Guilty (1913)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title Guilty
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1913
length 92 minutes
Rod
Director Hans Oberländer
production Oskar Messter
music Giuseppe Becce
camera Carl Froelich
occupation

Guilty is a German silent film drama from 1913 with Eduard von Winterstein , Martha Angerstein and Harry Liedtke in the leading roles. The film, which was based on the stage drama of the same name by Richard Voss (1886) , is one of the earliest examples of the auteur film emerging in Germany at the time .

action

Thomas Lehr, clerk at Häusler & Sohn, is essentially a peaceful person and a family man who has never been noticed before. One day he takes his pistol, which he doesn't know for sure at home because of his little son, to the company and puts it in his desk drawer. The company servant Wilhelm Schmidt stole it from there and shoots the junior boss with it when he catches him trying to plunder the company treasury. Schmidt needs the money for his lofty plans: He wants to emigrate to America. The suspicion of murder falls on Lehr not only because of his possession of weapons, but it is also known that he saw it with increasing discomfort that Häusler junior Lehr's wife Martha was courting. Schmidt also cleverly lays down other traces that point to Thomas as the perpetrator. In a trial, the innocent is convicted and put behind bars. This time means great difficulties for Lehrs wife Martha and the two children Julie, called Julchen, and Karl. The innkeeper Kramer, who has his eye on the attractive, single mother, helps her by giving Martha the post of housekeeper in his inn.

After twenty years Schmidt has returned to his old homeland from the USA; rich, but also old and sick. He wants to ease his conscience and confesses the murder to both a clergyman and the public prosecutor. Facing his emaciated and aged victim Thomas Lehr, inmate number 37, this sight becomes too much for Schmidt: he collapses dead. Lehr's return goes differently than hoped. He finds his family in Kramer's inn and is not immediately recognized. Karl has become a drinker, and Julchen visits a dance establishment that has an extremely bad reputation. His own wife has become the inn owner's lover. Karl, gripped by anger, wants to kill his competitor Kramer with the ax when his long-missing father returns, but Father Lehr prevents the impetuous young man from doing this insane act. While Martha initially pushes her husband back in disgust, she slowly begins to realize what this man, who has been languishing innocently behind bars for two decades, must have endured through. In the face of the beneficiary of his misfortune, Thomas Lehr forgets all of the advice he gave his son and, with Kramer, completes what Karl intended. "Now I'm really guilty!" Lehr exclaims and demands that he be brought back to where he knows his way around best: to prison.

Production notes

Schuldig was made in the Messter film studio at Blücherstraße 32 in Berlin, was censored on July 4, 1913, and was premiered on August 27, 1913 during a film show in Austria-Hungary (Vienna). The German premiere can be traced back to January 9, 1914 in Berlin's Marble House . The film was four acts long and measured 1,679 meters.

It was one of the last works by Carl Froelich as a cameraman. The assertion that can be read in some sources that Henny Porten also participated in Schuldig cannot be substantiated.

Leading actress Martha Angerstein appeared here for the first time together with her husband Adolf Edgar Licho , who probably made his film debut here.

criticism

“Richard Voss ennobled the photograph when he left his immensely valuable stage drama“ Schuldig ”to the film. It is no longer a mere catchphrase, the word auteur film, if this drama is taken as the basis of a genre of film. A picture of such dramatic force, gripping freshness and poetic clarity should have been a rarity in motion picture theater up to now. (...) The film seems more powerful than the stage representation. The magnificent character drawings are more stylish and uniform in the picture than a stage performance is ever able to reproduce. (...) The interaction of all these artists is exemplary It shows the hand of a brilliant master of the art of staging at work. And one such is Dr. Hans Oberländer. The film does him all credit. "

- Cinematographische Rundschau from August 10, 1913. P. 74 f.

Web links