His wife, the stranger
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | His wife, the stranger |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1923 |
| length | 82 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Benjamin Christensen |
| script | Benjamin Christensen |
| production | Erich Pommer for Decla on behalf of Ufa (Berlin) |
| camera | Frederik Fuglsang |
| occupation | |
| |
His wife, the unknown is a German silent film from 1923 by the Danish director Benjamin Christensen . Willy Fritsch and Lil Dagover play the leading roles .
action
The young artist Wilbur Crawford has gone blind since serving the front in World War I. He tells his mother a story that happened a long time ago. During a ball at Carnival time, he met a woman who was as beautiful as she was mysterious and who had been harassed and persecuted by several men. She asked for his protection and he then invited her to his house. Despite the mutual affinity, nothing happened the following night; he slept on the couch. The next morning, an unpleasant guy with a grim face appeared, whereupon the stranger left and left him a scribbled thank you note and a ring.
The mother learns from this story how important this decisive encounter must have been to her Wilbur and now undertakes her own research into the whereabouts of this woman. By chance she learns that this young lady is a criminal wanted by the police. She finds her address and invites her to dinner with her blind son. But the unknown does not appear. Disappointed, the mother goes to the Red Cross representative Eva, who had already helped her with the search. That woman, a young widow, goes to Wilbur's mother's house and knocks on the door. Wilbur himself opens the door and mistakenly assumes that it was about his encounter at that time, since this was announced. The Red Cross representative does not want to disappoint him and therefore leaves him in his faith. You take a liking to each other and begin to discover feelings for each other. When the wanted one doesn't turn up after all, Wilbur stands by Eva and they both get married. A child becomes the fruit of their mutual love.
One day Wilbur has the opportunity to regain his eyesight following an operation in the United States by a specialist. And in fact Crawford can see again afterwards, but he no longer recognizes his own wife, the "stranger". Instead, while leaving the ship, he falls on a woman completely unknown to him and embraces her, believing it is Eve. She is terribly angry and disappointed about this and then decides to leave her husband and their baby. She also takes all of the photographs of the two of them out of the house and initially stays with a friend. Wilbur follows her, but the deeply injured Eva refuses to see him. And so he returns home alone with the baby in his arms. Eva and Wilbur's mother then come up with a very unusual plan: Since Wilbur, barely recovered, can hardly look after the toddler alone, a nanny has to be found.
And so Eva returns to Wilbur's house under a different name in order to be employed by him or his mother for this purpose. Over time, Wilbur begins to fall in love with the stranger he knows somehow. Only now does Eva, who strangely enough would have preferred her husband to fall in love with the nanny, whom he does not know, give herself to recognize him. After a long back and forth, the story, which began as an ominous melodrama, steers into a classic happy ending.
Production notes
Even if, according to the memory of actress Lil Dagover, the film His Wife, the Stranger was shot in just two weeks, the shooting took place from mid-May to September 1923. Interior shots were taken in the Ufa studios in Berlin-Tempelhof , exterior shots were taken on the Ufa's outdoor areas in Neubabelsberg , today's Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam .
The film, Christensen's first German work, passed film censorship on October 1, 1923 and was banned from young people. The film, the working title of which was Wilbur Crawford's Wondrous Adventure , premiered on October 19, 1923 in the Tauentzienpalast . It was six files by 2232 meters long. In Christensen's homeland Denmark, the strip started on December 27, 1923. In Austria his wife, the stranger , could be seen the following year.
With his wife, the unknown , Denmark's star director Benjamin Christensen began his international career. As the Danish film historian Casper Tybjerg reports, Christensen did not receive a directorial offer for two years after the shooting of his witch film in 1921. When Erich Pommer and the German Ufa offered him to shoot in Germany, he immediately agreed. Christensen felt “compelled to tear off under all circumstances the trademark that had been stuck on me: that of the literary experimenter”. For this reason he only wanted to make “completely commercial films”.
The film structures were designed by Hans Jacoby . For the until then largely unknown 22-year-old Willy Fritsch, his wife, the unknown, meant the breakthrough to become a film star. Edith Edwards , a 24-year-old from Wroclaw , made her film debut here.
criticism
“In addition, the film suffers from a lack of uniformity in the basic tone. The first twenty minutes or more give the impression of a melodrama; but after Wilbur has regained his eyesight, the salon comedy prevails. (...) Towards the end of the film there are a few shots that show the intricate interplay of light and shadow that Christensen liked so much. (...) The film was illuminated with great expertise; a work by the Danish cameraman Frederik Fuglsang, who ... was known for the exceptional quality of his work. "
Web links
- His wife, the unknown in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- His wife, the unknown at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lil Dagover: I was the lady, Munich 1979, pp. 1949 ff.
- ↑ Hans-Michael Bock and Michael Töteberg: "The Ufa Book - Art and Crises, Stars and Directors, Economy and Politics (The International History of Germany's Largest Film Group)" . Verlag Zweausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 1992, p. 118.
- ^ Film portal: "His wife, the unknown" filmportal.de, accessed April 1, 2019
- ↑ cf. 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. 110