Behind the screen

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Movie
German title Behind the screen
Original title Behind the screen
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1916
length 23 minutes
Rod
Director Charlie Chaplin
script Charlie Chaplin
production Henry P. Caulfield
music Hans J. Salter (1929)
camera Roland Totheroh
cut Charlie Chaplin
occupation

Behind the Screen (original title Behind the Screen ) is an American film that Charlie Chaplin made in 1916 for Mutual Co. based on his own script (together with Vincent Bryan and Maverick Terrell). The film was released in US cinemas on November 13, 1916.

action

The scene of Behind the screen is a film studio, is in the same time at two different films, a historical drama and a comedy filmed. Charlie plays David, a stage laborer who is supposed to give his boss, foreman Goliath, a hand. In one narrative strand, Charlie shows pure slapstick when handling huge props , in another it is about a strike by the stage workers, during which Edna Purviance, after she has not got a job as an actress, disguises herself as a man, for at least one job as a stage worker to get hold of. Of course, Charlie falls in love with her right away, causing some confusion.

background

The film was made in the Lone Star Studio in Hollywood . The camera work was in the hands of Roland Totheroh , assisted by George C. Zalibra . The prop master George Cleethorpe was responsible for the equipment . Ed Brewer was the technical director .

Behind the screen was in the US by the Co. Mutual sold. In Europe, the film was shown in France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, Poland and Hungary, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. In Germany, where it was only shown in cinemas after the end of the First World War , the film was shown under titles such as “Chaplin in the glass house” and “Charlie as a backdrop pusher”.

In 1932 Amedee van Beuren bought Chaplin's mutual comedies from the Van Beuren Studios. He added music by Gene Rodemich and Winston Sharples to them , added sound effects and distributed them as sound films through RKO Radio Pictures , without Chaplin being able to take legal action against it.

In their three-part documentary series Unknown Chaplin , Kevin Brownlow and David Gill presented previously unseen material from this film in 1983, including two alternative takes with Edna Purviance, one in which she plays the harp and one in which she plays the guitar and starts to laugh (the documentary puts suggests that Chaplin and Purviance started their romantic affair at that time), and various takes of a scene in which Charlie's feet are almost chopped off with a hatchet, which was done by turning the camera backwards. This scene was never used in the film.

Reviews (selection)

“It's something like that with Charlie Chaplin and especially with his early works, the countless short films he produced on the assembly line for the Keystone, Essanay and Mutual studios: On the one hand, his body control and timing are deeply impressive to this day, but what exactly is that The success of physical comedy in those years is often difficult to understand. Many of the optical gags are simply no longer funny for today's viewing habits. Nonetheless, a great fascination for Chaplin's art remains, fueled not least by the later masterpieces ' Modern Times ' and ' The Great Dictator ', but not limited to them alone. "

- the daily newspaper , July 29, 2010

“In Behind The Screen we see Charlie as the constantly harassed stage worker David, who drags antique columns and other cardboard utensils through the scenery for a historical ham, while his chief prop master Goliath makes himself comfortable. But that's just the starting plot. As almost always, it's also about mishaps, tumults, strikes, throwing cakes - and, cherchez la femme , about a long kiss. "

- Wiesbaden courier

"When Chaplin created the Charlot , and he also worked as a director and producer, this unique choreography of movement was created: a mechanical movement, a body in motion, a mechanical body - that is what sets Chaplin apart."

- Kathrin Hondl

subjects

Behind the Screen was hailed as being important in the portrayal of homosexuality in the film because it was joking around the subject, which was quite unusual at the time. When Charlie notices that the disguised Edna is not a man, but a girl, he kisses her on the mouth in the studio. At that moment his foreman comes in, sees them both, and because he thinks Charlie is kissing a man, he begins to act tuntig to mock him until Charlie kicks him in the butt.

Re-performances

The film was repeatedly processed into anthologies with other mutual comedies and loaned out. An early example is the compilation by the German distribution company Humboldt-Film GmbH from Berlin from 1929. Together with Die Kur , Die Rollschuhbahn and Der Feuerwehrmann , Hinter der Screen came to the movie theaters under the title “Charlie's Career”.

