Melody of the World (1929)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Melody of the world |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1929 |
| length | 48 (today's version) minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Walter Ruttmann |
| script | Walter Ruttmann |
| production | Tonbild-Syndikat AG (Tobis), Berlin |
| music | Wolfgang Zeller |
| camera |
Reimar Kuntze Paul Holzki Wilhelm Lehne Rudolph Rathmann |
| cut | Walter Ruttmann Erna Hölzel |
| occupation | |
| |
Melodie der Welt is a German cinema film from 1929. The documentary, which was assembled in autumn 1928 by the director Walter Ruttmann mainly from recordings of a film expedition that took them to three continents, was commissioned by HAPAG and was (technically) made by Tobis made.
Concept and content
The four-act film thrives on the rhythm of Wolfgang Zeller's music and Ruttmann's idiosyncratic, sometimes very fast editing technique. The film, which has no actual plot, begins with the awakening of a sailor and his wife. She accompanies him early in the morning to the port of Hamburg, where the sailor goes on board. She looks longingly after him. Then he goes out into the big wide world on the HAPAG ship “ Resolute ”.
In the following 45 minutes, Ruttmann tries “to depict the sum of human activities and achievements using images from the countries of the world that the financing shipping company visited.” The areas of customs and traditions, working worlds and religion, leisure activities and sport, life worlds are discussed and local peculiarities, eating habits and musical traditions but also the horrors of war are captured in pictures and, despite all the differences between the inhabitants on the continents visited, the connections between people from different cultures are highlighted through intelligent cut-counter-cut arrangements.
Production notes
The recordings for Melodie der Welt were made in autumn 1928 in Europe (including Hamburg, Berlin, Venice, Rome, London), Arabia (today's Libya, Syria and Saudi Arabia) and Asia. The censors released the film on March 11, 1929 for young people. The world premiere was on March 12, 1929 in the Berlin Mozart Hall. This makes Melodie der Welt the first full-length cinema sound film in Germany. Karlheinz Wendtland wrote that the film had been recognized as such and heralded an interesting and future-oriented beginning of the German sound film. The version received today is 48 minutes long.
Guido Bagier , who was also responsible for the sound, was responsible for the sound production management on behalf of Tobis. HAPAG provided Heinrich Mutzenbecher with him , who was also the head of the actual film expedition. Ruttmann himself did not take part in the expedition; his task was rather to cut the exposed material into a film. Only the beginning and end of the film were provided with the original sound, everything else was dubbed in the studio. The press emphasized, however, that “the sound film was specially developed and brought to bloom in Germany”. As a side effect, the showing of the film had "a strengthening of the national consciousness, which was badly damaged by the Versailles Treaty," explained Karlheinz Wendtland.
The few buildings at the beginning of the film were created by Erich Czerwonski .
A somewhat surreal-looking scene in the 36th minute of the film shows George Bernard Shaw , who meets the almost 50 years younger film critic and filmmaker Ivor Montagu and exchanges a few irrelevant words with him.
The contributor Grace Chiang (born 1906) was the wife of the film architect Ernő Metzner .
On March 19, 1929, the film received the rating “artistic and popular education”.
Reviews
By Siegfried Kracauer represented negative attitude to the film was not shared by the vast majority of contemporary critics. For example, Hans Wollenberg wrote about Ruttmann in the Lichtbild-Bühne : “His film Melodie der Welt goes far beyond his previous achievements. Incomparable what he brings in the editing of the pictures, in the construction of lively, downright dramatic complexes. "
Kracauer's conclusion on the film was as follows: “His rhythmic montages not only encompassed the most varied of visual impressions, but also all kinds of tones, noises and melodies. Thematically, this montage wanted to encompass nothing less than the entirety of human activities and achievements: buildings, typical expressions of love, means of transport, religious cults, the armies of the world, methods of warfare, sport, entertainment, etc. ... The melody of the world was empty because Ruttmann, in his eagerness to capture the sounds of the whole world, lost his hearing for the special sound of every single melody. ”Wendtland wrote in his book that the audience was still enthusiastic.
