Gold (1934)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | gold |
 | |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1934 |
| length | 120 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Karl Hartl |
| script | Rolf E. Vanloo |
| production | Alfred Zeisler for the UFA |
| music | Hans-Otto Borgmann |
| camera |
Günther Rittau Otto Baecker Werner Bohne |
| cut | Wolfgang Becker |
| occupation | |
| |
Gold is a science fiction film by Karl Hartl about the artificial production of gold. Hans Albers and Brigitte Helm play the leading roles . The premiere took place on 29 March 1934 at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo of Berlin . The film was released from the age of 14.
action
Professor Achenbach and his research assistant, the engineer Werner Holk, are working - unselfishly and for the good of humanity, as they believe - on a sensational invention. In their gigantic laboratory, the modern alchemists are in the process of converting lead into gold by breaking up atoms at several million volts . But there are sinister opponents who want to prevent the success of this research at all costs. In an act of sabotage, as a result of which the laboratory is blown up, the old professor and his assistant Becker are also killed. Holk really wants to find out who is behind the murder of the teacher he admires. While the press criticizes the research and the explosion is described solely as the result of recklessness and pseudo-scientific nonsense, Holk tries to rehabilitate Achenbach and both of their work.
The mastermind behind the act of sabotage soon turns out to be a Scottish industrialist named John Wills, who has enormous lead deposits. In his hunger for power and gold, he is unscrupulous in the implementation of his goals. Holk lets Wills hire him for his company, as he suspects that he might be behind the act of sabotage and the murder of Achenbach and Becker. One day, the Achenbach adept pushes into the research facilities of the Wills Reich, which are located under the seabed, and realizes that his opponent has built his own underground laboratory complex that is fatally similar to Professor Achenbach's equipment.
Meanwhile, Will's daughter, the beautiful Florence, becircts Werner Holk. After she confronts two men who searched Holk's luggage on behalf of her father, she warns Holk about her own father and makes it clear to him that Holk is obviously under surveillance. In a possible romance with Florence, he recognizes the possibility of receiving unlimited capital from her father for the continuation of his and Achenbach's research. Finally, he succeeds in his experiment - at the same time proof that John Wills had the research results stolen from Achenbach for his own benefit and is therefore also responsible for the professor's death.
Holk decides to put an end to the greedy and unscrupulous capitalist Wills once and for all: First he hands over the artificially created precious metal to Wills in the hope that Wills' greed will prevail. Holk is proved right, and the press and banks are immediately warning of a glut of gold and that prices will plummet. Then Holk destroys all the equipment with which Wills tries to gild his enormous lead deposits in the truest sense of the word. When he tries to stop Holk's work of destruction, as if by senses, and wants to cut off the German's way back, he dies himself. Holk, on the other hand, has recognized that in the future his purpose in life will lie neither in increasing gold nor in the arms of cool Florence, but rather with his fiancée, the far less sophisticated, but deeply decent Margit.
Production notes
The film, which is quite elaborate to produce, was shot near Kiel and in front of Rügen (outdoor shots) from late 1933 to March 1934. At the premiere, the film was given the title artistic and was admitted from the age of 14 (youth free). The re-performance after the war took place on August 27, 1972 on ZDF .
The science fiction-proven film architect Otto Hunte ( Metropolis ) designed the impressive, futuristic (laboratory) backdrops, Theo Nischwitz and Ernst Kunstmann provided the special effects .
Gold ran into Finland , Denmark and the USA that same year (1934) .
Producer Alfred Zeisler and actress Lien Deyers married in August 1934.
With L'or , a French version of gold was also produced at the same time . Hartl was assigned the French director Serge de Poligny for the foreign language dialogue scenes . The Albers role took over Pierre Blanchar , while Brigitte Helm played her own role there too. It premiered in Paris on June 1, 1934. This version was also released in 1935 in Portugal and Turkey .
Films like this one, in which Brigitte Helm was once again committed to the role of femme fatale , made her decide in the following year to retire from acting.
The Allied military authorities banned the film from showing in 1945.
criticism
Oskar Kalbus ' Vom Werden German Cinematic Art ' praised the film full of pathos : “Karl Hartl created this film with bold and grandiose images above and below ground, the deepest content of which is the overwhelming poetry of modern technology. The film viewer will never forget the beauty of the machines, the magic of the electric rays. The hymn of technology sounds through the film, which does not want to recognize any limits of human spirit and human ability and has developed from the shapeless masses of the machines of yesterday into the artistic design of today: the steel romanticism of our time! "
The post-war criticism found a much more sober language. The film's large lexicon of people noted: After the director at FP1 did not answer "had shown a sure hand for science fiction material, Hartl was offered the" Gold "directorship in late autumn 1933, again with FP1 star Hans Albers in the Leading role. The dramatic story of the artificial production of the precious metal is told, and as with "FP1", some darklings, agents and saboteurs in this Hartl adventure are interested in the failure of a vision of mankind. "
The lexicon of the international film wrote: "Utopian adventure that thrives on Hans Albers and a remarkable technical effort for the time it was made."
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ In Oskar Kalbus: On Becoming German Film Art. Part 2: The sound film. Berlin 1935 says on page 110: “Michael Bohnen embodies the power- and gold-hungry industrial magnate who unscrupulously goes over corpses in the choice of his means. That is quite an achievement when beans, madness in the eyes, stares into the twitching, flashing light to witness the birth of gold, when he wanders around in fear of death in the laboratory and tries in diabolical malice to cut off Holk's way back ”.
- ↑ In Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst on page 110 you can read: "As a demonically beautiful millionaire's daughter, Brigitte Helm only has to look shiny and (in one scene in a spotted dress) sneaks like a leopard through the elegant rooms of her father's castle".
- ↑ On the development of German film art. P. 110
- ↑ 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 3: F - H. Barry Fitzgerald - Ernst Hofbauer. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 553.
- ↑ Klaus Brüne (Red.): Lexikon des Internationale Films Volume 3, S. 1364. Reinbek near Hamburg 1987.