Poison gas (film)

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Movie
Original title Poison gas
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1929
length 2,397 meters, 87 minutes
Rod
Director Mikhail Dubson
script Peter Martin Lampel
Natan Sarchi
production Paul Michael Bünger
music Werner Schmidt-Boelcke
camera Akos Farkas
Eduard Tissé
occupation

Poison Gas is a 1929 silent film drama directed by Michail Dubson .

action

Arnold Horn, a young idealistic chemist, discovers a compound that can be used to make a potent fertilizer as well as a deadly poison gas. Against his will, the management of the chemical factory enforces the production of poison gas in order to increase the value of their stocks. When the CEO ten Straaten approaches Horn's wife Ellen, the inventor loses his nerve. When he tried to break into the factory in his desperation, the director Hansen shot him and hit a gas container. The gas leaks out and a catastrophe ensues that wipes out all human life in the city. In the final vision of the film, the dead of the First World War rise and denounce the use of poison gas.

background

The film was made in Berlin after the play Poison Gas über Berlin by Peter Martin Lampel for Löw & Co. The script was written by Peter Martin Lampel and the Russian author Natan Sarchi .

Production was headed by Paul Michael Bünger . The film structures were created by August Rinaldi , and the production manager was Adolf Rosen .

The action was photographed by the Hungarian cameraman Akos Farkas . He was supported by the Russian Eduard Tissé , who connected his own painful experience with the subject.

Hans Stüwe played the unfortunate inventor , his wife Ellen was Lissy Arna . Fritz Kortner gave the CEO ten Straaten and the director Hansen Alfred Abel . The Russian actress Vera Baranowskaja was seen in the role of a worker woman.

The production of the film was sponsored by the pacifist German League for Human Rights . Russian director Sergej Eisenstein was involved in staging the final vision .

The film was submitted to the Berlin Film Inspectorate on November 8, 1929 for review.

The world premiere took place on November 13, 1929 in Berlin in the Marble House on Kurfürstendamm, which is considered to be “the setting for film-historically important and sometimes highly controversial film premieres”; Werner Schmidt-Boelcke composed and conducted the music for the premiere . The music critic Kurt London reviewed it in the trade journal " Der Film " in 1929 as follows: "The overall line of music was extraordinarily closed and, at the allegorical conclusion, rose from the cautious beginning to a powerful, carefully prepared crescendo."

The film also ran in Japan , where it premiered on March 5, 1931.

Both the film and the play, which was immediately banned, were based on real events: the secret arming of the Reichswehr under General von Seeckt and an accident in an illegal poison gas depot operated by the Stoltzenberg company in Hamburg , in which eight people died and hundreds were injured in 1928.

reception

The film was discussed and a. in the Weltbühne Berlin No. 47 from November 19, 1929 and in the Frankfurter Zeitung No. 885 from November 27, 1929.

“The film ... focuses primarily on the story of the scientist who can no longer keep his invention to himself and is defeated in the fight against industry. The main effect of the film lies in the topicality of the topic, which is unbalanced in its design ... Interesting stands next to the dilettante and the unresolved. […] Some scenes with actress Vera Baranowskaja as the workshop manager's wife are moving. Her mother's suffering and sadness are evident on her face; she is also able to display her protest on a large scale. "

Many critics criticized the fact that the images in the film had a strong effect, but were only embedded in a clichéd story and that melodramatic and social conflicts were inadmissibly mixed up. However, the film itself earned respect from its opponents.

Fritz Olimsky wrote about this in the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung on November 14, 1929: “Just as is the case with the Russian films, here too the artistic touch cannot be denied. From the point of view of tendency, the presentation must be described as downright brilliant. "

“... the dead rise from the graves and float accusingly over the neon signs of the Berlin companies Bechstein and Kempinski. 'Be human!' they call, but the audience is already rushing to the cloakrooms. That's not how you do propaganda. A work of art can only have tendencies if it shows the horrors of reality. But here you make a puppet show out of a serious matter, you leave the powerful ally of film unused. "

- Cinematographic, in: Die Weltbühne . Vol. 25, No. 47, from November 19, 1929

“If there is any film, this one illustrates the toxic gases that develop in our film production. The Berlin company Loew & Co. wanted to take advantage of the economy with him at all costs. Lampel is up to date, poison gas is sensational. So after Lampel's stage work 'Poison gas over Berlin' you turn a tear. Lampel's political tendencies are, as can easily be understood, stamped out; but that doesn't matter, the poison gas is still left over. The censorship mutilates the rest; no misfortune, the audience will swallow the poison gas […] The mendacity of the whole work, in which Kortner and Abel are absolutely out of place, gives an idea that a private affair is raised to the cause of the public misfortune. If a jealously motivated jealousy did not drive the inventor to despair, his poison gas would never go to all winds. Not the war, but a personal misunderstanding brings the population a splendidly arranged ruin ... "

