Peer Gynt (1918)

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Movie
Original title Peer Gynt
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1918
length approx. 160 minutes
Rod
Director Victor Barnowsky
script Victor Barnowsky
production Richard Oswald
camera Max Fassbender
occupation

and Richard Senius , Gertrud von Hoschek

Peer Gynt is a two-part German silent film made in 1918 , the only film work by the important Berlin theater man Victor Barnowsky , who received help from Richard Oswald , who is experienced in cinema from Vienna, with the cinematic implementation of the material . The title role was played by Heinz Salfner , whose second main film role (after his Colonel Chabert , 1913/14) was to be. Ilka Grüning , Lina Lossen and Conrad Veidt played other important parts . Henrik Ibsen provided the template of the same name, Peer Gynt (1867) .

The young Henrik Ibsen, shortly after the publication of Peer Gynt (around 1870)

action

Part one: Peer Gynt's youth

Norway in the 19th century: Peer Gynt is a powerful farm boy who tries to steal himself from his poor reality with invented stories. He suppresses the fact that his father Jon Gynt, once a respected man in the village and the surrounding area, threatens to lose his farm and property through mismanagement and excessive drinking. In Peer's imagination, the rundown house is still a grand palace. Peer also knows how to suppress the fact that he himself is a badass. He sees himself as a hero and knows how to make his mother Aase believe what a “devil” he is.

Aase, for whom the day thief and dreamer Peer means everything to her, glorifies the young man in her ideas, who not only lets the farm deteriorate more and more and believes himself in a world of trolls and demons, but also with a lot of enthusiasm in the end little success walks on free feet. The button founder, a figure from the dreams of his childhood, seduces Gynt into a series of foolish deeds. One day, Peer kidnaps Ingrid, someone else's bride, while at the same time meeting the decent and decent Solveig. Solveig is the exact opposite of Gynt: down to earth and loyal. She would be the one who could finally put him on the path of virtue. But the restless spirit of Peer is drawn into the distance.

Second part: Peer Gynt's years of wandering and death

Peer believes that he now has to go out into the “wide world” and look for adventure and prosperity. And so it pulls him away, leaving behind the good-hearted Solveig. In the following years Gynt experienced the longed for adventures. Three decades later, Peer Gynt became rich in Africa through slave trade and finally settled in Morocco. But there his business partners steal his ship and all of his valuable possessions. His ship sinks and Peer seems to have come to terms with his renewed poverty. In these moments he finds God and begins to understand what the true values ​​of life are.

One day certain circumstances drive him to the Sahara , where he finds salvation in an oasis. Here he gets to know the mysterious and soulless Anitra, who first steals his heart and finally his remaining possessions. But he has still not reached the lowest point in his life: In Cairo, Peer Gynt ends up in a car from the German doctor Dr. Conceptualized madhouse. But in the end he is finally lucky. Here he meets compatriots, seafarers who have come ashore on site and who are ready to take the now purified Peer Gynt back to their old homeland. Peer Gynt returns old and impoverished, where Solveig has been waiting for him as promised. And the loyal soul has not remained idle over the years: it has managed the rotten farm and brought it back into shape. She not only ensures that Gynt finds a home, but also finds salvation with her. Now he can die in peace with himself and his life.

Production notes

Peer Gynt was created in the late summer and early autumn of 1918 in Berlin between Oswald's Jettchen Gebert's story and The Journey around the Earth in 80 Days as a two-part series. The first part started under the title Peer Gynts Jugend , the second as Peer Gynts Wanderjahre und Tod . The film passed censorship in November (Part 1) and December 1918 (Part 2). The length of the first part was 1,864 meters, divided into five acts, that of the second part 1,425 meters, also divided into five acts. A first presentation took place at the end of 1918, the mass start for both parts was April 6, 1919 in the Berlin Marble House .

Background, interesting facts, reviews

The Peer Gynt was considered to be the star role of the theater actor Salfner (1877–1945), who until the dawn of the sound film era only appeared irregularly in front of cameras. He had already played Gynt for the first time at its German premiere at the court theater in his hometown of Munich at the beginning of the 20th century. After moving to Berlin, Heinz Salfner played Gynt again with great success, this time at the Lessing Theater in the capital in a celebrated production by Victor Barnowsky. Salfner's interpretation was so successful that the director Richard Oswald decided to take over Barnowsky's staging for a film adaptation. While Barnowsky took care of the actors' management, sch Oswald took care of all cinematic aspects and exercised the function of an “artistic headmaster”. For the theater man Barnowsky, this was his only contact with the medium of film.

This Peer Gynt film adaptation, which fell during the brief phase (1917/18) of Oswald's intense interest in adapting literature for the screen, met with little criticism.

The following could be read in Der Film : “The cast is the same as the original cast in the Lessing Theater. Heinz Salfner, perhaps the best stage peer Gynt, delivers an excellent performance (apart from a few small things), Ilka Grüning as the lonely mother Aase, Lina Lossen as Solveig (...) There is nothing to be said against this film adaptation, but you would like it best dramaturge and the most experienced director would have taken on this difficult task. Then it is said that Viktor Barnowsky - awarded at the "Theater" - is too inexperienced as a film director. Finally: "Had he lived, Henrik Ibsen would certainly have designed the film differently".

And in 1935 Oskar Kalbus nagged in the chapter "The modern drama" in the German silent film:

“Ibsen also had to believe in it. Before 1918, 'Peer Gynt' in Germany and 'Hedda Gabler' in Italy were badly filmed. "

- Oskar Kalbus : On the development of German film art. 1st part: The silent film.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Frank Arnau (ed.): Universal Filmlexikon 1932. S. 184, Berlin 1932
  2. ↑ Peer Gynt on cinegraph.de
  3. ↑ During this time he staged, among other things, The Portrait of Dorian Gray , The Dreimäderlhaus , The Living Corpse , The Diary of a Lost Person , Dida Ibsen's story , Jettchen Gebert's story and The Journey Around the Earth in 80 Days
  4. ↑ Richard Oswald on difarchiv.deutsches-filminstitut.de
  5. ↑ Der Film, No. 15, April 12, 1919 issue
  6. ^ Oskar Kalbus: On the becoming of German film art. 1st part: The silent film. Berlin 1935. p. 72

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