Variety show (film)

Movie
Original title	Vaudeville
Country of production	Germany
original language	German
Publishing year	1925
length	102 minutes
Rod
Director	Ewald André Dupont
script	Leo Birinski Ewald André Dupont
production	Erich Pommer
music	Ernö Rapée
camera	Karl friend Carl Hoffmann
occupation
Emil Jannings : "Boss" Huller Maly Delschaft : Mrs. Huller Lya de Putti : Berta-Marie Warwick Ward : Artinelli Georg John : Sailor Kurt Gerron : dock workers Georg Baselt : Variety Agent Paul Rehkopf : spectators at the fair Trude Hesterberg : spectator in the variety theater Charles Lincoln : Spanish artist Alice Hechy : actress The 3 Codonas : Artists Enrico Rastelli : juggler

Newspaper advertisement for Emil Janning's Varieté in the Plankenstein cinema in Merano , November 10, 1926

Varieté is a German feature film by Ewald André Dupont from 1925 about a jealous drama in the circus environment. The film is based on the novel The Oath of Stephan Huller by Felix Hollaender . At the Berlinale 2015, a new, digitally restored version of the film was presented by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation .

action

Inmate No. 28 "Boss" Huller, convicted of murder, is called to the prison director because his wife has filed a pardon for him after ten years in prison. So he tells the prison director his life.

He was a famous trapeze artist who had come down to the show booth owner on the Reeperbahn due to an accident . Here he met the seductive Berta-Marie, who appeared as a dancer for him. He left his wife and child and fought with her in the fairground. Here the two discovered an impresario who was looking for a new partner for the famous artist Artinelli.

Huller became a "catcher" and performed together with Berta-Marie and Artinelli in the winter garden . When Berta-Marie cheated on him with Artinelli, he was furious with jealousy and stabbed Artinelli in a knife duel when he could no longer keep his feelings in check. Then he turned himself in to the police.

The request for mercy is granted and Huller is released.

background

Variety show was premiered on November 16, 1925 in Berlin's Ufa-Palast am Zoo and became one of the greatest German film successes of 1925. The director Dupont then received engagements in the USA and Great Britain, where he worked from 1926 to 1931.

The film used elements of the chamber feature film such as the unconditional obsession of the main character, their rebellion against and escape from the monotonous everyday life as well as the inevitability of the fateful development of the plot. The highlights of the film include the shots of Karl Freund's swinging camera, looking from the trapeze at the audience in the stalls and showing their increasing excitement.

Others

In a short scene, two men are playing unicycle hockey . This is probably the oldest documentation of this sport.

Reviews

• Siegfried Kracauer put it: "Dupont's achievement consisted in giving the outside world of his film a visible shape with the same cinematic means that were originally used to make an inner world visible from the outside."

• Reclam 's film guide judged: "Whether it is the Schaubude in St. Pauli or the Berlin 'winter garden', the caravan from the beginning or later the luxury hotel - the milieu and surroundings are always convincingly real."

• Thomas Kramer wrote in Reclam's Lexicon of German Films: “The fatalistic triangle story - Huller's escape from everyday life into libertine is first played out with relish, then converted into a gruesome sign - only marginally interested Dupont. It is the formal implementation that makes this film a masterpiece. "

• Lexicon of international film : "Optically virtuoso silent film chamber play in the style of 'new, objective and neutral realism'."

literature

• Fred Gehler Variety Show . In Günther Dahlke, Günther Karl (Hrsg.): German feature films from the beginnings to 1933. A film guide. Henschel Verlag, 2nd edition, Berlin 1993, pp. 120 ff. ISBN 3-89487-009-5

• Friedrich von Zglinicki: The way of the film. Berlin (Rembrandt) 1956, pp. 437, 506.

• HJP Bergmeier & Rainer E. Lotz (Eds.): The Alex Hyde Bio / Discography (English) / Illustrated Biography and Discography (Alex Hyde, American jazz band leader), Jazzfreund Publication, 1986, 90 Pages, ill., Soft cover.

• Horst Bergmeier and Rainer E. Lotz: Hot music in German film. An overview from the beginnings to 1933. In: Fox on 78, Ed. Klaus Krüger, Munich-Dietramszell, Heft 25, 2009, p. 67 (= B & L special, p. 70 and 79)

Web links

• Variety in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Variety at filmportal.de
• Variety show at the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation
• Variety show on koki-freiburg.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Fred Gehler in: German Feature Films from the Beginnings to 1933 , Günther Dahlke and Günter Karl (eds.), Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1993, p. 120
2. ↑ quoted from: German Feature Films from the Beginnings to 1933 , Günther Dahlke and Günter Karl (eds.), Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1993, p. 122
3. ↑ Reclams Filmführer, by Dieter Krusche with the assistance of Jürgen Labenski, Stuttgart, 5th ed. 1982, p. 559
4. ↑ Reclams Lexikon des Deutschen Films, Stuttgart 1995, p. 323
5. ↑ Variety show. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed August 26, 2017 .