Robber Symphony
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Robber Symphony |
| Original title | The Robber Symphony |
| Country of production | Great Britain |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1936 |
| length | 105 (German version) 140 (original version) 91 (second version) minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Friedrich Feher |
| script |
Jack Trendall based on a story by Friedrich Feher and Anton Kuh |
| production | Friedrich Feher Jack Trendall for Concordia Films, London |
| music | Friedrich Feher under the orchestral direction of Alfred Tokayer |
| camera | Eugen Schüfftan |
| occupation | |
| |
The Robber's Symphony is a British fiction film from 1936 by Friedrich Feher . The film-historically significant production is considered the most unusual example of an emigrant film at the time of the National Socialist dictatorship in Germany.
action
This robber ballad does not follow the usual narrative structures and has its own staging style.
A strange band of robbers, led by a man in a straw hat, is after the savings of a fortune teller. They can rob the woman and take her piggy bank with gold pieces, but then a crowd of traveling musicians get in their way. Young Giannino, his mother and grandfather also belong to this colorful entertainment group. In an emergency the villains are forced to immediately get rid of their stolen gold treasure and to hide it temporarily. A drum piano used by the musicians appears to the crooks as an ideal hiding place. But it is precisely this piano that the bright Giannino takes care of. As the musicians travel on, the bizarre robbers threaten to lose their own stolen property. The thieves are by no means willing to let their prey slip away and hide in an oversized wine barrel with the police on their heels.
The colorful folk's journey leads to the snow-capped mountains of the Alps. Giannino, who takes care of his piano, still doesn't know anything about its valuable inner workings. In a mountain village, the man in the straw hat tries to draw all attention to himself so that his cronies can get the loot out of the hiding place. For this purpose, the chief thief performs a tightrope act. In the meantime, the robbers have "organized" four donkeys with four other pianos in order to completely confuse the boy, who is paying attention to his cylinder piano, and in this mess to steal his piano with the precious money sock. But Giannino is not so easily tricked; in the end, with his help, the band of robbers is arrested. Giannino is allowed to keep the money as a reward for his brave deed.
Production notes
The film was shot on the grounds of the Shepperton Studios as well as in Nice , Feher's old homeland, Austria, and around Mont Blanc (all exterior shots). The film was premiered in April 1936 in London's Palace Theater at Feher's own expense, as Fehers could not find a rental for his very unusual work. At that time the Robber's Symphony had a playing time of 140 minutes, but was shortened to 91 minutes in a recut version when it was performed again in November 1936. The Robber's Symphony was premiered in the USA on January 26, 1937, and four months later in France. The film was first shown in Germany on February 21, 1964.
A separate, French-language version with French actors was specially prepared for the French market under the title La symphonie des brigands , in which the local film star Françoise Rosay also played alongside largely unknown actors .
Robber's Symphony , based on an idea developed by Feher and the narrator, essayist and journalist Anton Kuh , is considered one of the most unusual and bizarre film productions in cinema history and is also one of the few emigrant productions in Great Britain during the Hitler dictatorship. Director Feher struggled to get the film off the ground, which turned out to be very expensive due to its long playing time and the external shooting. He financed it mostly from his own resources and got heavily into debt. In order to recoup the production costs and not go bankrupt, Feher traveled to the USA at the beginning of October 1936 to market the Robbers Symphony there too. The high costs were by no means reaped, and Fehers producing Concordia Films eventually went bankrupt.
The film expressionist elements in the robber symphony , repeatedly stated by the critics, are due to the participation of decisive forces of German film expressionism of the early 20s: Feher himself once had Franzis in the masterpiece of this style, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari , played. Caligari director Robert Wiene took over the production management for the Robbers Symphony and also supervised Feher's production artistically. In addition, two other experimental forms in the film of the Weimar Republic were not averse to specialists, Ernő Metzner (film construction) and Eugen Schüfftan (camera). Like Feher and Wiene, they too were emigrants fleeing the Nazi regime.
