Miss Raffke
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Miss Raffke |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1923 |
| length | 6 acts, 2383 meters, at 22 fps 105 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Richard Eichberg |
| script |
Helmuth Ortmann Hans Behrendt |
| production | Richard Eichberg |
| camera |
Heinrich gardener Erich Grimmler |
| occupation | |
| |
Fräulein Raffke is the title of a silent drama that Richard Eichberg directed in 1923 for his own company Eichberg-Film GmbH (Berlin) based on a script that Helmuth Ortmann and Hans Behrendt had written based on an idea by Hans Sturm . Werner Krauss and Lee Parry could be seen in the main roles ; and Hans Albers had in a role as containing sensitive Baron.
As the subtitle Zeitbild in six acts reveals, the film deals with a topical subject. “Raffke” was a type of that time: the war profiteer, the smuggler, the white-collar criminal who achieved wealth in a short period of time with not entirely clean methods and who likes to show it off. It tells the story of Raffke's daughter Lilli, who instead of the baron chosen by her father out of vanity, marries a simple employee, is cast out and almost perishes.
action
Contrary to what the title suggests, the focus of the film is on the entrepreneur Raffke himself and not his beloved daughter Lilli, Miss Raffke. The tough and unyielding in business matters, otherwise extremely affable Raffke and his wife, who rose together from small backgrounds, indulge in luxury, take over the castle of a baron in debt, including its inventory, ancestral gallery and knight armor, renowned for servants, coaches and extravagant clothing. Raffke strives for higher things and therefore accepts the wish of the dubious and scheming Egon von Geldern, who wants to marry Lilli in order to get her father's money. But the engagement party breaks up because Lilli has secretly married Paul, an employee of her father's. In anger, Raffke casts the young couple out.
Three years later, Lilli and Paul and their small child are completely impoverished and hungry due to Raffke's vengeance and Paul's serious illness. Against her husband's wishes, Lilli asks her father for help, but he doesn't want to give her anything as long as she stays with Paul. Lilli leaves the child with her parents and goes into the water, but is saved by Baron von Geldern.
The plot culminates in a pompous costume party in the castle, where Lilli, who has temporarily separated from her husband, lives with her child. In the center of the hall is the huge sculpture of a horned bull (symbol of optimism on the stock exchange - or is it the golden calf?), Around which polo noses are danced and Raffke rides on its back and smokes an enormous cigar. People boast: “Merry-go-rounds, slide and movable table top - all American-style.” During this “Raffke orgy”, Lilli's child runs away unnoticed.
In an adjoining room, Egon presses Lilli with money and runs away. The baron, whose deceptive intentions the viewer were aware of all along, is shot dead in affect by his secret lover, the dancer Tatjana (Vivian Gibson). On his corpse she accuses Raffke: "Your money took him from me." In the end, Lilli, Paul and their child are reunited, and the refined Raffke visits the poor district where Lilli is with his wife (he calls her mother) lives: "Mother - in this area we started small and modest - and we were very happy ..." (Ph. Stiasny in: Filmblatt , 55/56)
background
The shooting took place in July 1923. Heinrich Gärtner and Erich Grimmler were responsible for the photography . Ludwig Kainer designed the costumes . Jacek Rotmil was the scenarioist .
The film was submitted to the Reich film censorship on September 18, 1923 and was banned from young people under the number B.7678. The world premiere took place on October 14, 1923 in Berlin at the Marmorhaus cinema. Under the title A Filha do Novo Rico , the film was also shown in Portugal from July 24, 1924. In 1924 it also ran in the Soviet Union.
The 35 mm copy of the Swiss Emelka preserved in the film archive of the Federal Archives in Berlin has German and French subtitles and a length of 2137 meters (at 22 fps approx. 105 min.).
reception
“A grotesquely exaggerated moral image of the time of inflation with unscrupulous winners, agile flatterers and tragic losers. Emil Raffke is the prototype of a society that is out of balance: an upstart who clearly enjoys commanding, eating and flirting. He celebrates lavish parties with fantastically costumed guests, he praises and brags. He wants to set up his beloved daughter with a baron, but against his will, Fraulein Raffke marries a penniless employee. There are ruptures, intrigues and temptations, with the young Hans Albers playing a particularly sleazy role as a gigolo. "
What begins funny, develops into a tragedy in the course of events, if it weren't for Werner Krauss in the role of the patriarch: He plays Raffke as a complete disgust - instinctual, happy and somehow personable. Raffke is "the man from the people who got rich overnight with healthy juices, a guy who lives and lets live and makes use of his wealth in a delightfully barbaric way." ( Siegfried Kracauer in: Frankfurter Zeitung , Stadt-Blatt from 14. October 1923)
The film creates a parable of the exploding social spectrum of the Weimar post-war years. Emil Raffke, in whose role Werner Krauss delivers a memorable little piece of his acting skills, and his wife - Lydia Potechina, visibly in her element - as the future husband of their daughter (Lee Parry) envisions a baron who will ennoble financial prosperity in the most beautiful way "Von Geldern" is called and is endowed with a remarkable portion of meanness by the young Hans Albers. However, the young lady chooses a penniless employee (Harry Hardt), with whom she has a child, who has been temporarily rejected by her parents, who ultimately brings reconciliation. (Wedel, Das Kino des Richard Eichberg. P. 29)
Siegfried Kracauer, who credited the film with the fact that it "also makes people laugh where one should perhaps not just laugh", saw in him the new social type of "Raffke" for the first time come into its own: "the man who got rich overnight from the People with healthy juices, a fellow who lives and lets live and who makes use of his wealth in a delightfully barbaric way. Werner Krauss gives him the features of a person. […] This great actor even realizes the unbelievable: for a few moments he outgrows the sphere of the comic and spreads a glimmer of tragedy over Raffke […] ”( Frankfurter Zeitung , October 14, 1923). In Soviet Russia, the film was also used as part of anti-capitalist propaganda.
