernand, who escaped from prison. The aging juggler seeks refuge with his former wife Flora, who works as a predator tamer in the company . They both have a son, Marcel. He is also employed by Barlay and makes a living as one of several art riders . Marcel doesn't know that Fernand is his father. Flora is anything but enthusiastic when Fernand suddenly appears out of nowhere, she has long since established her life with the adult Marcel in the small circus.

One day the police show up in search of Fernand, whom they rightly suspect to be here. Out of an old bond, Flora hides Fernand. In return, he has to promise her not to reveal anything to Marcel that he is his father. The ringmaster finally hires Fernand as a laborer. In the meantime, Marcel has fallen in love with Yvonne, the director's daughter, who, like him, appears as an art rider in the arena. However, in Director Barlay's eyes, Marcel is anything but a good match, and so he sends his daughter to Italy first , hoping: out of sight, out of mind. Since Barlay has also put the flea in Marcel's ear that Yvonne will no longer reciprocate his feelings, the disappointed young man goes to Paris with another colleague, the equestrian Pepita, and leaves the circus, mother and the unknown father who is still him can save you from a great stupidity behind you.

Meanwhile, Fernand is caught up with his own dark past. Some petty crooks, acquaintances from the past, force him to help with a theft in the circus. In the middle of a performance, he is supposed to ensure that the light goes out so that the buddies of yore can carry out their foray. Due to a change in the program, however, the originally planned Japanese artists are not at the start at this point, but Flora, of all people, with her not entirely harmless tiger number. The animals react irritated and become aggressive in the face of sudden darkness. An animal attacks them and Flora is injured - albeit only slightly.

One day Yvonne returns home from Italy. She is pregnant. The child is from Marcel, who knows nothing about it. Flora wants to help the young woman and prevent her father from going wild and then hides Yvonne with her. Fernand realizes that he must finally get his life under control and wants to make up for mistakes he has made. After all, he is complicit in the fact that the tiger attacked his aging lover. And so he decides to visit his son and get him to return to the Barlay Circus. He makes it clear to Marcel that Yvonne has always loved him and still loves him. The jealous and temperamental Pepita is angry about this development and informs the police of Fernand's presence. When the police tried to catch him during the last circus performance, Fernand flees again, climbed over the roofs and was shot dead. Marcel and Yvonne, who has just given birth to a boy, finally get together and also receive the blessing of their father, the circus director.

Production notes

The film was made in the studios of Bavaria Film in Munich - Geiselgasteig in two versions: the German and the French under the title Les gens du voyage . Shooting began on September 13, 1937. The German premiere took place on July 1, 1938 in Hamburg . In Berlin, Fahrendes Volk was shown for the first time on July 18, 1938 in the Ufa-Palast am Zoo . Until 1940, Travelers were shown in the Netherlands, Portugal, Hungary and Japan, among others. The French version was launched in Paris on March 4, 1938 and was shown in Denmark and Finland until the end of the war in 1945.

The main actress Françoise Rosay, wife of the Belgian director Feyder, was the only one of the actors to play in both versions, as she spoke perfect French and very good German.

The film structures are by Fritz Maurischat , Jean d'Eaubonne and Heinrich Weidemann , the costumes by Maria Pommer-Pehl and Georges K. Benda. Robert Leistenschneider was production manager.

Fahrendes Volk was one of the very few productions by a foreign director from a western democracy in Adolf Hitler's Germany. The approval for a work permit in the " Third Reich " received Feyder, who in 1935 with the wise women a Franco-German production was staged in two versions (and also with his wife Rosay) and since then inactive remained in France, because he in Germany was well-liked because of openly anti-Semitic statements.

The circus companies Barley, Hagenbeck and Krone made some of their animals and their own equipment available for the filming.

Fahrendes Volk was shown at the 1938 Biennale as one of several German contributions and received a medal for the overall artistic design. Since France had become an enemy country at the beginning of World War II , the film was placed on the index and has not been shown in German cinemas since September 1939.

Reviews

Reclam's film guide wrote: “Feyder has depicted the world of artists in a sensitive and realistic manner in many details. But in the end he failed because of a script that was too sentimental and too melodramatic. "

The Lexicon of International Films called the Traveling People a "mediocre film".

The film’s large dictionary of people described the Travelers as a film with “tragic undertones”.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In Kay Weniger's "In life, more is taken from you than given ...". Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview is given on page 27: “Françoise Rosay shot the melancholy-poetic circus story“ Fahrendes Volk ”there, together with Germany's cinema star Hans Albers, in the early winter that followed. The director was the Belgian-born and French-by-choice Jacques Feyder, who, according to 'Pem's Privat -berichte' (May 11, 1938 edition), claimed in an interview by the German specialist publication 'Filmkurier' that he could no longer work in Paris. Reason: 'the industry is too Jewish for him'. "
  2. ^ Bogusław Drewniak: The German Film 1938–1945. A complete overview . Düsseldorf 1987, p. 471.
  3. ↑ Der deutsche Film 1938–1945 , p. 803
  4. ^ Dieter Krusche (collaboration: Jürgen Labenski): Reclams film guide . Stuttgart 1973, p. 302.
  5. ↑ Klaus Brüne (Red.): The Lexicon of International Films . Reinbek near Hamburg 1987, Volume 2, p. 946
  6. ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 2: C - F. John Paddy Carstairs - Peter Fritz. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 666.