Executioners, women and soldiers

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Movie
Original title Executioners, women and soldiers
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1935
length 92 minutes
Rod
Director Johannes Meyer
script Max W. Kimmich
production Otto Ernst Lubitz for Bavaria Film AG
music Peter Kreuder
camera Franz Koch
cut Gottlieb Madl
occupation

Executioners, women and soldiers (alternatively: The other Perbrandt ) is a German feature film from 1935 with Hans Albers in the leading role. The script for this was written by Max W. Kimmich and Jacob Geis based on the novel A man called Prack by Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen . It was produced from the end of June to the end of August 1935 in the Bavaria Ateliers in Geiselgasteig near Munich, passed the National Socialist censorship on December 11 of the same year and was premiered eight days later in the Berlin Capitol Cinema .

action

Rittmeister Michael von Prack, a daredevil aviator of the First World War , was taken prisoner by the British in 1918 in Asia Minor. However, at the first opportunity he escapes with an English plane to his East Prussian homeland, where he gets caught in the chaos of the post-war era. In a bar he learns shortly afterwards a captain Eckau know of a volunteer corps together from abgemusterten professional soldiers and would therefore continue to fight against Russia, and joins him. At the same time he meets the attractive Russian Vera Ivanovna. She initially confuses him with his cousin, the Russian general Alexej Alexandrowitsch von Prack, with whom she is in love and whom he looks very much like. This commands the opposing Russian troops. On the drive to the actual combat area, Michael meets Vera again, who is not only Alexey's lover, but also a Russian spy . Although she has since noticed her mistake, she spends a night of love with Michael before she returns to the Russian headquarters. When Alexej finds out there that she has met his cousin, whom he hated from childhood, he swears his death and sets a trap for the volunteer corps by luring it into a swamp. Here he challenges Michael to a duel, in which Alexej is killed and Michael is seriously injured. Since he had taken off his uniform jacket before the fight, the Russians mistakenly mistaken him for his cousin, the general, and take him to their headquarters. Although Vera recognizes Michael immediately, he manages to learn important military secrets of the Russian troops and to give them orders that actually improve the situation of his volunteer corps. Meanwhile, Vera vacillates between love and patriotism . After all, her love of the country outweighs her, so she confides in the Russian commissioner . But before Michael can be arrested, he manages to escape. Under his leadership, the Freikorps attacks the Russians from behind and shoots down their headquarters. Vera dies in the rubble, Michael dies in the fighting.

backgrounds

With this war film, which was forbidden for young people, the military use of so-called Freikorps should be justified. It was awarded the title "artistically valuable" by the film testing agency . In the Third Reich, this award was given to films that, in the opinion of the examiner, were particularly aesthetically pleasing in addition to the theatrical performances. Even Goebbels was very pleased with the strip. On December 11, 1935, he noted in his diary: “An exciting and gorgeous film with Albers.” After 1945, however, the film was banned by the Allied military government ; It is unclear whether it was played again after the end of the occupation in Germany. The film was not submitted to the voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (FSK Film), but this review is not absolutely necessary in order to get approval for a film to be shown.

Reviews

“How should you look at a film like 'Women, Executioners and Soldiers' [sic] in purely artistic terms when the gangster fable slips into the political? How apolitical Hans Albers himself is is supposed to prove the double role à la Henny Porten [allusion to the German feature film Kohlhiesels Töchter (1930)], which shows the heroic as a freedom fighter and as a Bolshevik general at the same time. What good is first-class filmmaking if National Socialism puts its stamp on the whole thing and tries to prove that all the irregulars who played war on their own in 1918 are noble people and the Bolsheviks , with whom Germany made peace, are villains who slam down poor pussies from behind ?! Where is the morale when Albers, as a fighter pilot, knocks down the enemy whose life he has saved in order to fly from Africa to Königsberg without landing and gasoline ? Then he meets gamblers and sliders as if there had only been such creatures in the inflation and no starving people at all. And the usual espionage story begins, which lets Albers fighter pilots fight against Albers Soviet general and win. The black and white technique of Russian propaganda films , often reprimanded and rejected, celebrates triumphs - all German irregulars are noble people and all Soviet Russians are devious criminals. Thanks to Johannes Meyer's direction, the whole thing really has nothing to do with film, all the more with Hitler's party program. The best tension fails where the distorting purpose becomes abundantly clear. "

- Pem

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ pem : Sharply seen - but correct. Hans Albers as Kohlhiesel. In: Der Morgen - Wiener Montagblatt , December 16, 1935, p. 11.