Manolescu (1929)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Manolescu / Manolescu - the king of impostors |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1929 |
| length | approx. 124 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Viktor Tourjansky |
| script |
Robert Liebmann based on a novella by Hans Szekely |
| production | Gregor Rabinowitsch and Noé Bloch for UFA |
| music | Willy Schmidt-Gentner |
| camera | Carl Hoffmann |
| occupation | |
| |
Manolescu , also known under the long form Manolescu - the king of impostors , is a German silent film from 1929 by Viktor Tourjansky . The title role is played by Ivan Mosjukin .
action
Paris one early morning. The elegant bon vivant and impostor, hotel thief and heartbreaker Georges Manolescu leaves the French capital. Once again he cheated the hotel bill because he's as good as broke. He travels to Monte Carlo by train. During this trip he gets to know the blonde, seductive Cleo, who like him is on the run. However, she tries to escape from her gruff lover Jack, a bear of man. As soon as he arrived in Monte Carlo, Cleo disappeared. He meets her again in a hotel. Manolescu checks into the luxury inn under a false name and gains unauthorized access to her suite, which is easy for a burglar and thief. At this point, the beautiful woman is sitting in the tub and taking a bath, not knowing that a stranger is in her apartment. When Cleo sees Manolescu, she plays the indignant. But soon the two get close to each other.
There is a knock on the door of the room, Cleo receives another unexpected and in this case highly undesirable visitor: Jack is standing in front of her with flowers in hand and wants to go into the hotel room. To avoid a confrontation and to follow Cleo's instructions, Manolescu hides on her hotel room balcony. Jack storms Cleo with his own coarse manner, while Manolescu takes the opportunity in the fresh air to peek from the balcony into the room of a lady who is just packing away her jewelry.
Jack can persuade Cleo to have dinner with her. When the brawny guy wants to pick them up, he catches Cleo and Manolescu in a situation that gives rise to misunderstandings. Immediately Jack rushes to Manolescu and takes out a revolver. Only when the hotel staff intervenes can the situation be brought under control. Jack is arrested because of his assault and the illegal possession of weapons and is therefore withdrawn from circulation for a long time. Manolescu and Cleo decide to stay together from now on. Cleo's morals are as underdeveloped as those of her new lover. Both keep their heads above water with the distribution of counterfeit money. Cleo doesn't expect anything other than a life of luxury. During a visit to the opera, they use a trick to exchange a lady's pearl necklace for a cheap imitation. Now Manolescu is making headlines in the newspapers thanks to his thieving tours and windy deals. His raids caused a sensation, he was put out to be searched. It is only thanks to his skills in disguise that he can always outsmart state authority and evade arrest.
Back in Paris, Cleo is discovered by a friend of Jack's. He immediately runs to the crook's ex-lover who is at large, whereupon he forges dark plans to get revenge on Cleo. Cleo and Manolescu begin to argue, since the gentleman manganove has had enough of this life on the run and the constant masquerades. Cleo, however, is still looking for the great adventure and calls him a coward. After searching for a while, Jack found Cleo in a hotel room. He would like to strangle the unfaithful instantly, but she takes all the wind out of his sails, hugs and kisses him stormily. Jack's anger quickly dissipates, he hopes for a new beginning for both relationships. When Manolescu unexpectedly enters, the impulsive Jack knocks him down. Badly injured in the head, Manolescu wakes up in the hospital. There he has a wild nightmare in which he is dragged to court for all of his offenses.
The dark-haired nurse Jeanette, the absolute opposite of the sophisticated and unscrupulous blonde Cleo, takes care of him with loving devotion. She now spends a lot of time with Manolescu. But the police have not slept in the meantime, a hot lead leads directly to him. Cleo visits the crook at the bedside. Jeanette, who immediately senses that Cleo wants to regain her power over her patient, leaves the room. Cleo asks Manolescu's forgiveness and warns of the threat of imminent arrest. Despite his wrong name and his disguises, a mug shot published in the newspaper may soon reveal him. Manolescu is angry and rumbles off. He blames Cleo for this devastating development. In view of the noise, Jeanette returns to the hospital room and asks Cleo to leave, as her patient absolutely needs quiet. The hospital doctor treating him sends Manolescu to the Swiss mountains for a cure. Sister Jeanette will accompany him.
