Fighting hearts

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Movie
Original title Fighting hearts
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1921
length 5 acts, 1707 meters, at 18 fps 84 minutes
Rod
Director Fritz Lang
script Fritz Lang, Thea von Harbou
production Erich Pommer , Decla-Bioskop AG Berlin
camera Otto Kanturek
occupation

Fighting hearts (also awarded as a four for women ) is a silent film drama that Fritz Lang realized in 1920 for Decla-Bioskop AG Berlin. The script, which Lang wrote together with his future wife, the writer Thea von Harbou , was based on a play by Rolf E. Vanloo with the title “Florence or Die Drei bei der Frau”. The film is cast with actors such as Carola Toelle, Anton Edthofer, Ludwig Hartau, Leonhard Haskel, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Paul Morgan and Paul Rehkopf, even in small roles. Critics regard it as a preliminary study for the later full-length films Dr Mabuse of the Gamers and Spies .

action

Harry Yquem (Ludwig Hartau) is a wealthy realtor. He disguises himself in order to purchase a piece of jewelery for his wife Florence (Carola Toelle) in a criminal cellar from the fence Upton (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) with false notes. He meets a man in whom he believes he recognizes a former lover of Florence from the time before their marriage: it is Werner Krafft (Anton Edthofer) who has returned to the city after years and is looking for his former lover Florence is located. Since he is penniless, he wants to visit his twin brother William Krafft to ask him for money. But he has become a bon vivant and a deceiver.

Yquem thinks William is Werner and therefore lets his confidante Meunier (Robert Forster Larrinaga) shadow him. Finally he passes him a bogus message that Florence supposedly wants to see him and offers him a rendez-vous , whereupon William drives to the Yquems house. Yquem follows him armed, hoping to catch him and his wife. At the same time, however, Meunier approaches Florence on his own initiative and with clear intentions, who is visibly confused.

Werner Krafft has tried in vain to meet his brother William. When he returns to Upton's basement, he overhears him and his assistant. You have discovered Yquem's fraud with the wrong money and want to kidnap Florence in order to extort the amount owed from Yquem.

Upton and his friend drive to the Yquems estate, Werner Krafft pursues them. The Yquems have a big show down with shooting and a large police presence , in which all secrets are revealed.

background

The recordings took place in 1920 in the Decla-Bioskop studio, Otto Kanturek was in charge of the camera, Ernst Meiwers and Hans Jakoby took care of the equipment .

The later composer of the cinema music for Metropolis and the Nibelungs , Gottfried Huppertz , who began his artistic career as an actor and operetta singer, can be seen in a small role as head waiter .

The film was under the censorship title “Fighting Hearts (The Four for Women)” on February 1, 1921, the Berlin police and received under the number B.01223 youth ban. It premiered on February 3, 1921 in Berlin in the Premièren-Kino Marmorhaus on Kurfürstendamm.

The film, distributed by Decla Bioscop AG, was also shown abroad, in France, Portugal and Poland, in Finland and even overseas in Brazil.

Under the same title Fighting Hearts , but with the subtitle An idyllic beach and a less criminal act, a film was made in 1912 in which Henny Porten , directed by Curt A. Stark, played the leading role.

reception

Reception of the contemporaries

  • Film-Kurier , No. 30 of February 4, 1921:

“In the processing of this film manuscript, that degree of culture can be recognized which, however deep the subject may be, includes its more valuable or at least artistically impeccable conception. This is something very essential to the level of our average films; if you can say that, they determine their mentality. In general, they make it possible to fix a basis from which something debatable, an art, can develop. "

  • Photo stage , No. 6 from February 5, 1921:

“Carola Toelle is always ladylike , acts as Florence through fine, nuanced play; Ludwig Hartau gives her husband stronger personal traits; Anton Edthofer performs the dual role of the Krafft brothers. The cast also has good names in the other roles. "

  • Ludwig Brauner wrote in Cinematograph No. 730 on February 13, 1921:

“You really can't complain about a lack of plot in this love and crook story. On the contrary, it is a great vortex of passionate encounters, temptations and threats, mysterious visits, break-ins and counterfeiting, a mess [...] that gets dizzy and even a demanding imagination can get its money. "

Reception of the present

  • “Those who know Fritz Lang will discover various motifs that will later recur: the dazzling surface and the chaos underneath; the difficulties with one's own identity; Real things are given for wrong and vice versa; an image triggers irritation. It's about costuming, disguise, fraud. The best thing is to look closely so that you don't let appearances fool you. "(Hans Helmut Prinzler)
  • “Fritz Lang's early stroke of genius 'Fighting Hearts' is one of those films by Lang that were considered lost and only rediscovered at the end of the 1980s. As a detective film and melodrama, it is now considered to be the key film that outlines Lang's complex late films. ”(Carsten-Stephan von Bothmer)
  • “A respected broker by day, Harry Yquem frequented disguised taverns at night and met with counterfeiters, thieves and fenders. When he thinks he recognizes a supposed lover of his wife there, an action-packed game of confusion takes its course. The fact that the apparently separate worlds of the righteous bourgeoisie, law enforcement officers and the criminal underground are ruled by amazingly similar structures and rules is already indicated as a fundamental political issue by Lang. "(Viennale)
  • “The young Godard once wrote that the exemplary situation at Lang is this: something is stolen from a normal person that was an indispensable part of his life. Now he has to leave his snail shell and take up the fight against the unfavorable fate. “It is not so much important whether he wins”, Lang said in interviews, “but THAT he takes up the fight.” “(Retrospective of the Viennale 2012)
  • "The ways of man in a universe of uncertainty, without divine support, without the consolation of home and family, without a social project for virtue or freedom", according to the film critic Georg Seeßlen, are the subject of Fritz Lang's films. Lang's pessimism, however, targets a social mechanism in which all binding forces are corrupted: love through neurosis, law through profiteers, art through the market. Fritz Lang's films are increasingly critical of the present. Fritz Lang does not look for the abyss in the soul but in the delusions and ambiguities of human coexistence. (Filmhauskino Nürnberg, retrospective 2010)

