Spies

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Movie
Original title Spies
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1928
length restored version: 145 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Fritz Lang
script Fritz Lang
Thea from Harbou
production Universum Film AG
music Werner Richard Heymann
camera Fritz Arno Wagner
occupation

Spione is a silent film from the genre of the agent film by Fritz Lang based on a script by Thea von Harbou . It premiered in Berlin on March 22, 1928.

action

Behind the inconspicuous facade of the Haghi Bank is the headquarters of an internationally active espionage organization, headed by the bank director Haghi. Haghi specializes in extortion and trafficking in stolen information. Strategically important institutions and even the police have been infiltrated by his people. On Haghi's behalf, the mysterious beauty Sonja Barranikowa tries to elicit military secrets from the Eastern European Colonel Jellusič. At the same time, Haghi's gang committed a robbery and murder of the Minister of Commerce in the street and took secret files into their possession.

Thereupon secret service chief Jason puts his agent "No. 326" on the case. He meets Sonja Barranikowa, who in turn was sent by Haghi to eliminate "No. 326". But Sonja Barranikowa and "No. 326" fall in love. The agent also reminds her of her brother, who was once a victim of the Tsarist Okhrana . Sonja Barranikowa refuses Haghi's order, whereupon the latter has her arrested at his headquarters.

In the meantime, Haghi's next action is rolling: the Japanese diplomat Dr. A copy of a highly sensitive and secret protection agreement is stolen from Matsumoto. War threatens. The secret service with "No. 326" is trying hard to clear up the matter, but is groping in the dark. In the meantime, Sonja Barranikova has been promised by Haghi that she will be released and see "No. 326" again if she provides him with one last courier service and takes photocopies of the Japanese secret agreement out of the country. In truth, "No. 326" is said to be killed in a train attack. But the attack fails, Haghi's headquarters are betrayed by Sonja and the entire gang is arrested after a dramatic and action-packed raid.

Only Haghi has disappeared without a trace. Finally the police find him - in a completely unexpected place in a completely unexpected role and disguise: It turns out that Haghi acted under a false identity as an informant for the secret service in order to protect himself and his organization through targeted disinformation. Inescapably circled by the police, he commits suicide.

Background and meaning

After long with its sprawling, perfectionist production in monumental Metropolis the UFA had driven into the financial agony, they had set him on the Ufa to very suspicious. Many wondered whether he would leave Germany and follow Erich Pommer , who had made several films with him as a producer up to Metropolis , to the United States. But Lang founded Fritz Lang Film GmbH and signed a contract with Ufa that would take over the distribution of his next works.

Production lasted fifteen weeks until March 1928, and the budget was modest compared to Metropolis . Most of the scenes take place indoors and, unlike later examples of the genre, give spies a somewhat hermetic atmosphere; the strongest exception to this is the sequence with the train in the tunnel and the subsequent chase.

Spione was a commercial success, the female lead Gerda Maurus , whose beauty was widely admired, rose as a new star. She had long since discovered her in Vienna in 1924, where she was active in the small art of the stage and had rejected his advances. At the time of the filming of Metropolis she came to Berlin and Lang, married to screenwriter Thea von Harbou , began a passionate affair with Maurus. However, that did not prevent him from putting her in danger while filming the spies with the repeated recording of a scene where he shot close to her at a pane of glass. According to some witnesses, he is said to have beaten her more often in private.

A second 'discovery' was the young Dutch actress Lien Deyers . In 1927 she was presented to Fritz Lang during an autograph day in Vienna, who then made test shots with her in Berlin. After her debut in Spies , she quickly made a career and would star in a total of 32 silent and sound films within eight years. In 1935 she followed her husband, the Jewish director and producer Alfred Zeisler, to emigrate to England.

In the Spione , only minor borrowings from real events and people can be made out. One of them is that Scotland Yard dug a supposed spy nest with the Soviet trade agency Arcos in 1926 . The exterior Haghis reminiscent of Lenin and Sonja works for him because her family by the secret police of the Czar was killed. The treason officer Jellusic could be inspired by the Austrian Colonel Redl .

Sonja is the only character who experiences a character development. The remaining figures, with their clear assignment to good or bad, serve efficiently for the rival groups to exchange blows. Haghi is a close relative of Doctor Mabuse , because like him he wants to dissolve order with a criminal group - an ideological intention is not recognizable with him - often changes his disguise and how that is portrayed by Rudolf Klein-Rogge .

Spione works according to the tried and tested action pattern of earlier screenplays by Thea von Harbou and is stylistically reminiscent of the previous long film Dr. Mabuse, the player from 1922. But Lang developed the genre of the espionage thriller to a decisive extent with Spione , Alfred Hitchcock made his contributions to his own films. In The 39 Steps , the Englishman even copied the idea of ​​the thick book that catches a bullet to save life. The MacGuffin , often ascribed to Hitchcock as an invention , already appears here in the form of international treaties, the discovery of which can trigger wars. The iconography of the spy thriller is also mapped out, especially for the film adaptations of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels: a criminal in a wheelchair, mini cameras, disguises, hiding places, a control center with modern communication equipment that is stormed at the end, an agent with a number as an alias , and agents who use seduction as a weapon. In its more mature form, the espionage thriller lost the clear separation of good and bad; how an individual gets caught between overpowering organizations is only shown by Lang in his film M (1931) , which is of course not about espionage .

restoration

Spione was restored by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation between 2003 and 2004 . Preserved film material from film archives in the Czech Republic, Austria, Australia, France and Russia served as the basis. A DVD edition with music by Donald Sosin was released in the UK in 2005. The film has also been available in Germany since 2007, in an edition with music by Neil Brand.

Special

In a nocturnal street scene in front of Colonel Jellusič's apartment, large-format Metropolis posters can be seen on a wooden wall in the background .

Reviews

"You can clearly see how the film the tension means of the novel and the drama disregard faces the opportunities that are peculiar to the camera, such settings, cropping, connections of images, increasing by effectively geschaute details." ( Vsevolod Pudovkin , 1928)

literature

  • Fritz Lang: I shoot 'spies' . In: Reclams Universum 44.2 (1928), pp. 617-618.
  • Thea von Harbou : Spies. Novel. (Large edition, with 16 images from the film of the same name), Verlag A. Scherl, Berlin 1928.
  • Anke Wilkening, Günter Agde (Hrsg.): Film history and film tradition. The versions of Fritz Lang's Spione 1928. CineGraph Babelsberg, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-936774-06-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ McGilligan, Patrick: Fritz Lang. The nature of the beast. Faber and Faber, London 1997, ISBN 0-571-19175-4 , pp. 109 and pp. 135-140
  2. ^ Pudowkin, Wsewolod: Film direction and film manuscript, Verlag der Lichtbildbühne, Berlin 1928, p. 212

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