The cure becomes a love journey, Manolescu and Jeanette become a briefly happy couple. Then Cleo suddenly appears unexpectedly. An ugly jealousy scene ensues. Manolescu rejects Cleo. But she refuses to accept that and seeks revenge by betraying her ex-lover to the police. While Manolescu and Jeanette celebrate the New Year together, two plainclothes police officers knock on the door. Out of consideration for the still ignorant Jeanette, Manolescu asks the gentlemen to postpone his arrest until after midnight. He feeds the nurse, who looks at him questioningly, with the white lie that the two men, who have now become "guests" of the New Year's Eve party, got lost in the snow. Meanwhile, Cleo remorsefully returns to Jack. When he learns from her that she had betrayed Manolescu to the police, the latter becomes very quiet and sends Cleo away. During the final dance, Jeanette notices the police badge peeking out from under the jacket of one of the two "guests". Now she understands the connections. New Year's morning has come and Georges has to follow the men in civilian clothes. Jeanette remains motionless, she is as shocked as she is deeply sad. The policemen drive away in a sleigh with Manolescu in custody through the winter night. Jeanette runs out into the cold and calls after her lover that she will wait for him.
Production notes and trivia
Manolescu was made in the first half of 1929 in the UFA studios in Neubabelsberg with external locations in St. Moritz and Monte-Carlo . The film was censored on July 23, 1929 and was banned from young people. The first performance of the nine-act act with a considerable length of 3,116 meters took place on August 22, 1929 in the Gloria-Palast in Berlin.
Robert Herlth and Walter Röhrig created the film structures, René Hubert was responsible for the costumes.
Brigitte Helm , tired of the eternal vamping roles, complained against the UFA in view of her new femme-fatale cast, including a nude scene in the hot tub . In September 1929 there was a lawsuit in which the Helm complained:
"In tears I asked Ufa not to always turn out to be a vamp - I don't always want to be a vamp - in Nina Petrovna I also showed that I can do other things. When I got the role in Manolescu , I gave it back because it contained indecent scenes that I didn't want to play. The role was then reworked but the indecent scenes remained anyway. They were then given by another actress. "
Real background
Manolescu is loosely based on the life story of the Romanian of the same name, who made the Berlin hotel scene unsafe as a thief in the first decade of the 20th century. He was tried a little later, and the impostor ended up in an asylum. In 1905, when he was released from prison, the memoirs of Georges Manolescu, " A Prince of Thieves " and " Failed. From the Soul of a Criminal " appeared, which became bestsellers.
Reviews
“A tried and tested director, Tourjansky, Brigitte Helm and Dita Parlo, blond and black, the two really big sex appeal numbers in German films; Ivan Mosjukin in the title role and a lot of good casual players, and finally Heinrich George, whom you just have to love on stage and in the film ... The auspices under which this film started could hardly have been better. It was a serious disappointment. With unbelievable persistence, especially the script passed every reasonably interesting possibility. (...) A single scene holds you in suspense, a feverish dream of the hero, a court hearing in which the black appears white and the white appears black: symbolism brought to suggestive expression by a purely photographic trick; these pictures were taken in negative. "
“The story of the international player, adventurer and hotel thief Manolescu is brilliant material for the film. Here he was completely spanked. You remember seeing a Manolescu film with Conrad Veidt years ago. It was much better, more effective and more amusing than this latest, albeit ingeniously photographed product from Ufa. You don't even know what it is about. Manolescu is acting like a stupid boy. Performances are arranged as if in outdated theater fashion. There is no tempo, the editing is conventional and boring. Brigitte Helm struts through the picture as a Garbo replacement, as a great American vamp. Mosjukin as Manolescu is colorless, Heinrich George is only sometimes deeply human. One more superfluous film. "
“One expects the report about the working day of an impostor, details about his lifestyle, his milieu, his craft. That would have interested. What follows is a novel, an ordinary impostor novel. Trickery out of a passion for a woman, not out of adventure and not out of passion for business. The film is still wonderful material. In the milieus: luxury trains, luxury hotels, Monte Carlo, Riviera; the intoxication of the big cities, their beauty and their confusing life: Paris, London, Berlin. The camera constantly plays around new images of an existence in the middle of the great life, as they are dreamed of. But it whirls by, never holds, is never determined. Interesting actors remain. Mosjukin is personable, interested in people ... but he always stays sympathetic, he does not reveal himself. Heinrich George is in movements and in the transitions ... often wonderful, but a figure without fate and without development. Brigitte Helm is not provocative, seductive and playful, but tart, pure, quiet and slightly self-confused. "
Web links
- Manolescu in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Manolescu at filmportal.de (with brief content and photo gallery)
Individual evidence
- ↑ cit. based on Der Deutsche, Berlin, No. 223, of September 22, 1929