Corpse 427
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | In the swamp of the big city |
| Original title | Corpse 427 |
| Country of production | Austria |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1920 |
| length | 67 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Ludwig Hamburger |
| script | Ludwig Hamburger |
| camera | Franz Bigner |
| occupation | |
Leichnam 427 is an Austrian film drama from 1920. In the German Reich it was supposed to run under the title Im Sumpfe der Großstadt . This was prevented by the censorship through a ban.
action
An elderly gentleman referred to as Mr. Harrison has a foster daughter Mara, as an intertitle noted, “lovely girl often seized with wild passion”, who begins a love affair with the reckless son of this Mister Harrison.
You can see the girl in her bedroom in her nightgown receiving the half-dressed lover. The son of the house leaves the parents' apartment with the girl, the girl soon complains that her lover wants to bring her to "shame". Occasionally in an argument he beats the girl and flees over the wall of the house because he believes he has killed the girl. The girl, pursued by a sinister person, has a clinic; it turns out that the doctor treating her is the older son of her foster father. When leaving the clinic, the previously mentioned scary person approaches her again, whom she rejects again.
Meanwhile, on his flight, the reckless son has reached his older brother, the doctor, to whom he confesses the alleged killing. The doctor dictates a letter to the brother, according to which she has voluntarily put an end to his life, quickly packs his bags, promises the brother a passport and deports him abroad. A newspaper note tells me that the reckless son was found dead on a railway embankment. The doctor visits Mara, who is lying in bed, who confesses her love for him and asks him to help her, but the doctor refuses. Desperation now puts Mara into the arms of the, insters [monster?], As an intertitle noted. In a dark street, Mara meets the creepy person who persuades her to go into a brothel. He even leads the girl of the owner of this brothel. After a thorough examination, the girl is obliged to maintain silence and is provided with prostitutes' clothes, which she receives with pleasure. The man is rewarded for his coupler services. You can see the inmates of the brothel in tails dancing, these gentlemen sitting on their laps and drinking champagne. Mara appears in this circle at first with the expression of displeasure and horror. An elderly dodgy person approaches her, drinks with her and proposes to her.
Mister Harrison receives news from the police that his son has died and goes to his older son, the doctor, who leads him to the morgue, where the father sinks in reverence in front of a corpse clad in canvas. When the face of the dead person is shown, he realizes that the dead person is not his son, but learns that his son's papers have been found on the dead person's body. The excited father asks for information at the police headquarters. In the meantime, the father has found out where his foster daughter Mara is, meets the weird person by chance and receives details of her whereabouts from him.
The creepy person immediately goes to Mara, who is sitting in a lavishly furnished room, tells her that she is wanted and Mara leaves the house. The doctor, who is very excited about the events, is asked by his superior to take a vacation to relax. The father is sent to the house by the police and should receive further information.
The doctor's superior suspects that the doctor has committed a serious crime. The doctor confesses to Mara that it was he who put his brother's papers in the dead man's files. He could no longer be helped. Mara receives a visit from the eerie person in the brothel, whom she receives in a friendly manner. Mara sees from the newspaper he gives her that the police have discovered that the dead man is not her former lover.
In the meantime the creepy person has found an image on the table in the living room that is his own image of youth. It turns out that Mara is the daughter of the creepy man and he gets excited because he has sold his own daughter to a brothel. In return, Mara asks to save the doctor, which the father also promises. The doctor is writing a suicide note and is preparing to drink from a poison bottle.
The arrest warrant against him is on its way when five people dressed as robbers break into the doctor's room, tie him up and lower him out of the window. This kidnapping took place at the instigation of Mara's father. The police have meanwhile broken into the doctor's apartment, find the apartment empty, but look out the window as the tied doctor is being dragged into a car. The police are following this car in another car. The tied doctor is housed in a shed, where Mara finds himself immediately afterwards, who removes him from his chains and, by repeatedly confessing her love, calls on him to flee abroad with her. Mara's father has paid his accomplices and, repentant, jumps into the water, drowning. Mara and the doctor decide to go abroad to atone for their crimes together.
Five years later, they became the owners of a farm and Mara became the mother of one child when, in the absence of her husband, a depraved person entered the apartment whom she received as a beggar. It turns out that this depraved person, her former lover, is the younger brother of her lover, who immediately tries to hug her and is then taken out of the house. In order to get revenge, he sets fire to a house next to the farm, the doctor comes in at the last minute and the younger brother is carried out of the burning house as a dying man. Doctor and wife stand next to the dead man who wanted to repay good for evil, but, as the last title shows, fate has overtaken him.
background
The film was produced by Meteor-Film Wien and probably premiered in 1920. It had four files or five files at 1,373 meters, about 67 minutes. It is also not entirely clear who the director was. According to the film portal, it was either Wolfgang Neff or Ludwig Hamburger . According to the New German Biography , it could also have been Richard Oswald .
In the German Reich it was submitted to the censorship authorities for assessment on April 22, 1921 with the new title “Im Sumpfe der Großstadt”. The report states that the film was already shortened and changed on this date. This suggests that the film was previously censored and banned. These changes were not decisive for the lifting of the ban, so the ban remained. After a complaint on April 28, 1921, the film was submitted again this time to the film inspection agency. Carl Bulcke then wrote an extensive table of contents (see above) and came to the result:
“This table of contents makes it easy to see that this strip of images is a so-called trash film, a mixture of sensationalism, untruthfulness, eroticism and sentimentality, which is only calculated to address the lower instincts of the uneducated section of the population and these instincts to influence demoralizing and brutalizing. It can go unmentioned that the strip of images contains a whole series of sequences of images which, even as parts, would be objectionable in their demoralizing effect. The film as a whole had to be refused admission because in its entirety, precisely because of this filthy content, it is suitable to exert a demoralizing and brutalizing effect on the population. "
The complaint was therefore rejected, the ban on the public showing of the picture strip in the German Reich remained in place.
literature
- Walter Fritz: The Austrian feature films of the silent film era (1907–1930). On behalf of the Austrian Film Archive, hrgg. from the Society for Film Studies. Year 1920, No. 519. Vienna 1967.
Web links
- Leichnam 427 at The German Early Cinema Database
- Corpse 427 at filmportal.de
- Body 427 in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Walter Fritz : The Austrian Feature Films of the Silent Film Era, No. 519
- ↑ Leichnam 427 at The German Early Cinema Database
- ↑ a b corpse 427 at filmportal.de
- ↑ Film length calculator , frame rate : 18
- ^ Censorship decisions in the archive of the German Film Institute
- ↑ Wolfgang Jacobsen: Oswald, Richard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 637 f. ( Digitized version ).
- ↑ Censorship decision of May 12, 1921
Remarks
- ^ Walter Fritz : The Austrian Feature Films of the Silent Film Era, No. 519. German sources occasionally also cite Wolfgang Neff and Richard Oswald . However, since both directors were working intensively in Germany at the time, this assignment is rather unlikely.
- ↑ The detailed table of contents comes from Carl Bulcke (1875–1936), writer and since 1920 chairman of the Film-Oberprüfstelle and is taken verbatim from his censorship report of May 12, 1921.