Ssanin (film)

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Movie
Original title Ssanin
Country of production Austria
Poland
original language German
Publishing year 1924
length 100 minutes
Rod
Director Friedrich Fehér
script Benno Vigny
Friedrich Feher based
on the novel of the same name by Michail Petrowitsch Arzybaschew
production Friedrich Feher for Vita-Film, Vienna and Feniks-Film, Warsaw
camera Eugene Hamm
occupation

Ssanin is an Austro-Polish silent film from 1924 by Friedrich Fehér with Oskar Beregi in the title role.

action

Russia at the end of the Tsarist era. The country is fermenting, and unrest and dissatisfaction with the state of society at the beginning of the 20th century spread. One of the spokesmen against the rigid social order and the general standstill is the revolutionary Vladimir Petrovich Ssanin, a product of his time: raw in demeanor and yet human, passionate and demanding. He advises his sister to have an abortion, he drives his best friends to suicide by convincing them of the futility of their empty, supposedly depraved life, and he rapes the beautiful Karssavina.

Ssanin is a revolutionary in many ways, but above all he calls for a sexual revolution, and he tries vehemently to put into practice the amorality he praised every day. Numerous characters act and exist in his living environment, their lives partly failed, partly marked by illnesses and personal dramas: there is the elegant and smooth officer Sarudin, a seducer of the first order, the Jewish philosopher Sselowejtschik, whose life is heavily burdened, the erotic Karssavina, whose beauty will one day doom her, the student idealist Jurij or the moribund teacher Semjenow.

Production notes

The director Feher had tried to get the filming rights from the novelist Mikhail Arzybaschew since the First World War , but initially received a negative answer. In fierce competition with German and, above all, American producers, however, he finally won the race to film Ssanin . The film was shot from May to July 1924, the outdoor shots were made in Grodno , then Polish , now Belarus . The enormously high production costs amounted to three and a half billion crowns , and a total of 35,000 meters of negative material was exposed. When it was premiered on November 7, 1924, both in Vienna and Warsaw, the length of the film had shrunk to less than 2,600 meters.

Feher Boris Newolin served as the Polish-Russian dialogue director, also led as Boleslaw Nevolin or Newolin. The buildings were designed by Alfred Kunz , the costumes by Karl Hollitzer.

The film is based on the novel of the same name that was confiscated by the tsarist authorities as "pornography" in 1907, but was released again a year later ... as "a poetic work of great value". “The novel became a sensational success in tsarist Russia because it captured all the shit of the unsuccessful revolution of 1905, a hodgepodge of ideologies that was cumbersome to reflect on and yet irresistible for its time, as it conveyed what the educated Russian class in particular felt at the time: Boredom and desolation of a life restricted by excessive conventions. "

As early as 1922, Friedrich Zelnik was shooting a German adaptation of the former scandal novel under the title " Lyda Ssanin " in Berlin . The title role was played by his wife Lya Mara .

Reviews

In Vienna's Neue Freie Presse it was said: “Ssanin proved to be still so fresh that he withstood both the dramatization and the filming successfully. In contrast to the gripping play, which is based almost exclusively on the love chapters of the novel, the film also shows Volodja Ssanin as the intellectual and not only erotic revolutionary. Likewise, the representation in the film is almost more lively than that on the stage. As in the novel, Ssanin has become the driving force again. Oskar Beregi forms a Ssanin of ardent humanity, restrained temperament and unconventional simplicity. Magda Sonjas Lyda is more natural in the film in expressing the whole range of emotions, which fluctuates between love, passion and despair than on the speaking stage. (...) The exceptionally good direction is supported by a photograph of outstanding fineness and precision, both in the open-air and in the interior shots. (...) "Ssanin" is one of Feher's most successful works. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Arzybaschew on the Ssanin film adaptation in the Neue Freie Presse
  2. ^ Information according to Walter Fritz: The Austrian feature films of the silent film era (1907–1930). No. 859. Vienna 1967.
  3. ↑ a b Sex at the Tsar on spiegel.de
  4. ↑ "Ssanin". In:  Neue Freie Presse , November 11, 1924, p. 10 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp