Clothes make the man (1940)

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Movie
Original title Clothes make the man
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1940
length 91 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Helmut Käutner
script Helmut Käutner
production Heinz Rühmann and Hans Tost for Terra Film
music Bernhard Eichhorn
camera Ewald Daub
cut Helmuth Schönnenbeck
occupation

Clothes make people is a German film by Helmut Käutner from 1940 based on motifs from the novella Clothes Make People by Gottfried Keller (first published in 1874). The main roles are played by Heinz Rühmann and Hertha Feiler .

action

The film takes place in Switzerland of the Biedermeier . The journeyman Wenzel, who works for a master tailor in Seldwyla, ponders his miserable existence. In a dream he sees his rise to a well-dressed gentleman of respect. He then adapts the tailcoat commissioned by the mayor of Seldwyla to his own height. He is therefore thrown out by his master. Instead of outstanding wages, Wenzel kept his tailcoat and wore it on his hike to the next apprenticeship. He meets the puppeteer Christoffel, who allows himself the fun of introducing Wenzel, wearing tailcoat, to a passing coachman as a count traveling incognito: The "count" is constantly denying his identity, but now has to be taken to the nearby town of Goldach. Wenzel is complimented in the carriage and begins the journey with a seemingly new identity. When the coachman has to stop because another coach has broken down in the street, Wenzel meets the pretty Fraulein Nettchen for the first time, the daughter of the wealthy cloth merchant and councilor of Goldach. Wenzel lets Nettchen get in. When he arrives in Goldach, he is received with all honors, because his elegant clothes make him a "Count from Russian". Reluctantly, but lacking funds of his own, Wenzel accepts the new role, which due to his clothing initially allows him to get along without cash.

Wenzel wins a large sum of money by playing with the local royalty. Above all, however, he finds Nettchen's affection, who, like everyone else, considers him a count. Only the Goldach master tailor Melcher Böhni, who has been engaged to Nettchen for a long time, suspects the wrong identity of Wenzel or his real profession based on small observations.

The matter becomes more complicated when a nobleman, the Russian Count Alexeij Stroganoff, actually arrives in Goldach, albeit incognito. Stroganoff wants to use his incognito to check a pen friend who is staying in Goldach, the Fraulein von Serafin, for her true affection, which is not guided by aristocratic outward appearances. The Miss von Serafin, however, now considers the alleged Count Wenzel to be her date partner. The real count quickly recognizes the situation. He pretends to be Count Wenzel's servant and publicly disguises Wenzel's efforts to expose his own false role. As his supposed servant, he equips Wenzel with money, in this way he can control the events and observe whether the Fraulein von Serafin notices the difference between the supposed (tuxedo) nobility and Stroganoff's “real nobility”.

The situation is revealed in the Goldach Carnival. Wenzel is exposed as a tailor by citizens of Seldwyla in a theatrical play arranged by Melcher Böni. He flees into the forest, where he wants to end his life. Nettchen, who loves him even if he's not a count, finds him in time.

Production notes

The film was shot from March 28, 1940 to July 1940 on the Barrandov open-air site and in the Prague studio as well as in the Babelsberg film studio and in the UFA -Atelier Berlin-Tempelhof. Heinz Rühmann, who was also involved in the production management, sings the song A tailor who must wander in the film , Hertha Feiler sings Taratata-iti . The film premiered on September 16, 1940 in Konstanz, and it was premiered in Berlin on October 23, 1940 in the Marmorhaus . It was first broadcast on television on January 29, 1957 by ARD .

classification

Wenzel embodies a type of anti-hero, especially in contrast to the martial models of the Nazi era. This, in turn, is no reason to ascribe emphatically resistant motifs to the film.

In the Biedermeier milieu of the film plot, Käutner tried out elements of a sometimes magical image and scene management, which in French film of the thirties are assigned to poetic realism . Such elements will shape Käutner's film language into the post-war period.

Reviews

“With great attention to detail, atmospheric and brilliant, Helmut Käutner translated the mood of Gottfried Keller's novella into images suitable for film. The ironic wisdom and malicious allusions of Keller were complemented by tragicomic accents. "

- Thomas Kramer in Reclam's Lexicon of German Films , Stuttgart, 1995

"An excellent comedy in delicately spun romance and rich milieu painting with ironic wisdom."

- Lexicon of international film

See also

literature

swell

  1. ↑ a b Käuntner portrait of Rudolf Worschech on the film portal (PDF file; 164 kB), text reproduction of his article See Käutner! Portrait of an underrated from epd film from March 1st, 2008.
  2. ↑ Clothes make the man murnau-stiftung.de

Web links