City of Anatol

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Movie
Original title City of Anatol
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1936
length 93 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Viktor Tourjansky
script Peter Francke
Walter Supper
production Alfred Greven for UFA
music Walter Gronostay
camera Karl Puth
cut Eduard von Borsody
occupation

Stadt Anatol is a German adventure film directed by Viktor Tourjansky with Gustav Fröhlich and Brigitte Horney in the leading roles. The premiere took place on 16 October 1936 at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo of Berlin .

action

There is a lot of excitement in the small, remote Turkish town of Anatol when the adventurer Jacques Gregor lands in an airplane in the middle of a meadow. It's a homecoming for Jacques, as he once spent his life here as a constantly penniless thief. Franziska, whom he also knows from before, he tells that he has big plans for this sleepy nest on the edge of nowhere. He wants to extract oil here and create a real economic boom that will bring great prosperity to everyone.

To do this, however, he had to purchase the old salt mine from Franziska , which she had owned since her father's death. Franziska doesn't understand why Jacques wants to buy it. Under the bottom of the mine there is oil, Jacques explains to the girl who has matured into a woman, with whom he has been friends since childhood, under the seal of silence. All of Anatol will be extremely rich, a paradise on earth! Jacques promises millions can be earned here. Even if she cannot fully understand the meaning of oil, Franziska trusts her childhood friend and lets him do it.

Big money beckons, and suddenly everyone is in the process of supporting Gregor's windy plan financially, even if nobody knows what it's actually about. The melon dealer suspects the construction of a huge water pipe, others speak of the alleged recovery of an old Turkish treasure. Jacques acquires the bear pit and an old quarry from Jaskulski, Franziska's plump, stocky admirer. Jaskulski believes that he has made a good deal with these sales and has tricked the supposedly idiot Gregor, his adversary for the favor of Franziska.

Jacques' client Garcia in distant Istanbul soon set a deadline for the young Gregor. By then, oil must be found, otherwise he will stop making payments. But as much as Jacques searches, none of his wells unearths an oil well. He even has to borrow a substantial sum from Jaskulski to continue drilling. After all, Jacques succeeds and his drilling actually hits the “black gold”. Jacques is overjoyed and in his mind sees himself at the side of the distinguished Anatol resident Sonja Yvolandi, with whose grandmother he has also signed a cooperation agreement because of an expected oil deal on their land. The biggest winner from the oil rush, on the other hand, is the largely penniless Franziska Maniu, on whose bottom most of the springs are located.

The economic success means that all sorts of sinister figures and soldiers of fortune soon find their way into the city, half-silly speculators and ruthless traders. The oil rush has turned many city dwellers who once led a quiet life into greedy and unscrupulous contemporaries: only money counts instead of established friendships. Waiter Xaver has opened his own bar, Jaskulski, whose unsuccessful oil search in his vineyard cost him a lot of money, drowns his jealousy of Jacques, who actually doesn't want Franziska at all, in expensive champagne. But the new oil magnate does not want to hear him, her heart beats for the childhood sweetheart Jacques.

Several residents of Anatol tear down their houses, suspecting oil wells on the building site, while others commit crimes. The new oil wealth brought only envy and resentment to Anatol's residents. The old woman Yvolandi also believes she is one of the boom winners thanks to her collaboration with Jacques Gregor. She's giving a big party, half of Anatol has come. Bad news breaks in. The holes hit a water vein on your property! Now numerous dreams collapse. Sonja sees her future with Jacques Gregor bursting and turns away from him. In general, the much older and more successful General Manager Garcia seems much more to her taste. The Yvolandis society dissolves. Jaskulski gets drunk to the point of unconsciousness, since he has just accelerated Jacques' and that of the city.

A big fire lights up the night, followed by explosions. Jaskulski used dynamite to blow up the mine with the profitable oil discoveries. Soon the fire spreads across the board and also affects the city of Anatol. The whole glory of the new buildings become a victim of the sea of ​​flames when the sparks from the burning mine trickle down onto the roofs. “A woman wanders through the smoking ruins. Franziska finds Jacques passed out, and pulls him up. In view of the destroyed city, two young, strong people find each other again. Only the first battle is lost, but the strength is unbroken. They will work and create on the sacred soil of their homeland, whose riches need hardworking, pure hands. Hands that grip tight and will build a new one on the site of the lost city, a healthy, sensible, happy community, not a cauldron of meanness and senseless waste. The - new Anatol! "

Production notes

The film was shot from May to July 1936. At the premiere, the film received the rating "artistically valuable" and was banned from young people. The re-performance after the war took place in 1950.

The film was based on a novel by Bernhard Kellermann , 'Die Stadt Anatol'.

City of Anatol was the first German film by director Viktor Tourjansky, who fled from revolution- torn Russia to Western Europe.

Rose Stradner played her last German film role here: a cold-hearted, calculating young woman. In July 1937 she emigrated to the United States , where she mainly played theater.

For the screenwriter Walter Supper , his film activity ended in the same year 1936. Since he refused to separate from his Jewish wife, he has not received any more assignments since then. Another film script work on a 1942 film was not mentioned in the opening credits.

Otto Hunte and Willy Schiller designed the extensive film structures, Arno Richter designed the costumes.

Jens Keith took over the choreography of the dances. Editor Eduard von Borsody also assisted the director Tourjansky. Theo Nischwitz took care of the special effects .

A French version of the city ​​of Anatol was also produced with Puits en flammes . Josseline Gaël (Horney role) and Georges Rigaud (Fröhlich role) took on the main roles there . The world premiere took place in Paris on April 2, 1937. With this version and the French version by Glückskinder , the tradition of making French versions of German films at the same time ended in 1930.

Reception and criticism

Became known Hitler mention of the film in an anti Romanian rant:

“The Romanian farmer is just a poor head of cattle. What otherwise appears are without a doubt only the most miserable circles. The film 'City of Anatol' portrayed the milieu of this Balkan petroleum development really well. People who just because an oil loader happens to run under their floor, come into possession of a flowing gold source without doing any work, that is completely against any natural order. "

The film's large personal encyclopedia wrote that the film drama typical of its time exuded “the zeitgeist of National Socialist Germany (will to build, visionary thinking and action)”, but not “brown ideology”. The great success of the film led to a large number of other job offers at Tourjansky.

The city ​​of Anatol described 6000 films as an "adventure film with artfully staged sensational scenes"

The lexicon of international films considered the film to be a typical German adventure film of the Nazi era: "Dodging into the exotic, a pinch of zeitgeist (" the down-to-earth "), technical effort in the brilliantly filmed disaster closure, pseudo-humorous and stilted." However, it is about one of Tourjansky's best performances.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Original quote from the program booklet of the Illustrierte Film-Kurier, No. 2531.
  2. ↑ Kay Less : "In life, more is taken from you than given ...". Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. ACABUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8 , p. 58.
  3. ^ Henry Picker : Hitler's table talks in the Führer Headquarters. Origin, structure, consequences of National Socialism . Propyläentaschenbuch bei Ullstein, Berlin 1997, p. 154 (recording from February 26, 1942 evening)
  4. ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 8: T - Z. David Tomlinson - Theo Zwierski. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 21.
  5. ↑ 6000 films, critical notes from the cinema years 1945-58. Handbook V of the Catholic Film Critics, edited by Klaus Brüne. 4th edition Düsseldorf 1980, p. 406.
  6. ↑ Klaus Brüne (Red.): Lexikon des Internationale Films Volume 7, p. 3575. Reinbek near Hamburg 1987.

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