In 2013, Behind the Screen was restored as part of the Chaplin Mutual Project with financial support from French director Michel Hazanavicius . Since then, the restored version has been performed frequently. Clemens von Wedemeyer showed the film on January 19, 2014 in the living archive of the Institute for Film and Video Art eV in the Arsenal in Berlin in his program A DAY'S PLEASURE, BEHIND THE SCREEN , in which he showed films “ that affect media production in society and analyze their conditions ”. On the initiative of the filmmaker Joachim Kreck, Behind the Screen in Schloss Biebrich in Wiesbaden was performed on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his series “Films in the Castle” together with the two-act drama The Vagabond , Leichte Straße and The Roller Skating Rink . Furthermore, the film was shown together with The Roller Skating Rink and The Immigrant at the 15th International Accordion Festival at a silent film matinee on March 2nd, 2014 in the “Filmcasino” cinema in Vienna . The culture channel Arte showed Behind the Screen in its series Kings Of Comedy on January 12, 2014 on German television with musical accompaniment by Robert Israel and his orchestra.

Several publishers have now brought Behind the Screen onto DVD.

Web links

Commons : Behind the screen  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Items:

literature

  • Richard Barrios: Screened Out - Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall. Psychology Press, 2003, ISBN 0-415-92329-8 , pp. 4, 7, 19, 382. (English)
  • Alan Bilton: Silent Film Comedy and American Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, Hampshire 2013, ISBN 978-1-137-02026-0 . (English)
  • Dirk Blothner, Ralf Zwiebel: »Melancholia« - ways of psychoanalytical interpretation of the film. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2014.
  • Gero Gandert (Ed.): 1929. The film of the Weimar Republic. A Handbook of Contemporary Criticism. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1997. (Review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of February 21, 1998, No. 44, p. 30)
  • Larry Langman: American Film Cycles: The Silent Era. (= Bibliographies and indexes in the performing arts. Volume 22). Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport / Conn. 1998, ISBN 0-313-30657-5 , pp. 1, 43, 169. (English)
  • Kenneth S. Lynn: Chaplin - His Life and Times. Simon & Schuster, New York 1997, ISBN 0-684-80851-X . (Cooper Square Press, New York 2003, ISBN 0-8154-1255-X ) (Carl Bennett: Book review. On: silentera.com ) (English)
  • James L. Neibaur: Early Charlie Chaplin. The Artist as Apprentice at Keystone Studios. (= G - Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series). Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland / USA 2012, ISBN 978-0-8108-8242-3 , pp. 212, 223, 226 (English)
  • Friedrich von Zglinicki: The way of the film. History of cinematography and its predecessors. Rembrandt Verlag, Berlin 1956, pp. 515, 517-520.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Zglinicki, p. 519.
  2. ↑ cf. WaverBoy, Entry # 285 ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , May 29, 2007 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.silentcomedians.com
  3. ↑ German  Unknown Chaplin , cf. Unknown Chaplin in the English language Wikipedia
  4. ↑ Still photo at silent-hall-of-fame.org
  5. ↑ cf. Blothner onion 2014, p. 80.
  6. ^ A b Peter Müller: Films in the Castle is celebrating its 30th birthday with four restored two-act Charlie Chaplin films. (No longer available online.) Wiesbadener Kurier , March 14, 2014, archived from the original on July 14, 2014 ; Retrieved July 9, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wiesbadener-kurier.de
  7. ↑ in: Clown and Myth. Charlie Chaplin exhibition in Paris. Deutschlandradio Kultur from June 7, 2005 [1]
  8. ↑ cf. The Celluloid Closet - German: Gefangen in der Traumfabrik , Documentation by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman from 1995, was released on DVD in 2001; also Larry Langman (1998) and Kenneth S. Lynn: Chaplin - His Life and Times (2003)
  9. ↑ cf. Humboldt-Film GmbH (Berlin) at filmportal.de
  10. ↑ The film came under the censorship no. B 23 625 in a length of 6 acts = 2042 meters on November 26, 1929 in Berlin in the UFA pavilion for the first performance; Hans J. Salter wrote a music for the cinema that was conducted by Victor Baer. See Gandert, 1929, p. 789.
  11. ↑ cf. Behind the screen - Trivia. Internet Movie Database , accessed July 9, 2014 .
  12. ↑ cf. "A Day's Pleasure, Behind the Screen" - A film curatorial performance by Clemens von Wedemeyer. Arsenal , January 2014, accessed July 9, 2014 .
  13. ↑ Films in the Castle - The somewhat different cinema in Wiesbaden. Friends of the Films in the Castle, accessed on July 9, 2014 .
  14. ↑ cf. 15th International Accordion Festival - SILENT FILM MATINEE. wien.at, accessed on July 9, 2014 .
  15. ↑ Dr. Achim Lewandowski: DVD Recommendation No. 7 - Films with Charlie Chaplin