Immortal Beloved (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Immortal Beloved |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1951 |
| length | 106 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Veit Harlan |
| script | Veit Harlan based on the novella Aquis submersus by Theodor Storm |
| production | Hans Domnick for Hans Domnick film production (Göttingen) |
| music | Wolfgang Zeller |
| camera | Werner Krien |
| cut | Margarete Steinborn |
| occupation | |
| |
Immortal Beloved is a German fiction film made in 1950 based on a novella by Theodor Storm with Kristina Söderbaum and Hans Holt in the leading roles. Söderbaum's husband Veit Harlan was the director , and this was his first post-war production. Massive protests formed against this return of the Jud-Süss director.
action
A summer party takes place on a Hamburg hotel ship. Dr. Talma. At this event, the man also meets the young Angelika von Hollstein. This woman's face reminds Talma of a painting with a portrait of a lady that he recently put up for auction at an auction house. Angelika cannot explain this coincidence either, and so they both trace the secret of this mysterious picture. Your trail leads to the Hallig Oland in Schleswig-Holstein. Here you can find out more about the young woman shown, whose name was Katharina von Hollstein and who was obviously an ancestor of Angelika.
Flashback to the 18th century: Katharina and the talented young painter Johannes once experienced a childhood love, which, however, was suddenly disturbed by Katharina's brother Wulf. In order to save his father's property from impending ruin, he demands that his sister marry the neighbor von der Risch, a rigid Junker. In the meantime Johannes has left for Paris to perfect his painting studies there. Meanwhile, old Count Hollstein, once the most important supporter of Johannes, dies of a stroke . Johannes returns soon and is delighted to find that Katharina has remained loyal to him and has withstood her brother's insistence and the Junker von der Risch's marriage proposal. But the irascible and violent Wulf hasn't given up yet and has been making his sister's life hell ever since. In order to pull Katharina out of Wulf's line of fire, Johannes sends his lover with a letter to an abbess, the sister of the dead count, in Itzehoe . There the harried young woman should come to rest and wait until Johannes can finally take her to his wife.
On the way back, Johannes comes across a forest tavern, where he meets the angry Wulf. The unrestrained drunk von der Risch is also present. Wulf von Hollstein finally chases his sharp dogs on Johannes, so that Johannes has to flee. With great difficulty he finds shelter in Katharina's room in the count's castle. His Katharina is back too, and it comes to a night of love. The next morning Johannes asked her brother for Katharina's hand in the hope that Wulf would calm down again. But his hatred of the gentle painter is still limitless, and so he simply shoots Johannes down. In order to cover up his nefarious deed, he dragged the wounded man to a forest ranger's house. Recovered again, Johannes tries again to establish contact with his beloved Katharina. She does not respond because his letters to her are intercepted and not forwarded. Johannes believes that Katharina has bowed to her brother's will and returns to Paris disappointed.
Katharina, in turn, assumes that her immortal lover is dead after all and gives herself to Pastor Georg Bonnix to avoid further violence from Wulf. He is domiciled in nowhere in Schleswig-Holstein, on the Hallig island of Oland. From the only night of love with Johannes under dramatic circumstances at Hollstein Castle, Katharina promptly became pregnant. Shortly before her confinement, the pastor married her in order not to let the young woman become a mother in a “state of sin”. One day Johannes returns to his old home, driven by the longing for his great and never-ending love for Katharina. He doesn't know where to look for her, she has disappeared. It so happened that Johannes was commissioned to make a portrait of Pastor Bonnix. He sees a four-year-old boy at the rectory and immediately thinks he recognizes those of his immortal lover, his Katharina, in his eyes. It is not much different for her when she sees the still unfinished portrait of her husband. The line, the coloring - everything literally breathes the art of the painter friend believed dead.
The pastor, anything but happy about this development, then asks John to leave as soon as possible. Then Johannes sees Katharina playing with the child, his son, in the garden. Katharina also sees the father of her child, but is so overwhelmed by her feelings that she does not want to speak to Johannes in the presence of the four-year-old. And so both lovers go to the little church on the Hallig to finally have a word. Then fate strikes mercilessly: In a moment of being unsupervised, the little boy went too close to the water and drowned in the process. Johannes, deeply convinced of his guilt for the death of his boy, asks Pastor Bonnix to be allowed to paint the dead, laid out boy. Instead of his name, he gives the picture the capital letters CPAS (Culpa patris aquis submersus) - "drowned in the water through the fault of the father" . Then John leaves the ominous place. But finally, after the pastor has released his wife, the tragic lovers find together forever.
Production notes
After Immensee and The Puppeteer, Immortal Beloved was already the third film adaptation of a model from Theodor Storm, which director Harlan undertook in his role as director and screenwriter. It is a free adaptation of Storm's novella Aquis submersus . Only after his second acquittal on the charge of a “crime against humanity” on April 29, 1950, the possibility of working as a film director again arose for the Jud Suess creator Harlan. For this complex see also: Lüth judgment .
