Ruler without a crown
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Ruler without a crown |
 | |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1957 |
| length | 106 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Harald Braun |
| script |
Odo Krohmann , Gerhard Menzel |
| production | Bavaria film art |
| music | Werner Eisbrenner |
| camera | Göran Strindberg |
| cut | Hilwa from Boro |
| occupation | |
| |
Ruler Without a Crown is a German historical drama by Harald Braun from 1957 . It is based on motifs from the novel The Queen's Favorite by Robert Neumann .
action
The doctor Friedrich Struensee from Altona is brought to the royal court in Denmark . As a respected psychiatrist , he is supposed to heal the mentally ill King Christian . The well-being of the country depends on it, as the king's stepmother, Juliane , is already waiting for the moment to have Christian deposed because of his illness and replace him with her own son. The Crown Prince is still a child and would be a mere puppet of the Ministers and Julianes. Struensee quickly wins the king's trust and realizes that the unstable regent is suffering from the rejection of his wife Mathilde , an Englishwoman who has been living on her country estate in Hirschholm for some time after an argument.
Christian asks Struensee to stay at the court, and he agrees, as he already felt the displeasure of the Danish people on the way to the royal palace. He wants to form a regent out of Christian who can lead his country - and bring about a decisive improvement in the life of the rural population himself. Since Mathilde refuses to return to court, Christian and Struensee travel to her. Struensee manages to get Mathilde to return to the farm. On the return journey they meet rebellious farmers who have revolted against excessive tax payments and are now threatened with torture by the king's men . Christian promises them impunity. When he later learns that the men were nevertheless tortured at the instigation of his two highest-ranking ministers, he dismisses both ministers. Struensee takes their place and soon becomes the most important man in the state. In this function, he decisively improves the situation of the population.
However, he plays a dangerous game: the queen worships him and both begin a relationship with each other. The queen becomes pregnant and gives birth to a daughter who promptly has a characteristic birthmark that Christian has already seen on Struensee. In dire need and under pressure from the Queen Mother, he signs the arrest warrant for Struensee and his wife Mathilde. Shortly thereafter, he fell mad and Struensee, who wanted to come to a discussion, realized that he could no longer help the king. However, he saves Mathilde, who is allowed to leave the country under the protection of the British crown, but would rather die by his side under the ax. At the request of a minister, Struensee pretends to travel to England with her the next night. While the ship is leaving with Mathilde, Struensee awaits the execution in his cell. When the salute sounds with which Mathilde is saying goodbye, he bows in her direction in his cell.
production
Filming began on August 23, 1956 and ended in October 1956. Filming locations were Copenhagen and the surrounding area, the Frisian coast and the island of Sylt . The royal palace was found in the Kassel Löwenburg and the Hirschholm Palace, in which the Queen stayed without her husband, in Wilhelmsthal Palace . The film premiered on January 16, 1957 in the Gloria-Palast in Berlin .
criticism
Der Spiegel wrote that director Braun “provided the melodrama about the royal favorite and popular reformer Struensee with a lot of explanatory ballast and those commonplace wisdoms that are often referred to in the film as 'contemporary historical parallels', so that nothing of the drama and little of the melos remained. [...] OW Fischer, handicapped by a great deal of importance, has to let the young Horst Buchholz score points for himself as a historically legitimized mad king in his special subject, the one-man frenzy. "
The lexicon of international film called rulers without a crown in the printed edition of 1990 a "soulful historical drama with visual and representational advantages". In the online edition, the equipment, camera work and the performance are also praised, but the film is "more interested in the superficiality of the topic, which is attractive to the public."
For Cinema the film was “Edelkitsch”.
Web links
- Rulers without a crown in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Rulers without a crown at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ New in Germany: rulers without a crown . In: Der Spiegel , No. 7, 1957, p. 51.
- ↑ Klaus Brühne (Ed.): Lexicon of International Films . Volume 3. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1990, p. 1591.
- ↑ rulers without a crown. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed July 9, 2017 .
- ↑ See cinema.de