Column X
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Column X |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1929 |
| length | 99 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Reinhold Schünzel |
| script |
Herbert Juttke , Georg C. Klaren |
| production | Reinhold Schünzel |
| music | Werner Schmidt-Boelcke |
| camera | Willy Goldberger |
| occupation | |
| |
Column X is a German silent film from the working class from 1929 by and with Reinhold Schünzel .
action
Column X is a gang of burglars who are currently making Berlin unsafe. Robert Sandt is their leader. He marries the distinctive stenographer Irene Mahler, who comes from a middle-class family and who has absolutely no idea of her husband's criminal activities. With this marriage, Sandt wants to finally draw a line and take the first step into a bourgeois existence. At both weddings Robert meets his old war comrade Weigert, who has since made a career in the police and has risen to the position of detective inspector. Images from both experiences at the front are awakened. To his great horror, Sandt had to learn that Weigert of all people was entrusted with the investigation into the break-ins committed by Column X.
Sandt uses the refreshed contact with Weigert to warn his cronies several times in good time. Again and again one escapes the bullying; on the street like through the manhole cover in Berlin's sewage system. But the gang members believe in view of Sandts excellent information situation that he must be a police spy. Thereupon they initiate Robert's wife Irene in the crimes of her husband and force her to participate in one of their crimes. A huge break in a bank is planned. Deeply shocked by the viciousness of his fellow thugs, Robert now actually whistles the entire column X to the police. He has her arrested by Inspector Weigert and is ready to go to prison for his crimes. He knows Irene will be waiting for him.
Production notes
Column X , occasionally also with the subtitle A detective drama from the Berlin underworld , was shot from May to June 1929 in the UFA studio in Berlin-Tempelhof , the exterior shots ( AVUS , Gedächtniskirche and Potsdamer Platz ) also in Berlin. The seven-act act with a length of 2,495 meters passed film censorship on June 26, 1929 and was banned from young people. The premiere took place on August 7, 1929 in the Berlin Marble House .
Cameraman Ludwig Lippert was involved on the first two days of shooting ; the material he recorded was not used. Gustav A. Mindszenty designed the buildings .
Set pieces from this film were found thirty years later in Alfred Weidenmann's crime film Boomerang with Hardy Krüger in a role based on Schünzel's character and Martin Held in a role based on Stahl-Nachbaur's inspector.
Reviews
“The underworld from the other side. Between the wedding criminal and the gentleman burglar there is the intermediate stage of the bourgeois crook. He feels safest in the cauldron of the big city, in the boiling places, in the noisy streets. Herbert Juttke and GC Klaren tried to find this crook. They wrote a manuscript that only had the ambition to be as entertaining as possible. There was also a tragic moment: when the unscrupulous love, he becomes gentle and sentimental. That is why it must break. (...) Purely cinematic ... this strip of images gives everything you can expect from it. A captivating milieu, well-grasped situations, a chain of exciting incidents and - an unfortunate ending ... The material was mastered by the director Reinhold Schünzel, who in turn proved his light hand for such colorful events, who remains entirely in the old school and acts according to proven recipes, but who knows what the audience wants and what is to be given to them. The actor Reinhold Schünzel, leader of the 'Column X', lively and effective as always, next to him the calm and personable Ernst Stahl-Nachbaur as detective inspector. "
“Reinhold Schünzel has changed in a certain sense. He has left the realm of the grotesque and has returned once again to acting, to the milieu piece with a Berlin twist. He calls his latest story a crime drama from the underworld. (...) Of course, love plays a major role. She turns Reinhold Schünzel into an honest and jealous person who finally turns himself in to the police in order to start a new life at the side of Grete Reinwald after serving his sentence. The detective who arrested him is his old comrade in the war, an extremely effective and dramatically gripping episode that Ernst Stahl-Nachbaur played skillfully and with routine. Reinhold Schünzel shows a varied, versatile, nice and amiable environment with all the thriftiness in the equipment, is proven as a director and actor, skillful, versatile as always and also has the experiment with Grete Reinwald, which was not seen in the flicker for a long time he entrusted with the female lead, successfully carried out. "
Herbert Juttke and GC Klaren call their manuscript 'crime drama from the underworld', and it turned into the Schünzel film, because Reinhold Schünzel finds here a bombastic role of infinite diversity, in which he can let all the stops of characterization play perfectly. (...) A moral film despite the milieu that Reinhold Schünzel, as director, reproduces like no other. He found energetic and supportive help from the architect Gustav A. Minzenti and above all from the cameraman Willi Goldberger. The result was pictures of special quality, just mentioning the drive in the car, the slump in the ceiling, the escape and pursuit through gullies, the scenes in the play club ..., the arrest and many other things. (...) The game: Reinhold Schünzel as a victim of fate; in it he shows his real artistry. Then Grete Reinwald. He couldn't have found a better partner. She finds unlimited tones of love, suffering, fear of the soul, the commitment with her whole self for the salvation of her husband. Then Ernst Stahl-Nachbaur: a detective as he should be; and yet, as long as it does not conflict with his duty, man, comrade, friend. (...) One is almost tempted to use the word Kammerspiel. "
“Our filmmakers live in a different world, in a different time. Your underworld film remains in the wake of the most banal cinema plot, the most conventional motifs: the chief of the column leads a double life. They bourgeoisie, they skewer the action: out of cowardice, out of lack of inventiveness. (...) Reinhold Schünzel, director and leading actor, follows the tendency of the authors. He mimes the modest "loyal soul", the good-natured honest man. He mimes obtrusive discreetness. What does he not put into his nuances! And how does he then try to hide and hide it? Nothing has a hand and foot here anymore. "
“Reinhold Schünzel's artistic goals are well known. He wants to give spiritual development. As with Hauptmann, his favorite subject is the fate of the milieu and the tragedy of the figure bound to it. Again and again he places people from the depths who are suddenly torn into a higher level by a woman ... (...) What a substance! But the authors Herbert Juttke and GC Klaren sell it into a detective novel with Stuart Webbs effects and safe break-ins à la Wittenbergplatz. Schünzel's films used to be more inward and factual. (...) Here, conversely, the tension is increased to the point of improbability that the detective inspector will attend the convoy leader's wedding. (…) Schünzel, the actor, makes up for a lot, and Schünzel, the director, also brings in money for others like Grete Reinwald, Otto Wallburg and Stahl-Nachbaur. (...) Of course, a tragedy does not come about, but a clean feature film with a humanly moving main character. "
“There would be no further talk of the pitiful attempt to copy the wonderful American underworld rogues if the decline of a previously extraordinary talent were not particularly evident in this film. Reinhold Schünzel plays the main role. A noble criminal who, because he loves a woman, wants to get out of the profession. Schünzel, one of the sharpest and clearest batch players in German film around 1919 ... is now completely washed out. Every movement is mannered. - The movie business spoiled him. This excellent charter gamer of yore is one of today's intolerable movie stars. Otherwise, nothing can be said about this film, which in mendacity and inconsistency far surpasses all stirring pieces of a similar kind. "
Web links
- Column X in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Column X at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ^ The film , August 10, 1929
- ↑ Der Kinematograph , No. 183, August 8, 1929
- ↑ Lichtbild-Bühne , No. 188, August 8, 1929
- ↑ Berliner Börsen-Courier , No. 7, January 5, 1930
- ^ Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , Berlin, No. 368, August 10, 1929
- ↑ Berlin am Morgen , No. 122, August 9, 1929