“1923 - inflation. The director Richard Eichberg is quickly on hand with a picture of the time. Even if he does not care about major social or historical problems, he turns Miss Raffke , whose focus is the most popular figure in post-war Germany (Werner Krauss as Raffke). ”(Oskar Kalbus Volume 1, p. 58)
As far as morality is concerned, Fräulein Raffke is regarded as a “film folk piece” or “stirring piece”. “Sentimental with little comical episodes,” noted Der Kinematograph No. 869 of October 14, 1923, pp. 5-6. The melodramatic part is almost entirely taken over by Lee Parry, who plays Raffke's daughter; Krauss, on the other hand, limited himself mainly to the comic part.
If you believe the advertisements in the trade press, Miss Raffke was a complete success during the months of hyperinflation. The Marble House in Berlin reported that the film was the best deal since the cinema opened and that the screenings were sold out three times a day at entrance prices of 80 to 500 million marks.
Re-performance
The municipal film house cinema in Nuremberg showed Miss Raffke on Sunday, April 24, 2016 at 6 pm; on the piano accompanied the film Dr. D. Meyer
literature
- Herbert Birett: Silent film music . Material collection. Deutsche Kinemathek Berlin 1970.
- Herbert Birett: Sources on film history 1920–1931. List of titles of German silent films, cf. kinematographie.de
- Heinrich Fraenkel: Immortal Film. The great chronicle. From the magic lantern to the sound film. Part of the picture by Wilhelm Winckel. Kindler, Munich 1956, DNB 451329279 , p. 309.
- Oskar Kalbus: On becoming German film art. 1st part: The silent film. Cigarette picture service Altona-Bahrenfeld, Hamburg 1935.
- Philipp Stiasny: The cinema and inflation. In: Gregor Ackermann, Walter Delabar, Michael Grisko (eds.): Narrated economic matters. Economics and economization in literature and film of the Weimar Republic. Bielefeld 2013, ISBN 978-3-89528-907-1 , pp. 35–44.
- Philipp Stiasny: Happiness and misery of the new rich. EVERYTHING FOR MONEY (1923), FRÄULEIN RAFFKE (1923) and the cinema in times of inflation. In: Filmblatt. 55/56, 2014/15.
- Michael Wedel: Colportage, kitsch and skill. Richard Eichberg's cinema (= Filmblatt-Schriften. Volume 5). Editing: Rolf Aurich, Jeanpaul Goergen, Wolfgang Jacobsen. CineGraph Babelsberg, 2007, ISBN 978-3-936774-05-4 , pp. 29, 97-98.
- Friedrich von Zglinicki: The way of the film. History of cinematography and its predecessors . Rembrandt Verlag, Berlin 1956, DNB 455810680 .
Web links
- Miss Raffke in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Miss Raffke at filmportal.de
Illustrations
- Cinema poster from Soviet Russia 1923
- Cinema poster from Soviet Russia 1923 (designed by Alexander Ilyich Naumov, 1899–1928)
- Stand photo with Gibson and Albers [German Kinemathek Foundation - Museum for Film and Television Berlin]
- Stand photo with Krauss (on the bull) and Albers (in the foreground, with single glass) [Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum for Film and Television Berlin]
- Ross postcard No. 458/4 by Lee Parry (Photo: Atelier Binder)
Individual evidence
- ↑ The popular-sounding name "Raffke" apparently goes back to a word creation in the Berliner Illustrirten Zeitung from the spring of 1922, which quickly became popular . See who invented Raffke? In: Vossische Zeitung , No. 420, September 5, 1922. Quoted from Stiasny in: Filmblatt , 55/56, 2014/15, p. 4.
- ↑ See Zglinicki p. 437.
- ↑ See release info in the Internet Movie Database
- ↑ See stummfilmkonzerte.de
- ↑ See dhm.de
- ↑ For example the advertisement of Südfilm AG In: Film-Kurier. No. 230, October 11, 1923.
- ↑ See Stiasny, Filmblatt 55/56, 2014/15, p. 22.
- ↑ See program for 2016, pp. 4–5, see (PDF)