- Siegfried Kracauer : in: Frankfurter Zeitung . Vol. 74, No. 885, from November 27, 1929

literature

  • Herbert Birett : Silent film music. A collection of materials. Berlin, Deutsche Kinemathek 1970.
  • Günther Dahlke, Günter Karl (Hrsg.): German feature films from the beginning to 1933. A film guide. 2nd Edition. Henschel-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-89487-009-5 .
  • Gero Gandert (ed.): The film of the Weimar Republic. A Handbook of Contemporary Criticism. 1929. Unchanged reprint of the bound edition from 1993. de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1997, ISBN 3-11-015805-1 , pp. 247-254, 868, 876.
  • Benjamin Carter Hett : Crossing Hitler. The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand. Illustrated edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-536988-5 , p. 293, Notes to p. 42-46.
  • Kurt London: Film Music. A Summary of the Characteristic Features of Its History, Aesthetics, Technique. And possible developments. Translated by Eric S. Bensinger. Faber & Faber, London 1936.
  • Pierre de La Rue: Poison gas. (Film novella). A film based on the stage work by PM Lampel "Poison gas over Berlin". Screenplay: N. Sarchi. Schmidt & Company et al., Berlin et al. 1929.
  • Thomas F. Schneider, Hans Wagener (Ed.): From Richthofen to Remarque. German-language prose on World War I (= Amsterdam contributions to more recent German studies. Vol. 53). Rodopi, Amsterdam et al. 2003, ISBN 90-420-0955-1 , p. 188, to note 18.
  • Thomas F. Schneider: Review of Stiasny, Philipp: The cinema and the war. Germany 1914–1929. Munich 2009. In: H-Soz-u-Kult. May 10, 2010.
  • Philipp Stiasny: The cinema and the war. Germany 1914–1929. edition text + kritik, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-86916-007-8 .
  • Heiner Widdig: Lampel, Peter Martin. In: Wilhelm Kühlmann (Ed.): Killy Literature Lexicon. Authors and works from the German-speaking cultural area. Volume 7: Kräm - Marp. 2nd, completely revised edition. de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2010, ISBN 978-311-02204-8-3 , pp. 178-179.
  • Friedrich v. Zglinicki : The way of the film. The history of cinematography and its predecessors. With 890 illustrations. Rembrandt-Verlag, Berlin 1956.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ after Dahlke, Karl (ed.): German feature films from the beginning to 1933. 1993, p. 200, filmportal.de and dhm.de ; It is noticeable that both at filmportal.de and at dhm.de it is Horn who deliberately and consciously releases the gas, while Director Hansen's shot in the gas container was the only trigger for the catastrophe in Dahlke's case.
  2. ↑ Cf. Gandert (Ed.): The film of the Weimar Republic. 1929. 1997, pp. 247-254, here p. 248.
  3. ↑ While he was working as a war cameraman on several fronts from 1916 to 1918, he was injured in a poison gas attack, cf. difarchiv
  4. ↑ See dhm.de
  5. ↑ See Zglinicki: The way of the film. 1956, pp. 437-438.
  6. ↑ See Birett: Silent Film Music. 1970, p. 144 on B 24 101, IX 538.
  7. ↑ Quoted from Gandert (ed.): The film of the Weimar Republic. 1929. 1997, pp. 247-254, here pp. 248-249.
  8. ↑ cf. on this Dieter Wunderlich: Marieluise Fleißer. 1901–1974 / biography, bibliography. : March 5, 1929: After the "Threepenny Opera", Martin Lampel's satire "Poison gas over Berlin" was premiered in the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin and immediately banned because it was about putsch plans by the Reichswehr.
  9. ↑ The Versailles Treaty prohibited the German Reich from owning, manufacturing and importing chemical weapons, cf. Geneva Protocol of June 17, 1925.
  10. ↑ See Heiner Widdig: Lampel, Peter Martin. In: Killy Literature Lexicon. Vol. 7, p. 178 f .: His critical period piece 'Giftgas über Berlin' (1929 as a film including 'Poison Gas') about the secret armament of the Reichswehr under General von Seeckt was published immediately after its premiere on March 5, 1929 Censorship banned in Berlin. und dhm.de : The fight against the gas war of the future was the focus of the anti-war movement in the 1920s. When eight people died in an accident in an illegal poison gas depot in Hamburg in 1928 and hundreds were injured, the topic of gas warfare came into the public eye. Peter Martin Lampel then wrote the sensational play "Poison gas over Berlin", which also formed the basis of the film "Poison gas".
  11. ↑ Cf. Dahlke, Karl (Ed.): Deutsche Spielfilme von der Anfang bis 1933. 1993, pp. 201–202.
  12. ↑ Quote at dhm.de
  13. ↑ Note No. 72 Hans Litten, “How the vermin fights against Lampel; No. 73 Hans Litten, Poison Gas over Berlin 1. The play: Schwarze Fahne Vol. 5, No. 12, 1929.
  14. ↑ online : The fact that imagined future wars, regardless of the chosen medium, always ended with a victory for Germany and the revision of the Versailles Treaty is just as unsurprising as the primacy of consensus building in the films chosen by Stiasny such as “World Without War” or “Poison Gas” ".
  15. ↑ Blurb: How does the cinema react to the epochal experience of the First World War? How does it reflect massive suffering, violence and death? What images does it bring to the memory of the war? To answer these questions, Philipp Stiasny subjected the popular cinema to a comprehensive revision between 1914 and the introduction of the sound film in 1929. In addition to the world war film genre, all the melodramas, thrillers, espionage and adventure stories that deal with the civil war, the war in historical guise and the war of the future come into focus. They offer excitement, profundity and sensations, satisfy the curiosity, arouse great feelings and emotions. In it: Chapter 3. Radiation, gas and weak men. Scenarios of the war in the future [238] […] "In the future any war is impossible." WORLD WITHOUT WAR (1920) [280], pacifism, kitsch and mass murder. GIFTGAS (1929) [300].