Yeah-soo!

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Movie
German title Yes sooo!
Original title Yeah-soo!
Country of production Switzerland
original language Swiss German
Publishing year 1935
length 84 minutes
Rod
Director Leopold Lindtberg
script Max Werner Lenz
Walter Lesch
production Lazar changer
music Robert Blum
camera Emil Berna
cut Käthe Mey
occupation

Yeah-soo! is the title of a Swiss sound film made by Leopold Lindtberg in 1934/35 for Lazar Wechsler's Zürcher Praesens-Film . The script was written by Max Werner Lenz and Walter Lesch , who was also a co-director; Emil Berna was at the camera . The Busoni student Robert Blum composed the film music.

Important Swiss actors took part in the dialect comedy , such as Emil Hegetschweiler in the leading role of the shopkeeper Stäubli, the cabaret artist and author Max Werner Lenz and the cabaret artist Elsie Attenhofer , who both appeared at the Zurich Cabaret Cornichon , as well as Walter Lesch and Zarli Carigiet , the younger Brother of the painter Alois Carigiet , who played his father in the film and designed backdrops and posters for the Cornichon .

Yeah-soo! was based on a stereotype that can be found throughout Swiss films of the 1930s: the moral superiority of the country over the city.

action

The grocer Jakob Stäubli (Emil Hegetschweiler) wants to live close to his daughter Nellie (Elsie Attenhofer), who works in a beauty salon in Zurich. So he sells his shop and moves with his wife Frieda (Hedwig Keller) away from his small village to the big city.

This is presented as a place where untrustworthy elements are at home. One of these "idlers, useless and clever people" is André Brugger (Fritz Ritter), with whom Nellie lives: a fictitious Basel resident who doesn't think much of honest work. He's less after Nellie than he is after her father's money. But old Stäubli with his common sense doesn't take long to figure it out.

On this occasion, he also critically questions urban phenomena such as the rules of modern traffic, ice hockey as well as cosmetic and dance parlors "in a lovely donkey quixote".

In the car of Xaver Casutt (Zarli Carigiet), a down-to-earth Graubünden man who was once Nellie's childhood sweetheart, the Stäublis return to the country, where it is safe.

Production notes

The shooting of Jä-soo! covered the months from January to March 1935. The interior shots were made in the film studio on Löwenstrasse (Zurich), the exterior shots at other locations in Zurich and in Hausen am Albis . The world premiere took place on March 20, 1935 at the Apollo cinema in Zurich. In Germany you could see the strip under the title Ja sooo! see.

The buildings were created by Robert Furrer and Werner Dressler. Actor Fritz Ritter also served as assistant director.

With this film began the approximately one and a half decade-long, extremely fruitful collaboration between the Swiss theater director Leopold Lindtberg and the Swiss film producer Lazar Wechsler during the Second World War . The production costs were very low at 85,000 Swiss francs, which was not least due to the fact that the film was shot down relatively quickly. Every time director Lindtberg had to be withdrawn from rehearsals for two plays by Gogol and Chekhov at the Zurich Schauspielhaus. Yeah-soo! was Lindtberg's first production at the only important film production company in Switzerland. Walter Lesch from Zurich was added to him as co-director, allegedly because Lindtberg, who was born in Vienna, “was not yet quite able to speak Swiss”.

The film was a great success with the public and has now finally established dialect film as a film genre from the original Swiss. It initially ran en suite for five weeks and was then extended by two months. "Above all, however, the film lives thanks to the work of Emil Hegetschweiler, an extremely popular character actor for over three decades who, as a mischievous, perplexed or indignant petty bourgeoisie, trudges through a whole hail of exhilarating tests."

With Wie d'Warret Würkt (director: Richard Schweizer / Walter Lesch), Zürcher Praesens-Film, founded in 1924, took the risk in 1933 to produce a film exclusively for the German-speaking Swiss market, thus establishing a successful film genre: dialect comedy.

In modern dancing in Zurich, Walter Baumgartner's band The Magnoliens plays in the film , and they often performed in the Corso vaudeville theater in Zurich .

Yeah-soo! was completely restored in the summer of 2018 by Swiss radio and television in cooperation with the Cinemathèque Suisse , the Memoriav association and Praesens Film . The world premiere of the restored version of the dialect feature film took place on October 4, 2018 as part of the Zurich Film Festival .

reception

With the genre of dialect films, the only really lasting originality of Swiss film emerged for the time being. For the German-speaking majority of the country, this special genre gained an identity-forming effect. Especially before and during the Second World War, the dialect film acquired a special cultural and political weight ( intellectual national defense ), because the need for demarcation from Germany was also expressed in a stronger emphasis on the dialect.

