Max and love
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Max and love |
| Original title | Le Duel de Max |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1913 |
| length | 63 or 46 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Max Linder |
| script | Max Linder |
| production | Pathé |
| occupation | |
| |
Max and the love (original Le Duel de Max ) is a French film comedy by Max Linder from 1913. It was a year before Sidney Drew A Florida Enchantment and Mack Sennett Tillie's troubled romance ( Tillie's Punctured Romance ), probably the first full-length comedy in film history.
action
One evening, Baron Fitz, who is in his castle with his beautiful daughter Lily and his nephew, tells his rangers to keep an eye out for poachers. At the same time, Max is on his way home. Tired of a long hunt, he wants to take a shortcut and unknowingly ends up on the baron's property. A hare [or a pheasant, contemporary reviews of the film contradict one another] runs into him and is killed by Max. One of the baron's gamekeepers thinks he's a poacher and goes in pursuit. Max escapes across fields and corridors, jumps over a wall, climbs over a railing and escapes into an open window.
He ended up in the room of the baron's daughter Lily. After the first shock, the girl realizes that she is not dealing with an ordinary burglar and wants to help him. While her father and the hunting warden search the castle, the baroness Max hides between her bed pillows and pretends to be asleep. Before Max retires through the window, the charmer asks his new acquaintance for a photo of himself. Since Lily has nothing else to hand, she gives Max a miniature painting with her portrait.
The next day, Max reads in the newspaper that Baron Fitz had offered a high reward for getting a miniature picture with a valuable frame that had inexplicably been lost from the castle. In Max, who has fallen in love with Lily, a plan germinates how to get in touch with the family. He writes the baron a letter in which he poses as an amateur detective with an excellent tracker dog. Then he orders his maid to get him a sheepdog and bring it to the castle.
The "detective" goes to the baron and extols the abilities of his noble animal in the highest tones. When the maid arrives, she brings a poor street dog with her who trembles with fear: Max hadn't given her enough money to buy it. The detective swallows his horror and unceremoniously pulls the dog to the place in the castle park where he previously buried the miniature picture. When the dog refuses to go any further, Max explains that the picture must be exactly there, triumphantly digs it up and is enthusiastically recorded in the castle.
But not only Max is planning to marry Lily, but also the jealous nephew of the baron, the girl's cousin. He suspects that something was wrong with the detective appearance and begins to watch Max. Finally, the two rivals clash violently. They want to decide their argument through a duel, which Lily knows how to prevent. As an alternative, the baron suggests a joke duel in which the two have to try to hit the cylinder off the opponent's head with a saber on horseback [or on a donkey, especially in the castle salon, reviews contradict each other again]. Max loses the duel, but doesn't think about giving up.
In a last attempt to outrun his rival, he writes a letter to Lily asking her to come to her father's park behind the orangery at 5 a.m. Another letter goes to her cousin, allegedly from his previous girlfriend, who wants to meet him one last time before he gets married. Max disguises himself as this lady and turtles around with the rival at the agreed place. When Lily arrives, he drops the mask and is able to expose his opponent as an unfounded philanderer. In this way he still manages to get the hand of the baroness.
After the marriage, the jealous cousin seeks retribution. To fool Max, he removes a mirror from its frame. [ Unfortunately, the contemporary reviews do not report anything precise about the exact sequence of the mirror dance that follows between the two rivals, only that Max is “foggy” - it is not clear from outside or personal influence - and in the mirror “strange visions” or “a terrible appearance "See.] But despite all the shameful maneuvers of his opponent, Max remains the winner at the end of the day.
Production notes
The film, directed by Linder as author, director and leading actor in personal union, premiered on July 25, 1913. It had a length of 1300 film meters, which corresponds to a duration of about 63 minutes at the frame rate of 18 frames per second that was usual at the time . The full version ran u. a. in the Netherlands, Australia, Brazil and, when it was revived in 1920, also in France, the country of origin. In England, the film was also released in full, but in two parts ( Max and His Rival and Max on the Road to Matrimony ).
In other countries, including Germany, the film was shown in a shortened version of 950 meters (approx. 46 minutes) due to copyright problems: In the early 1910s, the Schwartz brothers appeared in Germany with their 15-minute sketch The Broken Mirror ; Max Linder had attended its performance in the Berlin Wintergarten in December 1912 and incorporated a similar, longer scene into his film (see above). The two vaudeville artists then claimed copyright.
Although copies of Le Duel de Max exist to this day , surprisingly there have been no efforts to make this milestone in film history accessible to the public. So far, only excerpts from the documentaries L'homme au chapeau de soie (1983), Le Temps de Max (2000) and The Mystery of the King of Kinema (2014) have been made available.
In Linder's later feature film Seven Years Bad Luck from 1921, shot in the USA , there was a longer sequence about a broken mirror. Here, however, one of Max's servants is the culprit who wants to cover up the damage he has caused from his master.
Reviews
"This beautiful film is one of the funniest products of Maxen's inexhaustible imagination."
"The picture is a scream from start to finish."
"Max fairly surpasses himself in this excellent two-part comedy."
Web links
- Max and the love in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Background information on the film at maxlinder.de