Helena (1924)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Helena |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1924 |
| length | ARTE version 2001: 204 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Manfred Noa |
| script | Hans Kyser |
| production | Bavaria, Munich |
| camera |
Gustave Preiss Ewald Daub |
| occupation | |
| |
Helena is a two-part, monumental silent film from 1924 by Manfred Noa . He recounts motifs from the Iliad with the beautiful Helena at the center of the action.
action
Part One: The Rape of Helena The proud young Paris does not know that he is the son of the mighty Priam, King of Troy. He was once abandoned by the royal father as a small child to please the gods. As a young man he traveled to Greece on behalf of the aged king. There he met Helena, who was both beautiful and seductive to men, who was married to the Spartan King Menelaus.
Soon Paris and Helena fall in love. To escape the wrath of their husbands, they both flee to Troy , where Paris is recognized as the son of King Priam. Gripped by tremendous anger, Menelaus wants to bring his wife back at any cost, no matter how high it is. When it comes to war between Sparta and Troy , the Trojans first fight back Menelaus' army. But Helena is still a long way from feeling safe, even if Paris is preparing heaven on earth for her.
Second part: The fall of Troy The Spartans do not give up, they have besieged distant Troy for years. Paris is injured in a duel between Menelaus and Paris to decide the war. Helena saves him from worse. In the ensuing battle, the brave warrior Achilles kills Hector, the brother of Paris. Priam thereupon calls on Paris to reward blood with blood and to kill Achilles. Paris hits the unarmed Achilles with a poisoned arrow on the heel, whereupon he dies. But the goal of conquering Troy and bringing Helena back is not a step closer.
The cunning Odysseus has an idea. How about a big deception? The Spartans build a huge wooden horse, go into its cavity, and pull it in front of the gate of the city so that one morning, when the Trojans discover it, they believe it is a gift from God. And so the bona fide citizens of Troy pull the wooden horse within the city walls that protect them. But this act results in their ruin. One night Menelaus' warriors rise from inside the horse, devastate Troy and set it on fire. Paris and Priam are killed in battle. Menelaus renounces revenge and, instead of punishing Helena for her betrayal, takes her home again.
Production notes, backgrounds, interesting facts
After the great success of his film adaptation of Lessing Nathan Weise , Manfred Noa was offered this direction, which, with a film length of well over three hours, was to become the most extensive and costly work of his entire career.
Helena was shot entirely in 1923 - locations were the Bavarian Ammersee and Wörthsee , the lion hunt was filmed on a site near Wolfratshausen - and divided into two sections. The first part, The Robbery of Helena , five nudes at 2189 meters long, was censored on January 15, 1924, was banned from young people and was premiered on January 21, 1924 in the Mozart Hall in Berlin. The second part, The Fall of Troy , was censored on February 1, 1924, was six acts at 2932 meters long, and was premiered there on February 4, 1924.
Edy Darclea in the role of the title heroine, who was completely unknown in Germany until then , was an Italian silent film actress. Her real name was Iole De Giorgio, the daughter of the Neapolitan singer and photographer Alfredo de Giorgio, and was born in Rome in 1895 as the youngest of four children.
The extensive film structures come from Otto Voelckers and Peter Rochelsberg . The Trojan horse was designed by Berthold Rungers .
Almost two years before the American film Ben Hur , Helena showed a spectacular chariot race in an arena.
On November 30, 2001, a completely restored version of the film was shown on television for the first time on Arte .
With Helena and the almost simultaneous Oswald film Carlos and Elisabeth , the age of the classic monumental film with a historicizing background, which began in Germany at the end of the First World War, largely came to an end, with works such as The Plague in Florence , The Mistress of the World , The Indian Tomb , Lady Hamilton and Lucrezia Borgia had reached their climax. The last films had turned out to be so costly that, like the last Bavaria with Helena , they had led the production companies to the verge of ruin. In addition, even more elaborate Hollywood productions such as Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments began to flood the world market.
criticism
The Neue Freie Presse praised the staging of the film in its November 7, 1924 edition about the green clover: It was "emphatically stated in advance that this German Helena film is a performance of the greatest intensity and (...) This Helena film is a feat. It is worthy of being put on the finest gold scales of criticism (...) We just want to say that the dramatic condensation of the epic Stoffel is generally right well, in the first part, which is much more freely based on tradition, has succeeded better than in the second. What one may not entirely agree with is the solution of the extremely difficult cast question in such a case. Albert Steinrück's Priam can hardly be surpassed. Likewise the Trojan seer Aisakos Albert Bassermanns: Even the niobesque figure of Hecabe is in good hands with Adele Sandrock, and one would hardly have one for Paris either more beautiful and Hellenic acting actors than Vladimir Gaidarov, who quickly became known. But even the Helena of the exceptionally beautiful Edy Darclea stimulates a little to look around in memory for some Helena that is certainly much more appropriate. (...) This Achilles of the athlete Carlo Aldini, with all due respect, Achilles doesn't look like that. (...) Technically, photographically and directing this film is on a level that can hardly be surpassed. The vision technique in the first part is wonderful, especially in the judgment of Paris, which has been reinterpreted as a dream. "
Oskar Kalbus wrote in 1935:
“ For the film“ Helena ”(1924), the poet Hans Kyser combined all sorts of fragments of the Homeric epic into a script that aimed to teach the audience a classical education. The masses of people had long since been eliminated from German films, so it was time to follow the traces of the first post-war years again. The director Manfred Noa, like his colleague Lubitsch once, strived for American effects: a large-scale battle of the two enemy armies on land and water, an exciting chariot race, stylish monumental buildings. Manfred Noa, the lord of the hostile host of films, has become the master of German battle film directing with “Helena” (e.g. in the great staging of the destruction of Troy). The Americans couldn't have done better either. "
The US magazine Variety also saw Helena on par with similarly conceived Hollywood productions: “There is a deplorable rule in this country according to which mediocre films are highly acclaimed, but high-profile foreign films are downplayed. One such case is Helena , a film that is a brilliant production in every respect. This realistically shaped spectacle should force DW Griffith to wonder whether he has not rested too much on his laurels. The play of the actors, right down to the smallest roles, is unsurpassable. "
The lexicon of international film writes: "A monumental film that was very successful at the time, but now forgotten, human-psychologically superficial, but largely exciting and visually appealing."
Web links
- Helena in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Helena, first part: The robbery of Helena at filmportal.de
- Helena, part two: The Fall of Troy at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Helena on fsff.de
- ↑ "Helena". In: Neue Freie Presse , November 7, 1924, p. 13 (online at ANNO ).
- ^ Variety, February 5, 1925 issue
- ↑ Helena in the Lexicon of International Films , accessed on November 12, 2013.