«In terms of content, the film showed a characteristic feature of Swiss film at the time: the rural-urban divide. The city has often been portrayed as a haven of moral evil, a dangerous place for decent girls, and the home of seedy characters. [...] 'Decent' Swiss families in the films were almost always petty-bourgeois, good-natured, a little slow, but loyal, close to nature and with a great sense of family. "

Leopold Lindtberg was brought from the stage to film by Lazar Wechsler as a director.

«If Lindtberg's theater work in Zurich was the consistent continuation of his work on various German-speaking theaters, then his film career was by no means mapped out. Of his only early film work, a short film on the occasion of Goethe's 100th birthday, he is said to have said himself later that it was probably better that he was missing. It was more of a coincidence (and another stroke of luck) that the screenwriter and director Walter Lesch was looking for a co-director with experience in acting for his second dialect comedy, "Jä-soo!" (1935), came across the Austrian Lindtberg who understood the Swiss dialect. " (Martin Girod in NZZ )
“Lindtberg's cinematographic career began with the film adaptation of a Zurich dialect, which the Swiss authorities still have reservations about. The great success of the cabaret scenario, however, quickly silences them. " (gk)

In terms of film language they were still a bit behind: Yeah-soo! looked more like a cabaret than a real feature film due to the dialogues that appeared to be read off and the scenes that were barely connected in terms of content.

«One of Lindtberg's cinematic qualities can already be seen - between many awkward scenes - in Jä-soo! read: his sense of the atmospheric. In the films that followed, the slightly ironic, distant, but loving view of the Swiss and the all-Swiss proved its worth. " (Martin Girod in NZZ)

Yeah-soo! Although it was well received by the Swiss audience, cinematically it was more of a teaching example of the pitfalls of cabaret as a basis for film. The film attracted attention with its papery dialogues and a "number-by-number" sequence. [...] Despite all the formal weaknesses of the cabaret film, it was extremely popular with the audience. The reason was the casting of the roles that were taken on in numerous films by members of the Cabaret Cornichon, a "national institution" of those years.

For decades, the Swiss feature film, which is primarily produced in Zurich, used individual dialects as clichés, which was not without simplification: the Basler is the villain, the East Swiss petty, the Graubünden charming, but occasionally quick-tempered. [...] Already in Jä-soo! (Walter Lesch, Leopold Lindtberg, 1935), the oldest surviving dialect film, the audience was introduced to the figure of the “evil Basel native”. (Felix Aeppli: Beware of Basel German!)

«Let us know what is not ancora il tempo per realizare opere a grosso budget, make l'unico spazio per una production nazionale a source of the film“ semplici e sinceri ”. In quest'ottica nasce questo secondo lungometraggio in dialetto zurighese made in Praesens (il primo era stato " How d'Warret works " semper di Lesch). Il film dalla trama futile e dalla realizzazione dilettantesca riuscirà comunque a coprire le spese di produione, ma soprattutto vedrà riuniti quelli che diventeranno di la poco i principali collaboratori di Lindtberg. Dopo il film Lindtberg riprende le direction teatrali con opere di spessore come “Caesar in Rüblikon”, parodia di un piccolo tiranno che vuole instaurare la dittatura nell ' Oberland zurighese  … »(Circolo del Cinema di Bellinzona)

The film was re-released in Swiss-German by Praesens-Film Zürich on VHS in January 2000 after it was broadcast on the SF 1 television station.

In February 2012, the Bernese presenter Stefan Theiler on “Radio Rabe” presented “Healing films in the ear” Jä-soo! as a radio play.

More reviews

Yeah-soo! is ... a dialect fluctuation whose script only serves as a framework for joke scenes, yet it marks a milestone in the history of Praesens. With him comes the Viennese Leopold Lindtberg, the theater man and occasional filmmaker who will have the most lasting influence on artistic production during the war years. (...) Lindtberg's didactic piece is less than inconspicuous: he is obviously still struggling with the new technology, narration via montage is unknown to him, and the narrowness of the studio places limits on camera angles and movements and the depth of field. (…)… Wooden and unnecessary dialogues slow down the flow of action, the camera shows the obvious or slavishly records “numbers”. (...) Yeah-soo! aims at the laughing muscles of the masses - with the best results, one wants to believe the unanimous judgment of the press.

- Hervé Dumont : The history of Swiss film. Feature films 1896–1965. Lausanne 1987, p. 178.

