Diary of a Lost Woman (1929)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Diary of a Lost One |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1929 |
| length | 109 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Georg Wilhelm Pabst |
| script | Rudolf Leonhardt , based on the novel by Margarete Böhme |
| production | Georg Wilhelm Pabst |
| music | Otto Stenzel |
| camera | Sepp Allgeier |
| occupation | |
| |
Diary of a Lost is a German film drama by Georg Wilhelm Pabst from 1929. The screenplay of this silent film is based on the 1905 novel of the same name by Margarete Böhme .
action
On the day of her confirmation ceremony, Marie, called Thymian, the daughter of the pharmacist Robert Henning, has to see her father's housekeeper being chased out of the house for reasons unknown to her and committing suicide. That same night, Thyme is impregnated while she is unconscious by the provisional (manager) Meinert, who runs her father's pharmacy. After the child is born, the indignant family council decides that thyme should be placed in an educational institution. There she has to live, work and suffer like in a prison under the strict and sadistic regime of the headmaster Engelmann and his wife, while her child is housed with a seedy wet nurse. Thyme's father is now marrying Meta, formerly his housekeeper. Together with her roommate Erika and supported by Count Nikolaus Osdorff, an entertaining and dependent playboy , Thyme manages to break out of the reform home .
She rushes to her child and finds that it has died. Now she follows her friend Erika to a noble brothel , where she is welcomed in a friendly manner and works as a prostitute , but tries to escape this place again through other work. After the death of pharmacist Henning, it turns out that he bequeathed all of his possessions to his daughter Thymian, but Meta and her children who were born in the meantime had nothing. Osdorff, who has since been dismissed by his foster uncle because of incompetence and wastefulness, marries Thymian with the prospect of a small fortune. But the pharmacy is in debt. Henning had borrowed large sums of money from Provisor Meinert and had given him shares in the pharmacy as security. Meinert sees himself as the new owner, pays Thyme her share of 45,000 marks and heartlessly chases the widowed pharmacist's wife Meta out of the house with her children.
Thyme takes pity and gives all of the money to her little half-siblings. When Osdorff found out about this, he committed suicide. His uncle, Count Osdorff, ruined the widowed thyme and introduced her to aristocratic circles. As a widowed Countess Osdorff and as a new member of an association of charitable women, she confidently pays a visit to the educational institution, which was once the place of her suffering, and makes a passionate plea against mendacity and hypocrisy and for more humanity.
Remarks
The film contains only a few basic features of Margarete Böhme's novel and often deviates significantly from them. The material was filmed in 1912 (directed by Fritz Bernhardt) and 1918 (directed by Richard Oswald).
The buildings in the film were made by Ernő Metzner and Emil Hasler .
After Fritz Bernhardt's presumable film adaptation of the book under the title Diary of a Lost in 1912 and Richard Oswald's melodramatic implementation of the material from 1918, this was already the third film adaptation of the novel.
For American actress Louise Brooks , Diary of a Lost was the second film in a year directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst. She was 23 years old at the time, while the character she played, Thyme, is around fourteen at the beginning of the story.
The film was approved by the Berlin Film Inspectorate in a length of 2863 meters on September 24, 1929 (No. 23533) and premiered on October 15, 1929 at Berlin's Kurfürstendamm UT . After there had been complaints about the "demoralizing effect of the picture strip", the film was again submitted to the film supervisory board on December 5, 1929 for examination. However, a variant shortened to 2650 meters was shown to the film inspection authority. The film's approval was revoked and it was banned.
The locations are Wismar (parents' house and pharmacy), a big city and the beach of Swinoujscie .
Reviews
- "(...); Kintoppkolportage, which, however, is still moving today due to the fascinating direction by Pabst and the impressive game of Brooks. ”(Rating: 3 stars = very good) - Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz in Lexicon“ Films on TV ” (extended new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 798
- Christiane Mückenberger thinks in German feature films from the beginning to 1933 that “the schoolgirl charm of the beautiful Louise Brooks fits the role better here than in Pandora's Box ”.
literature
- Margarete Böhme : Diary of a Lost One. From a dead person . Photo-technical reprint of the luxury edition from 1907. Foreword to the new edition in 1988 by Jürgen Dietrich . Kronacher Verlag Moodrdeich / Reinbek, Witzwort 1988, 305 pp.
- Margarete Böhme : Diary of a Lost One. From a dead person . Newly edited and with an afterword by Hanne Kulessa . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1989, 272 pages, ISBN 3-518-38140-7
- Heide Soltau: The Diary of a Lost One. From the estate of a dead person. The world success of a book and the consequences . Publications from the research project "Literature and Sociology" (Issue 8). Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Training, Klagenfurt 1993, 21 pp.
- Christiane Mückenberger The diary of someone lost . In Günther Dahlke, Günther Karl (Hrsg.): German feature films from the beginnings to 1933. A film guide. Henschel Verlag, 2nd edition, Berlin 1993, pp. 195 ff. ISBN 3-89487-009-5
Web links
- Diary of a Lost in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Diary of a lost person at filmportal.de (including contemporary censorship cards, premiere poster, photos)
- Criticism collection at rottentomatoes