Flirtation (1913)

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Movie
German title flirtation
Original title Elskovsleg
Country of production Denmark
original language Danish
Publishing year 1913
length 42 minutes
Rod
Director August Blom
Holger-Madsen
script Arthur Schnitzler based
on his play of the same name from 1895
production Ole Olsen for Nordisk Film , Copenhagen
camera Johan Ankerstjerne
Marius Clausen
occupation

as well as Carl Alstrup , Oluf Billesborg , Ingeborg Olsen , Birger von Cotta-Schønberg , Maja Bjerre-Lind

Liebelei is a Danish silent film from 1913 by August Blom and Holger-Madsen based on the play of the same name by Arthur Schnitzler . Nordisk star Valdemar Psilander played one of the four main roles.

action

Lieutenant Fritz Lobheimer has a relationship with a married woman. A little later he meets the girl Christine and they both fall in love. One day the betrayed husband discovers evidence of his wife's infidelity. To gain satisfaction and restore his honor, he challenges the young man to a duel. Lobheimer's best friend Theo Kaiser tries in vain to prevent the duel. Before he can intervene, his friend Fritz dies.

In individual cases, the two directors took the staging freedom to contribute their own ideas. An example: "The duel scene (although it was not appreciated by Schnitzler) is realized through an effective iconographic solution that dynamizes the space through a triangular shape."

Emergence

In 1912 the Danish production company Nordisk got in touch with Schnitzler to negotiate the conditions for a film adaptation of his drama Liebelei . The Austrian writer himself was to write the script. In his diary, Schnitzler noted the beginning of work on "Film Liebelei" on September 26, 1912. On January 3, 1913, Schnitzler sent the first version of the manuscript to the Nordisk in Copenhagen. In the next two months he worked out the script in more detail.

For his screenplay, Schnitzler resorted to the plans for a “folk play” as he had originally planned Liebelei : Unlike in the drama premiered in 1895, the film was about getting to know Fritz and Christine in a dance school, Fritz with his lover and the duel show explicitly. Schnitzler also extended the ending compared to the stage version, suggesting two variants: Either Christine should fall down on Fritz's coffin or - this variant he preferred - arrive too late for the funeral service, walk from Fritz 'apartment to the cemetery and there after the funeral to collapse at the still open grave. The first variant was chosen for the film.

Background, worth knowing

Liebelei was not, as is regularly read, first performed in Denmark on January 22, 1914. A special performance in a small group, to which Schnitzler also belonged, took place on December 20, 1913 (presumably in Austria). In early March 1914, Liebelei was officially shown for the first time in Germany.

Liebelei was considered to be the second ambitious Danish literary film adaptation of Nordisk in 1913 , alongside the large-scale film Atlantis, which was filmed and premiered at almost the same time. In terms of financial and creative resources, however, this film was much more modest than Blom's Hauptmann film.

Carl Schenstrøm , the long and skinny half of the later comedian duo Pat & Patachon, plays a small but not unimportant role as Death .

Schnitzler himself commented on the film several times. His diary entry from December 20, 1913 has come down to us. There he speaks of “In total moderate enjoyment”. In a letter to Nordisk dated December 23, 1913, his overall judgment was more gracious: “… quite satisfactory, in some moments even very good.” He criticized, however, expressis verbis the “ghostly apparitions”, the duel scene and, as he put it, the "Zipelzapelige [n] street run" Christines. Schnitzler saw the performance as "largely excellent", "especially on the part of the gentlemen". On the other hand, Arthur Schnitzler complained massively about the accompanying text in the program booklet and distanced himself from it.

The film is preserved as a 15-minute fragment.

Liebelei stands for the attempt to raise the quality of cinematography, which up until this time was hardly regarded as a simple fairground amusement, with the auteur film and thus to meet a gradually emancipating public taste. In 1913, ambitious literary adaptations were made in various Central European countries: in Denmark, in addition to Liebelei , an adaptation of Gerhart Hauptmann's Atlantis was made, in Germany the literary works The Other and The Student of Prague were launched . In Austria-Hungary, the theater star Alexander Girardi played a selection of his greatest theatrical successes in his country's first large-scale production, The Millionaire Uncle .

Reviews

In Germany and Austria-Hungary it was noted that the Danish Liebelei film version of this original Viennese material could not hide its Scandinavian background. Schnitzler himself noted in his diary on December 20, 1913: “Copenhagen is the scene”.

All in all, the film was received controversially, but not negatively. In 1914 the Vossische Zeitung praised the visual illustration of the production, but criticized the inability of the makers to understand the complexity of the Schnitzler template and to implement it on film. Bild & Film even scoffed: "The sentimental female audience, however, will perhaps put up with the film and wipe a tear from their eyes with emotion ...". Other sheets such as Der Tag and Lichtbild-Bühne , on the other hand, saw “new poetry” in the work.

Three more individual reviews:

In Der Tag you can read: "Wherever the nature shots from the area around Vienna and the Prater had a say, there were even rich, mood-awakening effects that could please the eye."

The cinematographer wrote: "You have hardly seen a film that so vividly reproduces your own resigned mood of the Viennese world of enjoyment as this 'love affair'."

The Neue Freie Presse stated: “This work (...) has been carried out with all artistic and technical means that cinematographic experience has gained so far. The reproduction of the petty bourgeois milieu with the old musician and the elegant bachelor's house with Fritz, pretty street pictures and nature shots, the stylish duel, last but not least the perfect representation work together to create a work of art worth seeing. "

literature

  • Leonardo Quaresima: Vienna - Copenhagen - Vienna. Schnitzler's "Liebelei" and the Nordisk. In: Hans-Michael Bock, Wolfgang Jacobsen and Jörg Schöning (eds.), Manfred Behn (ed.): Black dream and white slave. German-Danish film relations 1910–1930. A CineGraph book. Munich 1994, pp. 87-104.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Leonardo Quaresima: Vienna - Copenhagen - Vienna. Schnitzler's "Liebelei" and the Nordisk. P. 97.
  2. ↑ Arthur Schnitzler: Liebelei. Historical-critical edition. Edited by Peter Michael Braunwarth, Gerhard Hubmann and Isabella Schwentner. De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014, p. 1117.
  3. ↑ cf. Quaresima, p. 88.
  4. ↑ Arthur Schnitzler: Liebelei. Historical-critical edition, p. 1117 f.
  5. ↑ Arthur Schnitzler: Liebelei. Historical-critical edition, p. 1147.
  6. ↑ Elskovsleg film program , available on the website of the Danish Film Institute: http://www.dfi.dk/ factaomfilm/ film /da/15894.aspx?id=15894
  7. ↑ Quaresima, p. 102.
  8. ↑ cf. Heinz B. Heller: literary intelligence and film. On the change in aesthetic theory and practice under the impression of the film 1910-1930 in Germany. Tübingen 1985, pp. 80-98.
  9. ↑ Quaresima, p. 99.
  10. ↑ Quaresima, p. 101.
  11. ^ The day of March 3, 1914
  12. ↑ Der Kinematograph, No. 426, 1915
  13. ^ Neue Freie Presse of February 15, 1914, p. 26 ( digitized version ).