The lexicon of international films reads: «First film by the director Lindtberg, who emigrated to Switzerland and later became very successful internationally; honestly staged and banally developed. "

literature

  • Felix Aeppli: Summary of Jä-soo. ( Memento of August 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) at: aeppli.ch
  • Felix Aeppli: Beware of Basel German! About the function of the dialect in Swiss films. In: Zürcher Kantonalbank (ed.): Zürcher Filmrolle. Zurich 2005, pp. 32–43; online at aeppli.ch
  • Martin Girod: He got cornered and created great things. On Leopold Lindtberg's 100th birthday. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung NZZ. May 31, 2002 - online at nzz.ch
  • Kageb, Fecas: “City”, “Country”, “Agglo” in Swiss film 1. City images in transition. Catholic university community in cooperation with the Paulus Academy Zurich (PAZ). Head: Dr. Felix Aeppli, November 5, 2014; online at kageb.ch
  • Thomas Kramer, Martin Prucha: Film over time - 100 years of cinema in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Ueberreuter Verlag, Vienna 1994, ISBN 3-8000-3516-2 , pp. 175-181, 209-213, 265-269.
  • Thomas Meyer: Moments for the ear: music in old Swiss films. Facets of a little noticed art. Kommissionsverlag Hug, Zurich 1999, pp. 10, 16 u. 45.
  • Josef Roos: Kurt Früh and his films: image or caricature of Swiss reality after 1945? Verlag Lang, 1994, ISBN 3-906752-48-8 , pp. 187, 193, 196, 452, 489 and 496.
  • Benedikt Sartorius: The new recipe of the film doctor. In: KulturStattBern. February 28, 2012 (via the episode «Heilsame Films im Ohr» on Radio Rabe)
  • Rudolf Schwarzenbach: The position of the dialect in German-speaking Switzerland: Studies on the language usage of the present. Verlag Huber, 1969, p. 371.
  • Bruno Spoerri: Jazz in Switzerland. History and stories. 2nd Edition. Chronos Verlag, Zurich 2005, pp. 62 and 425.
  • Kay Less : "In life, more is taken from you than given ...". Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. ACABUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8 , pp. 313-314.
  • Werner Wider, Felix Aeppli: The Swiss Film 1929–1964. Switzerland as a ritual . Volume 2: Materials. Limmat Verlag, Zurich 1981, pp. 271, 312 (Film No. 30), 443.

Web links

Illustrations
  • Stand photo from Jä-soo! with Hegetschweiler and Carlsen at filmarchiv.at
  • Author and actor Max Werner Lenz 1958 at srfcdn.ch
  • Artist postcard by Elsie Attenhofer, signed, 1952, at autogramme.com (accessed April 20, 2015)
  • Film composer Robert Blum on a signed photo at cyranos.ch
  • Director Leopold Lindtberg on a signed photo at cyranos.ch

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Felix Aeppli: Beware of Basel German!
  2. ↑ so at kageb.ch
  3. ↑ he represents the "bad Basel": he leaves a believer with the question "Wänn Si Ihr Gält with eme maagere Zinsli ummehaa?" run up, cf. Felix Aeppli: Beware of Basel German!
  4. ↑ (gk) at film.at
  5. ↑ cf. Views of a Village. In: Hauser Spiegel. No.37, September 2004, as PDF at hausen.ch ( Memento from April 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ a b Hervé Dumont : The history of Swiss film. Feature films 1896–1965. Lausanne 1987, p. 178.
  7. ↑ so in Praesens-Film
  8. ↑ cf. Yeah-soo! ( Memento from April 17, 2015 in the web archive archive.today ) at: filmpodium.ch
  9. ↑ cf. Meyer p. 45; on Baumgartner cf. Ingrid Bigler-Marschall in: Andreas Kotte (Hrsg.): Theaterlexikon der Schweiz. Volume 1, Chronos Verlag, Zurich 2005, pp. 135-136.
  10. ↑ Yeah-soo! - Zurich Film Festival. Retrieved October 5, 2018 .
  11. ^ Pierre Lachat: Film - 2 beginnings of Swiss film: 1930s to 1950s. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . November 5, 2009. Retrieved June 25, 2019 .
  12. ↑ cf. Swiss film
  13. ↑ cf. film.at
  14. ↑ so in Praesens-Film
  15. ↑ so with Schweizer Film
  16. ↑ reproduced at kinotv.com ; in Italy the film was called Uno Svizzero imperfetto
  17. ↑ cf. worldcat.org
  18. ↑ since December 16, 2012 SRF 1
  19. ↑ cf. Edition Classic The good Swiss film, EAN & ID: 7611719203441/344; Cover of the re-release of Jä-soo! shown on VHS at shop.praesens.com
  20. ↑ cf. B. Sartorius at newsnetz.blog Der Bund
  21. ↑ Yeah-soo! In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 19, 2015 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  22. ↑ These are radio comedies that are broadcast on Thursdays. It starts with «Jä-soo» from 1935, cf. The federal government, newsnetz.blog