Nju

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Movie
Original title Nju
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1924
Rod
Director Paul Czinner
script Paul Czinner based
on a presentation by Ossip Dymow
production Hans Wollenberg for Rimax-Film AG
music Bruno Schulz
camera Axel Graatkjær
Reimar Kuntze
occupation

Nju - a misunderstood woman is a German silent film from 1924. Directed by Paul Czinner , his future wife Elisabeth Bergner plays the title role.

action

Nju is a young, lively and sensitive woman. She could actually be happy with her life, but her civil marriage with her beefy, coarse and insensitive husband feels more and more like a prison from time to time. Her husband, a successful businessman, adores her and reads all of her wishes from her eyes. But visually as well as mentally, he is quite a rough block, who treats his wife more as a nice, little thing and pretty toy with which one can be known in front of others. One day, Nju meets a completely different type of man. She is young, slim and slender, a well-thought-out handsome - in short: the exact opposite of her husband.

Nju has been drawn to this man, a writer, from the beginning. The man, a charmer, gentleman and woman who understands her, eventually becomes her lover. In order to preserve the appearance of a functioning marriage, Nju initially continued to live in her husband's house. The latter soon learns of this relationship and tries to kill the rival. Nju then leaves the marital home and moves into a pension.

However, Nju soon realizes that the poet doesn't really see her as an equal partner in life and in love, and that both relationships are threatened with falling onto the same well-trodden tracks as their marriage. Also, his love for her is little more than a flash in the pan and quickly evaporated, little more than an amusing change. There is another separation. One day, Nju sees her abandoned husband accompanied by another woman. Obviously he has a new one ... As a result, Nju commits suicide.

Production notes

Nju was shot in the spring (March / April) of 1924 in the Efa studio at the Zoo and in Staaken and premiered on November 22, 1924 in Berlin's Alhambra cinema on Kurfürstendamm . The film was also subtitled An Misunderstood Woman .

The film structures designed by Paul Rieth were executed by Gottlieb Hesch .

Reviews

FWK wrote in the Film-Kurier : “'Nju' gave us three valuable gifts: firstly a new director, secondly a new star, and thirdly with the realization that there are chamber films in film that appeal to a large number of people. With this film, the director Paul Czinner moves into the front row of our directors. Elisabeth Bergner, by no means predestined for film, proved the triumph of ingenious skills over the impassability of new film grounds, and Jannings and Veidt reinforce their reputation as our first film actors - all over again. [...] Now he took the piece and edited it for the film. With incredibly fine, sensitive fingertips that can be followed in every tiny detail within the film. Now this marriage is building up in front of us with terrifying realism, with meticulous reproduction of the most inconspicuous details, with mood painting like seldom before. With surprising conciseness and restriction to the essentials. There is Jannings, the husband: a belch that has become human, good-natured, decent, rich, satiated - violent in the affect. Unheard of how he grabbed his wife after the ball and slurped into the pantry with dangling suspenders to tumble down a bottle of beer and cut his sandwiches. And how he collapses in the face of Nju's decision to leave him, how the big, strong man, the superior Raffke, becomes a small, sobbing little piece of human being, that's shocking. You: Elisabeth Bergner. A little defenseless, fluttering bird, helplessly shattered by the meanness of life. At once stunned by the brutal violence of the one and by the cold cynicism of the other, the beloved, whose image she takes the last farewell to on the carpet of the room. The game of this God-gifted woman lives and weaves and floats over everything unreal - it never grips, it always flutters around the most difficult problems in the most subtle movements, as if it would never dare to approach everything that means making a decision or doing. The hands, feet, neck, shoulders of this woman play in so many nuances, in such a thousand glittering lights, in such a fabulous shimmer that only a great astonishment remains - a devout astonishment ... Conrad Veidt, the poet. At times his will to demoniac blurs the barriers to the purely social, which this poet must show in his dealings with society. Otherwise, however, he lends this figure everything that makes him lovable. "

Dr. KM judged in the Lichtbild-Bühne : “An everyday action, an everyday subject, and yet not an everyday film. The way in which the subject of the appearance of the 'third party' in an otherwise happy marriage is dealt with raises this work by Paul Czinner far beyond the scope of any other film dealing with the same subject. And only how does it matter. The film is timeless and could be set anywhere on earth. Because everywhere and over and over again, 'He' enters the duality of marriage in order to make it a trinity. All circles are equally haunted by this everyday occurrence. Here in this film you can see the development of the triangular construction from its first beginnings to its tragic end. […] Paul Czinner did not make the work too difficult for himself by choosing the three best actors who could be considered for the three characters. Elisabeth Bergner as Nju, Emil Jannings as her husband and Conrad Veidt, the third member of the group. Elisabeth Bergner can be seen for the first time in the film. Her high level of acting skills, which knows how to give eloquent expression to every inner movement in facial expressions, captivates from the first to the last scene. She gives real life. […] Jannings, whom one sees once again after a long time in a modern formal suit, shows in an impressive game all the nuances of the husband indulging in happiness and the husband who has been unbalanced by the wife's infidelity. Conrad Veidt is demonic, superior, unscrupulous - as the director demands. "

Oskar Kalbus ' Vom becoming German film art said: “Of course there were also chamber feature films with subtitles. So the film Nju was made in a new style (director Paul Czinner): purely naturalistic, the pure imitation of life. The story of a woman (Elisabeth Bergner) who lives with her husband (Emil Jannings) without illusion, follows her lover (Conrad Veidt) and loses body and soul in the process. "

Reclam's film guide commented on the film: “The film handled its subject with skillful reserve. The bourgeois monotony of Nyu's marriage is described only in telling hints. And Czinner proves the renewed failure primarily through the similarity of casual gestures that expose the romantic lover as a brother in the spirit of the bourgeois husband. "

In Heinrich Fraenkel's Immortal film it means to Elisabeth Bergner three central silent film work in the 1920s: "In the Geiger of Florence (with Walter Rilla ) in which Arthur Schnitzler's novella as sensitively modeled Kammerspiel Fräulein Else and Nju (with Emil Jannings and Conrad Veidt ) Bergner had the opportunity to try their very idiosyncratic stage style with cinematic nuances ”.

literature

  • Fred Gehler Nju. In: Günther Dahlke, Günther Karl (Hrsg.): German feature films from the beginnings to 1933. A film guide. 2nd edition, p. 108 f. Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-89487-009-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nju. Illustrated Film Week 1926, accessed on May 9, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Film-Kurier No. 276 of November 22, 1924
  3. ↑ Lichtbild-Bühne, No. 137, from November 22, 1924
  4. ^ Oskar Kalbus: On the becoming of German film art. 1st part: The silent film. Berlin 1935. p. 75
  5. ↑ Reclams Filmführer, by Dieter Krusche, collaboration: Jürgen Labenski. P. 98. Stuttgart 1973.
  6. ↑ Immortal Film. The great chronicle from the Laterna Magica to the sound film. Kindler Verlag Munich 1956, p. 192

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