In the fight with the mountains
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | In the fight with the mountains |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1921 |
| length | 1,536 meters, 6 acts, approx. 72 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Arnold Fanck |
| script | Arnold Fanck |
| production | Arnold Fanck |
| music |
Paul Hindemith (as Paul Merano) |
| camera |
Sepp Allgeier , Arnold Fanck |
| cut | Arnold Fanck |
| occupation | |
In the fight with the mountains , alternatively in storm and ice. An Alpine Symphony in Pictures is a German silent film made in October 1920 by mountain film pioneer Arnold Fanck , which shows the ascent of the 4,500 meter high Lyskamm by skiers Hannes Schneider and Ilse Rohde . The documentary was shot in three days for a production cost of CHF 4,000 with a hand crank camera. The film was originally planned as a three-part series, but only the first part ( In Sturm und Eis ) was realized.
action
The mountaineer Hannes Schneider wants to climb the Lyskamm in the glacier area around Matterhorn and Monte Rosa . He persuades Ilse Rohde to come with him. The next day, they set off together from the Bétempshütte at dawn. You slowly work your way through the imposing glacier world with ice ax and rope. The path is dangerous because the crevasses up to 100 meters deep can be covered by fresh snow. Your path finally crosses a particularly powerful crevasse that threatens to prevent you from further penetrating the ice world. You have no choice but to rope your way down into the glacier's mouth. Below you can take a look inside the glacier's belly. After they have climbed back up on the other side of the gorge, they continue their march through the eternal ice. Take a first break on the Felikjoch at 4290 meters.
You continue to hike over hundreds of ice steps and finally reach the ridge at 4530 meters. The clouds tower deep above the Po plain and offer an impressive spectacle. In the last rays of the sun, the mountaineers begin the descent over an ice wall at an altitude of 4400 meters. When night falls, only the moonlight offers orientation. During the further descent, Ilse gets into a crevasse when she steps on a seemingly stable blanket of snow. Only held by her partner's rope, however, she survives this unharmed. Just in time for the onset of the sudden fall in the weather, which is moving across from Italy, they set up camp for the night under a ledge.
The next morning the sun shines over deep, fresh snow. The climbers continue their way through the glacier labyrinth and finally reach the foot of the mountain. While Ilse continues down to Zermatt , Hannes stays at the hut.
Film music
Arnold Fanck edited the film in Meran in the summer of 1921 and met Paul Hindemith there , who happened to be there. Fanck showed him the first version of the film, whereupon Hindemith offered his collaboration. He wrote the music for salon orchestras in less than two weeks and presented Fanck with a copy signed “Paul Merano”.
“When [Hindemith] finished the whole composition and played it for me on the piano, it suddenly became very clear to me that the effect of my pictures was greatly enhanced by the music. In any case, that was the first time that a film had an original composition. "
At the premiere in the UT Friedrichstrasse in Berlin on September 22, 1921, however, the music was not played, supposedly because there was not enough preparation time available. It is more likely, however, that they preferred to use their own compositions in order to save royalties. How often Hindemith's music was performed for the film at that time can no longer be traced.
After the score was found in the composer's estate in 1963 and a copy of the film had surfaced in Moscow in the 1980s, the score was performed again with the film, but only in an abridged version according to the existing film material. With the recent unification of music and image, the music could for the first time be viewed in the context of the image. The former head of the Hindemith Institute , Giselher Schubert, said: “Hindemith also relies on absolute musical forms, such as that of the Passacaglia , which develops according to its own laws and illustrates the film less musically than rather counterpoint. Such forms also justify a separate performance of the film music. "
Film versions
For a long time the film was only available in a shortened black and white version with different subtitles, which had been preserved in the Moscow film archive Gosfilmofond . The origin of this version is unclear, but it is conceivable that it was created at the end of the 1920s, when UFA bought the rights to Fancks Sport- und Bergfilm GmbH. Possibly the UFA wanted to reevaluate the film and brought it out in a new version. This rather documentary version has been shortened by approx. 400 meters compared to the original version (approx. 23 minutes at 18 fps) and instead of the original 58 subtitles contains 78 titles that comment on the film in a sporty way. Due to the confiscation of large parts of the Reich Film Archive after World War II , the copy ended up in Moscow, where it was only identified in the 1980s.