The young main actor Hans Feher is Friedrich Feher's 13-year-old son from his marriage to Magda Sonja at the time of filming , who, as in most of the previous Feher productions, also played the female lead in the Robber's Symphony .
Reviews
The writer Graham Greene , in his capacity as a film critic, dealt extensively with the Robber Symphony . In the publication The Spectator he wrote: “ The Robber Symphony by Mr. Friedrich Feher is certainly the most interesting film of the last twelve months, a film whose editing, as strange as it may be, is based on the music. He has moments of extremely sensitive directing and is almost two hours long - restless, disheveled, amusing, boring, cheap, lyrical, grotesque. Its plot is quite obviously borrowed from the story of Emil and the Detectives , but immersed in a surrealistic atmosphere that is completely alien to the pleasantly common sense of that book. [...] Mr. Feher calls his work the first 'composed' film, and if his experiment is certainly original, it is at the same time unproductive. In order to match the images with the music in their present form, he thought it necessary to use 180,000 meters of film. [...] There seems to be a certain mental confusion that prevents the film or music from becoming the masterpiece that it should - because there is no doubt about the director's poetic self-image. "
In Reclams film leader is to read: "An unusual, idiosyncratic and almost stubborn film, the group has turned from emigrants in England. Influences of German Expressionism [...] mix with surrealism, naive joy in playing, a dash of amateurism and a pinch of social criticism. But the key is the fairytale tone and the musical rhythm of the film. There is the curly logic of the absurd that seems to justify wobbly decorations as well as the wooden play of the actors. One thinks of the puppet theater; because it is just as turbulent, illogical and so enjoyable here. "
For Bucher's Encyclopedia of Film , the Robber's Symphony was "an idiosyncratic, turbulent film about a bizarre gang of robbers and traveling musicians, which contains both expressionistic and surrealistic elements and also reveals influences from the musical montages of Ruttmann and Fischinger ."
Kay Less wrote in Feher's biography: "The film, for which Feher could not even find a distributor and therefore started it at his own expense in London's Palace Theater, visibly overwhelmed the unaccustomed British audience."
In an assessment by the Austrian Film Museum it was stated: “ The Robber Symphony is an unknown treasure trove in matters of weirdness and surrealism. […] A minimum of dialogue, instead a comical pace, strong assembly rhythm, obeying the rhythm of the music, and film musicians who play visibly in the background. […] The Robber Symphony, an unusually complex undertaking, was his artistic utopia, in which he invested everything he had. The expressionist sets by Hungarian film architects Ernő Metzner and Eugen Schüfftan's shadowy photography are great: "The whole composition takes on the appearance of a large eye." (Laurie Ede). In other words: one of the most bizarre, most unusual, most inexplicable films in the history of cinema. "
In Films 1962/64 it is said: "Despite technical and stylistic deficiencies, an appealing entertainment experience, the defining artistic characteristics of which are of interest at the time of creation."
Web links
- Robber Symphony in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Graham Greene said, “The whole sequence is extremely amusing; one of the best and most imaginative directorial achievements I've ever seen ... "
- ↑ a b c d Kay Less : "In life, more is taken from you than given ...". Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. ACABUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8 , p. 163.
- ^ London Calling. Germans in British film of the thirties . A CineGraph book. Editor: Jörg Schöning. Munich 1993, p. 162.
- ↑ More is taken from you in life than given speaks of £ 80,000
- ^ The Spectator , edition v. May 24, 1936. In a translation by: London Calling. Germans in British film of the thirties . P. 163 f.
- ^ Reclams Filmführer , by Dieter Krusche, collaboration: Jürgen Labenski, Stuttgart 1973, p. 496.
- ↑ Bucher's Encyclopedia of Films , Verlag CJ Bucher, Lucerne and Frankfurt / M. 1977, p. 234.
- ↑ See filmmuseum.at ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ See filmmuseum.at
- ^ Films 1962/64. Critical notes from three years of cinema and television . Verlag Haus Altenberg GmbH, Düsseldorf 1965, p. 138.
