Vanina

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Movie
Original title Vanina
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1922
length 69 minutes
Rod
Director Arthur von Gerlach
script Carl Mayer based
on motifs from the novella Vanina Vanini von Stendhal
production PAGU, Berlin
camera Frederik Fuglsang
Willibald Gaebel
occupation

Vanina , also known as Vanina or The gallows wedding is a German silent film from the year 1922. Directed by Arthur von Gerlach play Asta Nielsen , Paul Wegener and Paul Hartmann the leading roles.

action

The royal governor rules his city of Turin with a hard hand . His unyielding, authoritarian nature will one day lead to people revolting and daring to revolt. You even try to storm your palace. But the governor, physically handicapped and walking on crutches, has the rebellion put down with all his might, the leader Octavio arrested and sentenced to death. Meanwhile, the governor's daughter Vanina has fallen in love with Octavio and desperately wants to save him from the gallows. And so she decides to marry him.

Her father surprisingly agrees and allows Octavio to marry his daughter, but only to appear all the harder and more intransigent in front of the people. Because he intends to widow Vanina again immediately after the planned wedding. During the wedding, the governor ordered Octavio to be arrested again. Vanina is not ready to indifferently watch the sadistic game of her father and beats him to get her husband released. She forges a notice of dismissal for Octavio. Both try to get outside through the labyrinthine corridors of the prison, but their way out of the prison gate to freedom actually leads directly into the inner courtyard of the prison complex. The executioner is already waiting for Octavio there. Octavio ends up on the gallows, his deeply shocked bride dies a little later of a broken heart.

Production notes

Vanina was the film debut of theater director Arthur von Gerlach. The story is loosely based on the original Vanina Vanini von Stendhal .

The film premiered on October 6, 1922. The length was 1,550 meters, divided into five acts.

The expressionist film structures were designed by Caligari architect Walter Reimann .

Vanina was performed in Denmark and Finland in the same year 1922.

The same material was filmed again in 1961 by Roberto Rossellini under the title The fearless rebel (OT: Vanina Vanini ) in Italy.

Reviews

The Film-Kurier judged: "This film is the most consistent attempt to date to create a special art form from the conditions of the living image."

Reclam's film guide wrote of Vanina: “The director created an atmosphere of dire threat without spectacular means. The actors avoid pathetic exaggerations, which is particularly useful in the big scene between father and daughter. The staging is lively and exciting. "

Robert C. Allen found: "Vanina was the most Expressionist of Nielsen's films, full of shadows, maze-like corridors, and dank dungeons. Paul Wegener plays a demoniac governor whose daughter (Nielsen) falls in love with the leader of a revolutionary group (Paul Hartmann). The rebel is imprisoned, but Vanina frees him, only to find, after leading him through seemingly interminable, labyrinthine corridors, that the governor is waiting for them. Nielsen brilliantly adapts her essentially naturalistic style to the demands of an emotionally claustrophobic plot. As Lotte Eisner says, 'If this film is more astonishing for us today than many others, the reason is that Nielsen's acting is intensely modern - her eyes, her hands, the sweep of her figure betraying an immense sorrow, give a violent intensity and resonance to this Kammerspiele of souls. "

In an essay about the author Carl Mayer written by Jürgen Kasten for the Tagesspiegel it says: "In Scherben (1921) and Vanina (1922) almost every picture he designed stands visually powerful and powerful on its own. This tells more about the isolation and the loneliness of the characters as their already sparse speech. The silent, self-standing, precisely composed image - that is the starting point of Mayer's cinematic narration, for his fantasy and dramaturgy. "

literature

  • Eberhard Berger Vanina (The Gallows Wedding). In: Günther Dahlke, Günther Karl (Hrsg.): German feature films from the beginnings to 1933. A film guide. 2nd edition, p. 78 f. Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-89487-009-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Film-Kurier, October 7, 1922
  2. ↑ Reclams Filmführer, by Dieter Krusche, collaboration: Jürgen Labenski. P. 132. Stuttgart 1973.
  3. ^ Robert C. Allen in Sight & Sound
  4. ^ Der Tagesspiegel from June 26, 1994

Web links