“We all experienced a historic moment yesterday in the Mozart Hall. When the captain of the Hapag steamer 'Resolute' gives the command to depart, the chains creak ... it wasn't just the experts who were entranced by the new, surprising thing ... this is where the new possibilities of the sound film lie - and this is the hour of birth for Germany ( ...) The Melody of the World is not a hundred percent sound film, on the contrary, the sound effects are very few and far between. But when Ruttmann uses them, they have the greatest effect. The screaming of a crowd, the noise of machines, has an extraordinary effect. Otherwise I limit the tonal character of the film to the fact that the accompanying music is photographed throughout. "
“You have to make a distinction between this work as an image strip and as a sound film. The 'Melody of the World', the first full-length sound film? The new Ruttmann film is not a sound film at all. (...) He does not give areas and people one after the other, he does not let the journey run in its time sequence. Ruttmann arranges and uses the image material according to different aspects. It shows people doing the same job across countries. (...) The music is in the images, not in the sound. Because this 'sound film' did not always record the noises, the languages, the dance, church and market music of the peoples of the world, but rather it uses specially composed music by Wolfgang Zeller. (...) So this wonderful picture music film remains a deaf sound film. Picture melody of the world, not voices of the peoples. Neither a scientific work (for the archives) nor a pure work of art. "
“Walther Ruttmann, a clear-sighted, very present person, first tracked down the melody of the daily, the visible, the real in the picture. (The 'Berlin' film.) Now we learned that it was also in the audible experience of this world, in its festival and weekday sound, in its dance, prayer and death tones, in the thousandfold language of the lifeless, in China, Japan , Germany, France, found the opposing motifs of a melody bound in the higher. One has been disappointed. At first, Ruttmann's audio-visual report gives the ear very little. You can hear the siren of a steamer howling, machines stamping, the spectators of a sporting event screaming, an exotic dancer clattering his shoes. The rest is Wolfgang Zeller's accompanying music recorded as a sound image, reproduced very mediocre, with little expression, a little tinny, often disturbing. This automatic noise arouses the longing for a lively, co-experiencing, clear orchestra, as was the case with the 'Storm over Asia' performance. Ruttmann nowhere shows the typical things in his montage. He works exclusively, without any change in the technical idea [...] "
“A triumph for silent film, a triumph for modern, artistic film reporting and a triumph for Walther Ruttmann, who outgrew his 'Berlin' film here. Ruttmann drove around the world in the Hapag steamer Resolute, and what he found interesting he caught with the camera. So an 'interesting' travel film? No, something fundamentally different, namely a sociological cross-section through the peoples. How is it done? Very simple: through skillful editing and with the help of a general political and social attitude that sees things that are going on in the world from a special point of view. (...) It is as primitive as it is ingenious, and we still do not fully understand that we are sitting in a theater room in front of a piece of canvas and at the same time flying through the world as fast as the rays of light. Suddenly we are no longer interested in geography, our senses (not just our eyes) sneak around people, faces, gestures, customs. Suddenly we are interested in comparisons: how do you do it here, how do you do it there? "
“But the impressions are far greater than in March 1929 in the film 'Die Melodie der Welt' (director: W. Ruttmann) on the screen when the captain of the 'Resolute' gave the command to depart with the correct language than the chains correctly creak, howl the sirens and the machines pound. Suddenly there was certainty in everyone's mind: this is where the new possibilities of the sound film are hinted at, and this is the hour of birth for Germany. "
“ Melodie der Welt , the first full-length German sound film, is interesting pioneering work. The aim of Ruttmann was to show the sum of human activities and achievements by means of pictures from the countries of the world, which the financing shipping company called. The content of the work suffers from the force of this concept. (...) The rhythmic montage also encroaches on the sound, and Zeller's music is interwoven with noises such as ship sirens, machines and the rattling of anchor chains. "
“The film Melody of the World , which the author explained, was a further development and perfection of the ideas of the film The Sounding Wave . It was made as a commercial for the “Hamburg America Line” and was in fact a report… from the voyage of the steamer 'Resolute' to the Far East. Ruttmann himself had not taken part in this expedition, he merely assembled the material, which mostly consisted of silent strips of images. (...) The question arises whether Melody der Welt is rightly called an exemplary and exemplary film. The enthusiasm of that time does not seem to be justified today, and one could have found many more interesting and content-rich documentaries. "
Web links
- Melody of the world at filmportal.de
- Melody of the world in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Germany recordings
- ↑ Germany recordings
- ↑ Travel recordings
- ↑ Travel recordings
- ↑ Bucher's Encyclopedia of Films, p. 503
- ↑ India, Sumatra, Japan, Singapore, Madura, Zamboango, Ceylon, Palestine, China, Japan, Sunda Islands, Burma, Indonesia, Taiwan
- ↑ a b c d Karlheinz Wendtland: Beloved Kintopp. All German feature films from 1929–1945 with numerous artist biographies born in 1929 and 1930, Medium Film Verlag Karlheinz Wendtland, Berlin, first edition 1988, second revised edition 1990, pp. 8, 9, film N2 / 1929. ISBN 3-926945-10-9
- ↑ Berliner Börsen-Courier , No. 122, March 13, 1929
- ↑ Tempo , No. 61, March 13, 1929
- ^ Vossische Zeitung , No. 124, March 14, 1929
- ^ Oskar Kalbus : On the becoming of German film art . Part 2: The sound film . Berlin 1935, p. 11
- ↑ Bucher's Encyclopedia of Film . Publishing house CJ Bucher, Lucerne / Frankfurt / M. 1977, p. 503
- ^ History of Film , Volume 2: 1928-1933 . Berlin (GDR) 1976, p. 46 f.