Revenge!

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Movie
German title Revenge!
Original title Hævnens Nat
Country of production Denmark
original language Danish
Publishing year 1916
length 100 (Copenhagen), 107 (Vienna) minutes
Rod
Director Benjamin Christensen
script Benjamin Christensen
production Benjamin Christensen
camera Johan Ankerstjerne
occupation

Revenge! is a Danish silent film drama from 1916 by and with Benjamin Christensen .

action

The "Strong Henry", an artist, has been convicted of having committed a murder in his circus, although he has always protested his innocence. One day he breaks out and secretly retrieves his baby from the Ranton orphanage. With his little son in his arms, Henry rushes through the snowy landscape and breaks into the mansion of a landlord near Ranton on New Year's Eve. He receives a letter by courier warning of the breakout. The landlord who is entertaining guests gets up immediately and gets a hunting rifle to be prepared for any eventuality. His niece Eva is appalled that the people who have fled, in her eyes, are planning a real hunt, and wants to help him and his baby. Soon the entire society armed with rifles and revolvers is in a downright happy hunting fever.

Finally, the minds calm down just as quickly, since apparently no one is sneaking around the mansion. It is already two in the morning when you see Henry walking through the dark house with a flashlight. Eva, who has firmly bolted her bedroom door, is afraid; she thinks she can hear footsteps in the hallway. Finally, Henry enters her room. Eva is scared to death. But the neglected fugitive, who looks terrifying, turns out to be a gentle giant who only asks the young woman for some milk for his starving child. Eva goes into the kitchen and organizes something to eat and drink. She is caught by her uncle who is still awake and who immediately sees through that this food cannot be for herself. She lets herself be persuaded to bring Henry the milk so that he can then be captured by the armed uncle and his servants. And so it happens. During his capture, at which Henry fiercely defends himself, he threatens that one day he will return and hang the traitor by a rope. Then he turns to Eva's room and swears: revenge!

14 years later. Eva is with Dr. West, a respected doctor, is married and has long since had his own (still young) child, a blonde daughter. The real perpetrator, the elephant trainer and, like the innocent Henry, one of the circus, reads in the newspaper that the strong Henry, now a broken man, will be released early from prison due to a pardon. Henry is promised that with the document that the prison warden gives him in hand, he should also have his child returned. With a large teddy bear that he bought earlier, Henry goes to the orphanage to pick up his boy. But there he is told that the child has long been adopted by a gentleman and the lady accompanying him, who is covered in a black veil. When you see the lady lift her veil briefly in the flashback, you recognize: it's Eva!

While Henry wanders aimlessly and disaffected through the streets of the city, he meets a gang of petty criminals, one of whom still knows Henry from their time in prison. The crooks have specialized in kidnapping dogs and then bring the "accidentally found" animals back to their owners - for a good reward, of course. But you are not only keen on the reward, rather you try to find out something about the financial situation of the owner when you bring the animal back. And so one of the crooks, the Dr. West brings his St. Bernard back to his town house, during his brief absence, gives two of the doctor's keys and exchanges them for two wrong ones in order to be able to break into this town house of the doctor. In a letter lying around the dog thief finds out that this house will be vacant for a long time because Dr. West intends to go to the country with his adopted son to live with his family.

In fact, the three crooks break into Dr. West's house while the unsuspecting Henry is said to be outside dope. They drink the doctor's good wine and clear away numerous valuables from the house in bags they brought with them. Only when Henry's old jail buddy throws the first sack onto the handcart guarded by Henry, he realizes with horror that he is helping with a large-scale break-in. Meanwhile, the elephant trainer seems more and more confused and guilty. One day he refuses to perform with his animals. Finally, the man plagued by visions of guilt falls down the stairs. The unconscious trainer is dragged away and the director brings the crocodile number forward. Shortly before he dies of a heart attack, the trainer confesses on a piece of paper the deed for which the strong Henry had to go to prison for so many years. While rummaging through the stolen objects, Henry picks up a small box that he still knows from the time he broke into the mansion with his child. Only when he opens the box does it become clear to him: it must be the same household to which Eva belongs - the woman who, in his opinion, had betrayed him so terribly!