Since no censorship card had been preserved for the film, there was no idea of the original version of the film. However, the original intertitles were preserved as shorthand notes in the original score by Paul Hindemith at the Hindemith Institute in Frankfurt , in which the 58 subtitles are noted down to the minute and, for the most part, provided with keywords. So it was clear that the original version corresponded more to the narrative style of a "romantically inspired mountain mysticism" than that of the present sporty documentary.
On the occasion of the re-recording of the film music, intensive research was carried out for additional film material in international film archives. The result was two finds in Vienna and Berlin, with which an almost complete reconstruction of the film was possible. With the newly discovered colored nitro copy from the Filmarchiv Austria with almost complete subtitles (length: 1,253 meters, approx. 61 minutes) and a black-and-white copy with 28 subtitles from the film archive of the Federal Archives in Berlin (length: 896 meters, almost 44 Minutes) a version could be created in which only 300 meters, i.e. about 15 minutes, are missing. The film material from Vienna was scanned in high resolution in 2K and compared with the other copies. Missing passages were added and digitally colored according to the color concept of the Vienna copy.
criticism
“What slipped past my drunken eyes in the form of dusting snow flags, glittering ice ridges and the joy of climbing to a summit of the Valais ice giants, all of a sudden tore open all the beautiful memories of my previous life and excited me so much that I never left the movie theater , but stayed seated to watch the film again, so much had it enchanted me. "
“The huge Alpine Symphony in Pictures, about which we had our Freiburg correspondent report, shakes and now grabs the hearts of the audience in the Tauentzienpalast. It is difficult to write 'film reviews' about the infinite beauty and majesty of the snow-capped mountain giants, about the horror of their gullies and moray eels, about the triumph of human courage that conquers this mountain world. One would only wish that quite a lot of people take part in the experience of this film. "
“It is certainly not everyone's business to tackle the glacier ice with a pickaxe - what an immeasurable value there is in this demonstration film, which photographs the roar of the snow storm as faithfully as it interprets the unspeakably solemn silence of the ice ridge! […] The photographic capturing of the alpine majesty, the almost discarded arrogance of the weak human creature beyond the clouds, the proud sense of victory of the trembling human heart when it is allowed to throb four thousand meters above all gray worries - these are all such tremendous moments this Filmes, so purifying emanations of unadulterated grandeur that the producing company must be given full credit for the new achievement. "
“These images, which have lost none of their suggestive power after all these years, inspired one of the most important German composers of the 20th century, Paul Hindemith, to write a veritable 'Alpine Symphony'. Its richness of colors not only underlines, it sets dramaturgical accents that give the documentary film to special moments of tension. The effect is incomparable, powerful and gripping and does without the attached pathos that later mountain films often show in plot and accompanying music. "
Web links
- Fighting with the mountains in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- In the fight with the mountains at filmportal.de
- In the fight with the mountains in the film archive of the European Film Philharmonic
literature
- Arnold Fanck: He directed with glaciers, storms and avalanches. A film pioneer tells. Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-485-01756-6 . P. 125ff.
Individual evidence
- ↑ In the fight with the mountains. Silent film with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. (No longer available online.) Hessischer Rundfunk , May 13, 2013, formerly in the original ; Retrieved November 4, 2013 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c d premiere of IM KAMPF MIT DEM BERGE. Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation , March 2013, accessed on November 4, 2013 .
- ↑ Fanck, Munich 1973. P. 129 (PDF; 75 kB).
- ↑ a b Paul Hindemith: In the fight with the mountain. (No longer available online.) Schott Music , May 6, 2013, archived from the original on May 22, 2016 ; Retrieved November 4, 2013 . 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.
- ↑ a b c d About the music. (No longer available online.) Arte , April 25, 2013, archived from the original on November 5, 2013 ; Retrieved November 4, 2013 . 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.
- ↑ a b c d Film version and lucky finds. (No longer available online.) Arte , April 25, 2013, archived from the original on November 5, 2013 ; Retrieved November 4, 2013 . 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.
- ↑ In the fight with the mountains. (No longer available online.) Filmmusik.at, formerly in the original ; Retrieved November 4, 2013 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Lichtbild-Bühne , No. 39, September 24, 1921. Critique by Hans Wollenberg. filmportal.de , accessed on November 4, 2013 .
- ^ Critique from the Film-Kurier, No. 222, September 23, 1921. filmportal.de , accessed on November 4, 2013 .
- ↑ In the fight with the mountains. European Film Philharmonic, accessed November 4, 2013 .
