Sacrifice (1944)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Sacrificial passage |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1944 |
| length | original theatrical version 98 minutes, shortened rental version 93 minutes, restored version 95 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Veit Harlan |
| script | Veit Harlan and Alfred Braun based on the story of the same name by Rudolf G. Binding |
| production | Ufa-Filmkunst GmbH Berlin |
| music | Hans-Otto Borgmann |
| camera | Bruno Mondi |
| cut | Friedrich Karl von Puttkamer |
| occupation | |
| |
Sacrifice is a German feature film by Veit Harlan in Agfacolor . It was filmed in 1942/43 in Berlin (including at Wannsee ), Potsdam , Hamburg , on Rügen and on Hiddensee , but it was not premiered until December 1944.
action
Albrecht Froben is returning to his hometown Hamburg after three years from a sea voyage that took him across Africa to Japan . In a short time he becomes engaged to Octavia, the beautiful and clever daughter of his uncle. You live on a water plot on the Elbe . The adventurer Albrecht finds it difficult to get used to the peaceful and melancholy life of the family, in which recitations by Nietzsche and the playing of nocturnes are the order of the day. He meets Aels Flodéen, who lives in the neighboring villa - a woman from Finland who spends her summer in Hamburg and frequently travels to Africa - and often rides with her. Aels falls in love with Albrecht, which Albrecht does not notice at first. Octavia accepts the friendship between the two.
Albrecht is made aware of the dangerousness of his relationship with Aels through his best friend Mathias, who was also previously interested in Octavia. He quickly marries Octavia and moves to Düsseldorf with her . At a carnival event, Octavia finally realizes that the Rhenish mentality does not suit her. Albrecht cannot overcome the thoughts of Aels in spite of the spatial distance and believes he has falsely discovered her behind the carnival costume of a visitor. While the couple lived in Düsseldorf, the health of Aels, who had a severe heart condition, deteriorated and she could barely get out of bed. But she only confides her feelings for Albrecht to her diary and her horse.
The Froben couple move back to Hamburg. Albrecht rides past Aels' house and greets her in front of her garden gate, whereupon the patient's condition suddenly improves. Together they go on horse riding trips again and there is a kiss. Octavia suspects the affair and suffers from it, but still loves her husband and is silent about her jealousy. She finds out that Aels has a daughter who she has put up with her old nurse in the Hamburg harbor district . Meanwhile, Aels' condition is worsening again and Albrecht rides past her house every day in the usual manner.
When typhus breaks out in the city , Aels asks Albrecht to fetch her daughter. He saves the child, but infects himself with the disease and is taken to a quarantine station in the hospital. Aels is dying in her villa and knows nothing about it, she waits in vain for Albrecht to ride past. Octavia decides to go on a “sacrificial walk” and takes on the role of Albrecht as a rider to prove her sincere love to her husband. Aels dies delirious, but happy. Albrecht gets well again and learns to love his wife again through her sacrifice. The ashes of Aels are scattered in the sea.
Production and publication
For cost reasons, the film was produced at the same time as Immensee , whose shooting began two months earlier. Both films were directed by Harlan with Raddatz and Söderbaum in the leading roles. The shooting lasted from August 21, 1942 to around August 5, 1943. The shooting took place in Babelsberg, Ufast , near Berlin, near Eutin , on Hiddensee and in Hamburg.
In the novel by Binding, in contrast to the film, it is not Aels who dies in the end, but Albrecht. This change was supposedly ordered by Goebbels because the figure of Aels as an adulterous woman stood contrary to the family-political ideas of the National Socialists. Harlan is said to have spoken out against this change and threatened to abandon the project because he actually wanted the Binding novel to be staged true to the literature.
It was not until December 8, 1944, that the offering first appeared in German cinemas in Hamburg and Berlin. The main reason for this was that the two costly color play melodramas Immensee and sacrifice gang did not want to be allowed in the cinemas at the same time, as they would probably have stolen viewers from each other.
Initially banned by the Allied military authorities, the film was also released in cinemas in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1952.
The Murnau Foundation had the sacrificial passage and Immensee digitally restored in 2016. A previously edited scene was reinserted in the sacrificial passage so that the film is now available in a 95-minute version (originally: 98 minutes). The digitally restored film premiered at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival and was released on DVD and Blu-ray on September 22, 2016.
Scene cut so far
Albrecht and Octavia drink coffee together. After the fade-out, you can briefly see a sailing boat on a lake - then there is a cut and you can see Octavia and Albrecht briefly kissing. In the intervening scene, which was no longer included in the previous versions, the following takes place:
You can see Albrecht and Mathias on the sailing boat ( rear projection of the Wannsee, which is supposed to be the Alster ) talking about Octavia, who probably likes / loves her more, realizing that Albrecht would like to ask her whether ... ( fade to Octavia's bedroom where Albrecht asks her directly) ... she wants to marry him. Octavia (close-up) accepts the marriage proposal - this is followed by the kiss, which was also included in the cut version, and the sentence "Neither arm's length should be between us anymore" (length 2:20 minutes).
Trivia
Christoph Schlingensief's film Mother's Mask (1988) is a free adaptation of sacrifice .
Reviews
Dirk Jasper from FilmLexikon calls the film “a moving melodrama about the power of a great love - a classic Kristina Söderbaum role”. According to the lexicon of international films , it is a " film adaptation of literature developed in atmospheric images with good actors; superficial and exaggeratedly melodramatic in the psychological drawing of noble feelings ”.
Filmportal.de tries to classify the film in Harlan's controversial artistic oeuvre : “The morbidity and sensuality of the sacrifice - which Goebbels dubbed 'death eroticism' - have a disturbing effect. As a result, the sacrifice becomes a film that makes it difficult to classify Harlan clearly in the Nazi propaganda machine, although everything seems so clear with Jud Suss . "
See also
Web links
- Sacrifice in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Sacrifice at filmportal.de
- Sacrifice at the Murnau Foundation
- Project: Restoration of the sacrificial passage at the Murnau Foundation
- Joachim Kurz: Veit Harlan: Sacrifice - Longing for Death in Agfacolor . Culturmag.de, October 15, 2016
Individual evidence
- ^ CineGraph - Lexicon for German-language film - Veit Harlan
- ^ Ingrid Buchloh: Veit Harlan. Goebbels' star director. Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 2010. pp. 130-131.
- ↑ Rediscovered: sacrifice filmportal.de, accessed on 10.10.17
- ^ Ingrid Buchloh: Veit Harlan. Goebbels' star director. Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 2010. p. 131.
- ↑ Restoration of Immensee and sacrificial passage , Murnau Foundation, accessed on October 10, 2017
- ↑ Sacrifice. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 11, 2017 .
- ↑ "Sacrifice" in the series Rediscovered. In: filmportal.de. Retrieved February 3, 2017 .