Nana (1926)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Nana
Original title Nana
Country of production France , Germany
original language French
Publishing year 1926
length 150 (1926), 110 (1970) minutes
Rod
Director Jean Renoir
script Pierre Lestringuez based
on the novel of the same name (1880) by Émile Zola
production Claude Renoir senior , Paris
Isidor Rosenfeld for Delog-Filmges. Jacoby & Co., Berlin
music Maurice Jaubert
camera Jean Bachelet
Paul Holzki
Carl Edmund Corwin
cut Jean Renoir
occupation

Nana is a French-German literary film adaptation from 1926 based on the original of the same name by Émile Zola . Directed by Jean Renoir , Catherine Hessling plays the title role, alongside Jean Angelo and Werner Krauss as Nana's lovers.

action

France, Second Empire . At the center of the action is the ambitious actress Nana, who absolutely wants to achieve something: artistically, financially, socially. So far, however, she has not gotten beyond more or less insignificant supporting roles. Now, however, the chance that Nana has been waiting for so long seems to arise: Monsieur Bordenave, director of the Théâtre des Variétés, has offered her the leading role in the operetta “Die blonde Venus”. It is not so much the prospect of asserting herself artistically with her half to completely nude performances that is what drives Nanas. Your goal goes far beyond that. In this way, she hopes to finally achieve a kind of fame and prominence that will open up previously barred social opportunities, namely rich gentlemen of class, respected Parisians with money and titles. Supported by Bordenave, who sometimes calls his establishment a brothel, Nana quickly rises through this special kind of contact in the high and high circles of the Parisian Haute Volee and becomes the lover of Count Muffat, whom she loves emotionally according to every trick in the book and above all financially looted. Like her other lovers before, she takes advantage of him mercilessly without loving. This sometimes leads to dramatic consequences: The elegant racing team owner Comte de Vandeuvres, for example, becomes a villain out of love for Nana and kills himself because of her, as does Georges Hugon, another admirer of the courtesan.

Rather, her heart belongs to fellow actor Fontan, with whom she wants to develop a serious relationship. But the attempt fails right from the start, violence determines both being together. After a brief lesbian encounter with the young Satin, Nana remorsefully returns to her dilapidated Muffat. He picks them up again immediately. He enables her to enjoy an unparalleled luxury life; she humiliates him by no longer hiding her countless love affairs with other men, which she continues to maintain. When the Thèâtre des Variétés is planning a new stage production, Nana Muffat urges them to finance this too so that she can take on the leading role. But the role of a virtuous woman in this new performance fits Nana far less well than that of the courtesan, who she played in "Blond Venus". Nana fails. When Nana exaggerates Muffat's humiliations, he throws his lover and whore out of the house and completely submerges in the faith in which he hopes to find consolation. For Nana, a rapid social and health decline begins. First she loses the theater role, then she has to leave Paris because of financial difficulties, as she can no longer afford the life she used to live. The flight to Russia to another wealthy patron also brings her no luck. Finally, Nana, who has meanwhile returned to France, falls seriously ill with smallpox and dies lonely in a hotel room. On the same day the Franco-Prussian War (1870) breaks out.

Production notes, backgrounds, interesting facts

Filming of Nana began on October 16, 1925 and continued through February 1926. The film was shot in Berlin (studio scenes in November 1925) and in Paris (studio recordings in January 1926). Outdoor shots were taken in the Bois de Vincennes , at the Le Tremblay racecourse and in Nice. The nine-act film, which is around 3,200 meters long in the original French version, had its celebratory world premiere on April 27, 1926 at 2 p.m. in the Moulin Rouge in Paris . Later French versions were shortened to 2,800 meters. The French mass start was on June 25, 1926 at the Aubert Palace in Paris.

In Germany, Nana passed the censorship as a seven-act act with a length of 2044 meters on December 22, 1926 and was banned from youth. No German performance can be identified before February 1929; a German premiere was not reported in France until April 15, 1929. After the Second World War, Nana was shown for the first time in Germany as part of a television broadcast on January 17, 1970 in the third program of the WDR . The film was extensively restored in 2002 for the German-French cultural channel ARTE . There Nana was performed again on September 27, 2002 at 11.10 p.m. on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the death of Émile Zola.