Henry plans to complete his revenge while retiring to the doctor's country house. He rings Dr. West gets out of bed by phone and fakes an emergency to lure him out of the house to the shabby gang of thugs. In this hovel, Henry overpowers the doctor and ties him up. In the meantime, the boy of the West, in fact Henry's son, has run after his doctor father. Once in the robber's den, Henry immediately takes the boy into custody and locks the fidgeting man in a closet. Then he releases the dogs that were stolen by his cronies and held captive in the cellar, takes a rope and sets off to the country house of the West to finally complete his vengeance on Eva. Meanwhile, with the help of his adoptive father, the boy can alert the police by phone.

The dog is barking in the doctor's house and Eva and the maid are worried that someone might be about to break in. The strong Henry grabs the maid in front of the house, who still says "Help!" can scream, whereupon Eva locks herself in her little daughter's room. While Henry tries to break open the door, two police officers on horseback are already approaching the property at a gallop. Before he could assault her daughter, Eva sacrifices herself and surrenders to angry Henry. In the meantime, the two police officers have already broken into the house. Henry is shot from behind by one of the two police officers while trying to strangle Eva. The police release the doctor and the son just at the moment when the three other crooks with the fat booty from Dr. West's townhouse arrive. Father and son rush back to the country house, where the seriously injured Henry is tended to. Finally everyone gathers around his sick bed, peace has been made with one another.

Production notes

Revenge! - released in Austria-Hungary under the title Die Nacht der Rache on March 9, 1917 - premiered in Denmark on September 25, 1916.

Filming began in 1915 and ended after about a year and a half. Revenge! was discussed in numerous German specialist publications in 1916 and was also a great success in the USA.

The director pays special tribute to the German young actor Otto Reinwald, with whom Christensen shot two of his most important films of the 1910s: In a scene at the harbor, a ship from Riga called “Reinwald” is anchored.

criticism

The Danish film historian Casper Tybjerg analyzed Christensen's dual performance as actor and director as follows: “... he received high praise from the critics for his portrayal of Strong John, a man who is mistakenly imprisoned for many years; although he looks terrifying, he always remains decent. (...) But not just the way it is portrayed, but the film as a whole shows that Christensen was by no means willing to rest on his laurels; the design is still superior to that of DET HEMMELIGHEDSFULDE X; the film is perhaps the cinematographically most stylish of 1915 - worldwide. "

“After Benjamin Christensen has demonstrated the nightly scenes of his film on an illuminated model of the villa, he can confidently plunge them into the dark. With recordings in almost black rooms, which are often only illuminated by a single lamp or weak “moonlight”, and with exalted perspectives such as a view through a darkening keyhole, the Danish director emancipated the cinema from the theater. He also recommended himself as a specialist in horror films, for which Hollywood hired him a decade later. "

In Paimann's film lists you can read: "Exciting material, excellent with dramatic, gripping scenes, photos and play, scenery despite the severe cuts, very good".

“A touch of humor gives this social drama its originality. This columnist story is characterized by the interplay of light and shadow, which is extremely innovative for this epoch. "

“In Hævnens nat (1916) Christensen tells the story of a man who ends up innocent in prison. This second production also met the expectations perfectly. Hævnens nat (1916) received rave reviews and also made the leap across the pond to the USA. There "Benjamin Christie" was celebrated as a true genius, who delivered a masterpiece almost entirely by himself. "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ in the US version: John
  2. ↑ in the US version: Ann
  3. ↑ in the US version: Wilken
  4. ↑ Casper Tybjerg: Shadow from the Master. Benjamin Christensen in Germany; in: Black dream and white slave. German-Danish film relations 1910–1930. A CineGraph book, Munich 1994, p. 108
  5. ↑ Vengeance! on berlinale.de
  6. ↑ The Night of Vengeance in Paimann's film lists ( Memento of the original from March 16, 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / old.filmarchiv.at
  7. ↑ Vengeance! on musee-orsay.fr
  8. ↑ Vengeance! edition-filmmuseum.com

Web links