One night in the Prater
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | One night in the Prater (Austria: The Lena Schmidt case) |
| Original title | The Case of Lena Smith |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1929 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Josef von Sternberg |
| script |
Jules Furthman , Julian Johnson , Samuel Ornitz |
| production | Paramount Pictures |
| camera | Harold Rosson |
| cut | Helen Lewis |
| occupation | |
| |
One night in the Prater (original title: The Case of Lena Smith ) is the last silent film by Josef von Sternberg and was premiered on January 19, 1929. As with most other productions of the time, no copies of this film have survived .
action
The Viennese maid Lena Smith has a child from the young officer Franz Hofrat, with whom she is secretly married. When Franz's parents found out about the child, they took it against the mother's will. Franz feels helpless in the situation and commits suicide. After the court rejects Lena's request for the child, she kidnaps her child to Hungary, where she raises it. At the end of the film, the boy went to war in 1914.
background
The last known copy of the film was destroyed by the production company in the 1950s because the film was shot on nitrocellulose material and should no longer be stored due to the risk of fire.
A good scene transcription was written in 1929 by Takada Masaru for the Japanese magazine Eiga Orai . In 2003, a four-minute fragment reappeared in a junk shop in Manchuria . The fragment shows Lena with her friends Pepi and Poldi, walking across the Vienna Prater and flirting with two young officers. The only surviving fragment of The Case of Lena Smith was published on DVD by the Austrian Film Museum.
The publication Josef von Sternberg reconstructs Josef von Sternberg using 150 original photos, set drawings, script and production documents, literary texts and several essays by international authors . The Case of Lena Smith , which appeared in the FilmmuseumSynemaPublications series in 2007, made the film.
Reviews
Mary Meerson of the Cinémathèque française called the film “the most beautiful of all silent films”.
literature
- Alexander Horwath , Michael Omasta (eds.), Josef von Sternberg. The Case of Lena Smith. Vienna: SYNEMA - Society for Film and Media, 2007, ISBN 978-3-901644-22-1 ( FilmmuseumSynema Publications Volume 5).
- Alexander Horwath, Reconstruction of a film , In: Paolo Caneppele, Alexander Horwath (Ed.), Collection , Vienna: SYNEMA - Society for Film and Media, 2014, p. 68ff. ISBN 978-3-901644-56-6 ( FilmmuseumSynemaPublications Volume 22)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Andreas Busche: Three minutes is a film . In: the daily newspaper , October 26, 2007 p. 15f
- ↑ DVD The Salvation Hunters / The Case of Lena Smith (fragment)
- ^ Book of Josef von Sternberg. The Case of Lena Smith
- ↑ Peter Dettmering: Conflict Management through Creativity: Studies on Literature and Film , 2004, ISBN 3826027485 (page 191)