Claude Autant-Lara , who only gained fame as a director during the sound film era, designed the buildings and costumes for this film by Robert-Jules Garnier . He also played a supporting role under the pseudonym "Claude Moore". The only 20-year-old distributor of this film, Pierre Braunberger , also made a small appearance here in front of the camera. From the German side, Paul Holzki (camera not mentioned), Leopold Verch (German costumes) and Otto Karge (production manager, props) were involved. Screenwriter Pierre Lestringuez had also taken on a small film role with theater director Bordenave.

The filming rights cost Renoir 75,000 francs. Werner Krauss received a fee of $ 6,000, paid in four installments. Paulette Dubost , who was just 15 years old and briefly seen in a dance scene as a member of the Ballet du Bal des Moulin Rouge, made her film debut here.

For Jean Renoir, this was only his second full-length cinema director. He was given an extraordinarily large budget, but this meant that the film could not pay for itself at the box office. Renoir himself commented on his implementation of the Zola material as follows:

“ I reduced the novel“ Nana ”to the three main characters: Nana, Muffat and Vandeuvres. You personify in yourself all those whom I had to sacrifice ”.

Reviews

"Despite some theatrical effects, this film clearly shows Renoir's effort to provide realistic descriptions of the situation and psychological credibility."

- Reclams film guide, by Dieter Krusche, collaboration: Jürgen Labenski. P. 94. Stuttgart 1973

“ Nana (1926) is a completely different and much more committed film (...) with a large budget and impressive decorations by Claude Autant-Lara. The film consciously used the contrast between Catherine Hessling's typically exalted game and the solemn style of Werner Krauss as her lover and main victim. Characteristic elements can also be found here: What is new, above all, is the preference for theatrical arrogance, which is shown both from the perspective of Olympus as well as from the stage worker and is accompanied by a parallel representation of the master and servant world. Nana has a weight that is more typical of Stroheim and the German school than of Renoir's later work, and Catherine Hessling's puppet-like nature contradicts the tragedy inherent in the theme, which even today suggests a curious ambiguity. "

- Bucher's Encyclopedia of Films, p. 641, Frankfurt a. M. 1977.

“The tragic fate of the little ambitious actress Nana, who likes to appear as a fine lady, but remains unsuccessful and dies of syphilis after many erotic escapades - here in an idiosyncratic silent film adaptation by Jean Renoir, who differs from the harsh naturalism of the films Erich von Stroheims inspired shows. The main character, played by Renoir's wife at the time, has burlesque and clownish features. "

- Lexicon of International Films

“Exactly what constitutes the freshness and modernity of this film leads to endless head shaking in 1926: the burlesque in the tragic, vulgar in the sentimental, hard in the tender, completely stylized in the seemingly realistic - Renoir's desire to constantly mix opposites in a crazy way. And finally: the white, rolling eyes of the puppet of Catherine Hessling, an actress who did not for a moment indulge in naturalistic play. According to Renoir, there wasn't a moment in this film that wasn't his creator. "

“Renoir is doing an admirable job in a purely visual sense, rendering Zola's miserable story of a lustful Parisian girl from the slums. (...) Catherine Hessling gives a stylized but effective characterization of the title heroine. "

In “History of Film” it says: “ Nana (1926)… shows that Renoir departed from the purely painterly conception of film and tied in with the traditions of French realism. He was influenced by Stroheim's film Foolish Women , which Renoir considered a critical, realistic film. Nana sees Renoir as his first major film. (...) “ Nana was the first film where I discovered that you can't copy nature, but that you have to reconstruct it, that the whole film, the whole demanding artistic work has to be a creation, a good or a bad one . ""

Georges Sadoul wrote: “With“ Nana ”, based on Zola, Renoir was able to make a film to his liking in a German studio. But the material failure of this film forced him to deal with commercial productions just like his friend Cavalcanti . "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ the performance dates to be read in the French Wikipedia are obviously not correct, see precise reconstruction of the production conditions in the web link www.arte.tv.
  2. ↑ according to Jean Tedesco (“Nana à Berlin”) in the French trade journal “Cinéa - Ciné pour tous”, issue no. 131, from April 15, 1929, p. 11
  3. ↑ Nana on allemovie.com
  4. ↑ cit. n. Reclams film guide, p. 94
  5. ↑ Nana. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed November 20, 2015 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  6. ↑ Nana on film.at
  7. ↑ Synopsis by Hal Erickson on allemovie.com
  8. ↑ Jerzy Toeplitz : History of the film, Volume 1 1895-1928. East Berlin 1972. p. 450.
  9. ^ Georges Sadoul: History of the cinematic art. Vienna 1957, p. 199

Web links