Blown tracks

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Movie
Original title Blown tracks
Blown tracks Logo 001.png
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1938
length 78 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Veit Harlan
script Thea from Harbou
Felix Lützkendorf
Veit Harlan
production Franz Tapper
Helmut Eweler
for Majestic-Film
music Hans-Otto Borgmann
camera Bruno Mondi
cut Marianne Behr
occupation

Blown Traces is a German crime film by Veit Harlan from 1938.

action

Paris for the 1867 World's Fair : 18-year-old Seraphine Lawrence comes to the city with her mother Madeleine. Madeleine was born in Paris, married her husband here and went to Canada, where Seraphine was born. She is seeing the city again after 20 years. The streets are overcrowded, around two million people are visiting for the world exhibition in Paris. Madeleine feels uncomfortable and the doctor Dr. Morot helps the two women to get to their hotel. Here it turns out that Madeleine's room reservation never arrived. The hotel is overcrowded, but Madeleine can move into a single room under the roof. Seraphine is led by Dr. Brought Morot to a smaller hotel. Both roam the city at night and go dancing. The next morning Morot was asked to speak by the Police Prefect of Paris and Count Duval, President of the World Exhibition Committee. Madeleine is dead, but the circumstances of death should be kept secret in order to avoid a mass panic among the guests, which could result in far more deaths. All those present are sworn to secrecy.

Seraphine returns the next morning to the hotel where her mother was staying. Nobody there seems to remember her or her mother, the mother's room has apparently been renovated for a long time and all of Madeleine's suitcases have disappeared. Only hotel owner Dompierre makes a small mistake when he seems to know the name of Seraphine's hotel, even though she did not name it. Seraphine turns to Dr. Morot, but he too pretends to have never seen her mother. Although Seraphine contacts various public authorities, including the police prefecture and the consulate, no one can help her. Madeleine's name does not appear on the passenger list of the steamer on which Seraphine came to France from Canada with Madeleine. Seraphine is desperate and thinks she is going insane. Because Dr. Morot, whom she had perceived as a friend, refused to give her any support, she wanted to get rid of him and spoke to a strange man, who told her in front of Dr. Morot takes protection and continues with her. It's about sensational reporter Henri Poquet, who is interested in Seraphine's story. He wants to print an article about Madeleine's disappearance, but the big newspapers have already been banned from reprinting the story. The smaller magazine Brandfackel put the article into print, but was banned by the police shortly afterwards. No article appears.

Seraphine almost gives up when she meets the piano-playing music student Gustave in the hotel. He never knew Madeleine, but did not doubt Seraphine's statement that his mother had come to Paris with him. In fact, it occurs to Seraphine that her mother wrote down the address of a Madame Printemps who served her on the steamer. Seraphine and Gustave travel to Madame Printemps, who confirms that she has served mother and daughter. She even still has her list of ships, which has Madeleine's name on it, and Gustave takes the list to go to the police. On the way back, Seraphine and Gustave are ambushed on the train, with the thieves only taking the list. The police prefect Seraphine wants to turn to about the theft is again at a ball. Morot visits Seraphine at the ball to confront the Prefect of Police when she sees a woman in the crowd wearing her mother's jewelry. Half mad, Seraphine pulls the woman by her hair through the crowd to the police prefect. The wife is the friend of Maurice, who works as a housekeeper in the mother's hotel. Hotel manager Dompierre had Madeleine's clothes burned in a panic after her death, with Maurice keeping the jewelry for himself and giving it to his girlfriend. Maurice is summoned and Seraphine describes it as a murderer, but replies in emotion that Madeleine was long ago dead. Seraphine collapses. She wants to know where the mother is now, but the prefect only says that she was burned. Why, nobody is allowed to say. When Seraphine leaves the ballroom half-mad, she is hit by a carriage and taken to a hospital.

In the meantime, Gustave has had 5,000 leaflets produced in Poquet's print shop, which are distributed overnight in Paris. You ask how a woman can disappear in a city covered by the police and the authorities. The prefect of police now knows that only Seraphine can prevent a disaster. He reveals to her that Madeleine died of the plague . Should this become public, a mass panic would be inevitable. He asks her to sign a declaration that she has come to Paris alone. She is doing an invaluable service to her mother's fatherland. Seraphine remembers how much her mother loved Paris and signs the paper.

production

Blown Traces is based on the radio play of the same name by Hans Rothe . The film was shot from March to May 1938 in Berlin, Munich and Paris. On July 25, 1938, the censorship banned the film from young people. On September 21, 1938, Blown Traces had its premiere in Berlin's Gloria-Palast.

The film and book are based on an incident at the Paris World's Fair in 1889. According to current research, however, it was a modern legend .

With Alfred Hitchcock disappears A lady a thematically similar film was released in August 1938 after a book presentation. A much more similar version to Blown Traces appeared in 1955 as the episode Into Thin Air of the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents

Another version is the British film Paris at Midnight (1950) with Jean Simmons and Dirk Bogarde (directors: Terence Fisher and Anthony Darnborough ). Its literature was So Long at the Fair by Anthony Thorne.

As early as 1919, the subject was covered in one of the episodes of the film Eerie Tales . This time, the literature model was The Apparition of Anselma Heine .

In X-Factor: The Incredible, there is episode 38, the 6th episode of season 4, episode 5, room 245 , in which a similar story is told.

criticism

For the film service , Blown Traces was a "conventionally designed, but quite exciting entertainment film with dramatic accents, somewhat word-heavy based on a radio play."

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See imdb.com
  2. ↑ [1]
  3. ↑ Episode 38, Episode 5, Room 24 , X-Factor - The Unbelievable, rtl2.de
  4. ↑ Blown tracks. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used