The film was shot in the second half of 1950 in the film studio in Göttingen as well as on the Hallig Oland and in Itzehoe. Tilo von Berlepsch , actor of Johannes von der Risch's competitor, enables Harlan's film team to shoot the castle scenes at the ancestral home of his ancestors, Schloss Berlepsch .
The film passed the FSK examination on January 4, 1951. The premiere took place on January 31, 1951 in Herford in order to avoid demonstration marches by vehement Harlan critics in the metropolises . One day later, the film was shown in three also rather small towns in the Federal Republic of Germany: in Göttingen , Erlangen and Bad Oeynhausen . Police had to be called in several times in order to allow the film to be shown undisturbed.
Producer Hans Domnick was also in charge of production. The buildings come from Walter Haag . For the former silent film star Erna Morena , who had played his last film role ten years earlier in Harlan's infamous Jud Suess film, Immortal Beloved was the only post-war role and the last film role ever.
Political protests
In fact, Immortal Beloved was supposed to be in German cinemas as early as Christmas 1950. However, massive protests against the return of Jud Süß director Harlan to the German film scene had formed early on . The socialist youth movement Die Falken called for a ban on the showing of all upcoming Harlan films, and Hamburg's Senate Director Erich Lüth , also chairman of the press club, called on September 20, 1950 in a speech at the opening of the "Week of German Films" for a boycott of the upcoming Harlan film. Film on. In a legal dispute that dragged on for years, the producing Hans-Domnick-Filmproduktion and the distribution company Herzog-Film tried to force Lüth to withdraw its call, which was perceived as damaging to business. It was not until January 15, 1958, that Lüth was finally right by the Federal Constitutional Court , which saw its appeal covered by freedom of expression ( Lüth judgment ).
In other cities and regions, too, there were violent protests by certain sections of the population, there were riots in the metropolises - the Hamburg premiere was then moved to the nearby, much smaller Ahrensburg - but also in somewhat smaller cities such as Salzburg and Frankfurt am Main, where in February 1951 the Social Democratic City Council and the Jewish Community protested violently in open letters against the performance of the Immortal Beloved .
Harlan's immortal mistress even caused sharp verbal arguments between individual press products. The trade journal Film-Echo spoke out in favor of the production, while the Hamburg Echo replied on January 19, 1951: “To the credit of the German film industry as a whole, it must be said that by no means all of its members are enthusiastic about Harlans Include the come back in those egg dances that the 'film echo' tries to stage the master of the cinematic anti-Semitic agitation keyboard. "
criticism
Die Zeit wrote in 1951 that Harlan was such an "eminently acting director", whose films had such amazing acting performances that the audience forgot to "think about the content and meaning of the film". Not even that had succeeded with the Immortal Beloved ; the actors would suffer from the "dramatic anemia of the script". Harlan's words that "[a] ll true art" are aimed at "redeeming" and his "speculating on religiosity" would bring the film "threateningly close to the political 'Harlan case'".
Curt Riess, who had returned from exile, scoffed at the directing performance of the former Nazi film favorite, "Harlan tried to" once again enrich German film. "The lexicon of international films called the film a" [l] armomyantes soul drama ”and the attempt“ to force a comeback with familiar topics ”. The film’s large dictionary of people judges that Harlan remained "true to his pre-war theme of pompously told, female anguish".
Paimann's film lists summed up that the “eternally new story” is “drama routinized ... designed by impressive actors: particularly effective for a female audience.” The director has “often transformed the melancholy of poetry and the Halligen landscape” into pathos, “of the Even film-makers (Rococo times) and composers were unable to free themselves. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ Harlan: his "Fall" and his film , Die Zeit , February 1, 1951, No. 5
- ↑ Der Spiegel of February 7, 1951
- ↑ Der Spiegel of March 21, 1951
- ↑ See the debate about Harlan after 1945 on cinegraph.de
- ↑ Flyer from Die Falken ( Memento from February 11, 2015 in the web archive archive.today )
- ↑ The “Immortal Beloved” in Frankfurt on stadtgeschichte-ffm.de ( Memento of the original dated February 11, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Hamburger Echo from January 19, 1951 on cinegraph.de
- ↑ Die Zeit No. 5, February 1, 1951.
- ↑ Curt Riess: There's only one. The book of German film after 1945. Henri Nannen, Hamburg 1958, p. 134.
- ↑ Immortal Beloved. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ 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 3: F - H. Barry Fitzgerald - Ernst Hofbauer. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 537.
- ↑ Immortal Beloved. In: Paimann's film lists.
Web links
- Immortal Beloved in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Immortal lovers at filmportal.de