Reconstruction and re-performance

The early film Fritz Lang, long regarded as lost, was found in 1986 in the Cinemateca Brasileira in São Paulo by the film historian Walther Seidler, an employee of the Kinemathek in Berlin, together with Lang's Das Wandering Bild , where it came from the estate of a local distributor. After two years of restoration work, it was shown again at the Berlinale in 1988. The reconstructed copy is 1,618 meters long. The subtitles have been translated back from Portuguese.

Kämpfende Herzen was released in 2012 on a DVD with a playing time of 84 minutes (No. 760336) in New York by Kino Classics (catalog key 9042593, NTSC; 1.33: 1 aspect ratio; Dolby digital 2.0).

In the same year, the American company Kino Lorber released a 3-DVD collection under the title Fritz Lang: The Early Works with the early long films Vier um die Frau , Das Wandering Bild and Harakiri . As the title page announces, the edition is authorized and restored by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation and contains musical accompaniment by Aljoscha Zimmermann from the Munich Film Museum .

literature

  • Ofer Ashkenazi: Weimar Film and Modern Jewish Identity. Studies in European Culture and History. Verlag Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, ISBN 9781137010841 , 250 pages (English)
  • Babett Stach, Helmut Morsbach: German film posters: 1895 - 1945 (= Volume 3 of the film, television, sound archive series). Verlag Walter de Gruyter, 1992, ISBN 978-3111402147 , p. 153 (English)
  • Georges Sturm: The Circe, the Peacock and the Half-Blood. The films by Fritz Lang 1916–1921. (= International Film History, Volume 8). WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, Trier, Trier 2001, ISBN 978-3884764343 .
  • Viennale / Austrian Film Museum: Fritz Lang retrospective of the Viennale, 208 pp., 100 ills., Hardback. Marburg: Schüren-Verlag, October 2012. ISBN 978-3-89472-816-8 .
  • Friedrich von Zglinicki: The way of the film. History of cinematography and its predecessors. Berlin: Rembrandt Verlag, 1956.

items

Web links

References and comments

  1. ^ At that time Thea von Harbou was still married to Rudolf Klein-Rogge, from whom she separated in 1918; she married Lang, whom she had met in 1919 through her film script work, in August 1922. In addition: Jürgen Bräunlein, Heinz J. Galle and Brigitta B. Wagner
  2. ↑ cf. cinegraph [1] : "Deutsche Bioscope-GmbH, founded in 1897, is one of the oldest German film companies."
  3. ↑ cf. Aitam Bar-Sagi: "During WWI Huppertz worked as an opera singer and theater actor in Coburg, Freiburg and Breslau, and also wrote some music for the theater. In 1920 Huppertz moved to Berlin and began acting at the Nollendorfplatz Theater, and shortly afterwards met his future wife, Charlotte Lindig. During that period, Huppertz was also recorded singing two songs with other singers as promotion for the operetta "Verliebte Menschen," which was released in 1922 on a 78rpm record. " It concerns the Vox record 04023 (mx. 480-A) We must have a lighting (quartet) from "Verliebte Menschen" (operetta by Eduard Künneke): Charlotte Boerner [soprano], Ilse Marwenga, Eugen Rex, Gottfried Huppertz; Back (mx. 481-A) Uliza-Foxtrot (trio) from dto. By dto .: Charlotte Boerner [soprano], Helmuth Neugebauer, Gottfried Huppertz. However, the recording took place in 1922, the record was not published in the Vox catalog until 1924, cf. RELotz, online artist discography VOX, PDF at lotz-verlag.de
  4. ↑ cf. Birett, Quellen [2] B01223 Fighting Hearts 1921
  5. ↑ cf. Zglinicki pp. 437-438
  6. ↑ see IMDb / releaseinfo [3]
  7. ↑ Contents: With the help of the pastor, the fisherman's two daughters find their right husbands, cf. GECD # 26608 [4]
  8. ↑ he also received from the Berlin police authority under test no. 12.40 youth ban; It premiered on November 16, 1912 in Berlin, cf. filmportal.de [5]
  9. ^ Filmportal.de material on the film
  10. ^ Filmportal.de material on the film
  11. ↑ Fighting hearts at stummfilmkonzerte.de
  12. ↑ Fighting hearts at viennale.at
  13. ↑ bayern-online.de
  14. ↑ cf. When the pictures learned to wander In: Der Spiegel 35/1987 of August 24, 1987
  15. ↑ cf. Prinzler 1992 [6]
  16. ↑ cf. berlinale.de/archiv [7]
  17. ↑ cf. utoronto.ca [8]
  18. ↑ November 6, 2012, cf. kinolorber.com [9] : "Anticipating such films as DR. MABUSE: THE GAMBLER and SPIES, FOUR AROUND THE WOMAN involves a society woman who must navigate through a complex web of criminal and emotional intrigues."