Madness (1919)

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Movie
Original title madness
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1919
length 1662 meters, after censorship 1482 meters / 18 fps, 72 minutes
Rod
Director Conrad Veidt
script Margarete Lindau-Schulz ,
Hermann Fellner
production Conrad Veidt for Veidt-Film Berlin
camera Carl Hoffmann ,
Karl Freund (questionable)
occupation

Wahnsinn is a German silent film drama that Conrad Veidt realized in 1919 in the Zoo-Atelier Berlin for his own production company Veidt-Film Berlin based on a script by Margarete Lindau-Schulz and Hermann Fellner. It was based on a story by the author Kurt Münzer , who can be assigned to magical realism in the history of literature.

background

Veidt himself played the banker Lorenzen, Reinhold Schünzel , Gussy Holl and the dancer Grit Hegesa also took part. Carl Hoffmann photographed the sinister plot. Maybe it was Karl Freund too . The film structures were created by Willi A. Herrmann .

The film was announced with considerable artistic advertising expenditure and had its world premiere in Berlin on October 15, 1919 in the representative Lichtspielpalast Marmorhaus on Kurfürstendamm .

Insanity was censored twice: In 1919, the Berlin police issued a youth ban on the 5 files and 1662 meter long strip under No. 43–414. The Reichs-Filmzensur also maintained the youth ban in 1921 under No. 4281 vis-à-vis the distribution company Uckerfilm Berlin, despite the reduction to 1,482 meters.

The film that came before Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (first performance on February 27, 1920) is now considered lost.

action

The banker Lorenzen learns that his lover Marion and his authorized signatory Jörges are cheating on him. He has a nervous breakdown and his doctor advises him to travel so that he can get other thoughts. A gypsy, whom he meets on the way, prophesies that he will find a chest that will bring him the greatest happiness, but also death. As if madly, he searches for the chest. In his visions she appears to him, together with a beautiful young girl. He actually found the chest in a junk shop, but it didn't open. From a young dealer who bears the features of the girl from the visions, he acquires a mysterious key with which he manages to open the chest when he is back home. Marion, who was forced into prostitution by Jörges, comes back to Lorenzen, but he no longer recognizes her in his madness. Jörges is after Marion and locks Lorenzen in the chest to turn him off. The lock snaps shut and can no longer be opened, so that Lorenzen suffocates. The Gypsy's prophecy has come true.

criticism

The Erste Internationale Film-Zeitung (Berlin) published a description in the style of Expressionism on October 11, 1919 in Volume 13, No. 40, at pp. 50-51.

The film was also published in the morning edition of the Berliner Tageblatt, Volume 48, Number 494 of October 19, 1919 (author anonymous), in the Film-Kurier (Berlin) Volume 1, Number 116 of October 19, 1919, p. 1 by J. Brandt, and in Der Film (Berlin) Volume 4, Number 42, also from October 19, 1919 on pages 46 and 54 discussed by Fritz Podehl .

literature

  • Wheeler Winston Dixon: A History of Horror. Rutgers University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-8135-5039-8 , p. 11.
  • Peter Hutchings: The A to Z of Horror Cinema. Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland 2009.
  • Christian Rogowski (Ed.): The Many Faces of Weimar Cinema: Rediscovering Germany's Filmic Legacy (Screen cultures: German film and the visual). Camden House, 2010, ISBN 978-1-57113-429-5 , pp. 3, 13, 17, 26, 104, 109, 115, 119, 25, 34,136, 143, 150 ff.
  • Gerd-Peter Rutz: Representations of film in literary fictions of the twenties and thirties (= contributions to media aesthetics and media history. Volume 8). LIT-Verlag, Münster 2000, ISBN 3-8258-4342-4 , pp. 155-159.
  • John T. Soister: Conrad Veidt on Screen: A Comprehensive Illustrated Filmography. McFarland & Company Pub., 2009, ISBN 978-0-7864-4511-0 .
  • Friedrich v. Zglinicki: The way of the film. The history of cinematography and its predecessors. Rembrandt Verlag, Berlin 1956.

Web links

Individual references, comments

  1. ↑ cf. Zglinicki p. 349 f. and http://www.cinegraph.de/etc/ateliers/zoo.html
  2. ↑ cf. The shop prince. In: filmportal.de . German Film Institute , accessed on September 20, 2016 .
  3. ↑ opened in 1913, cf. Kellerhoff January 15, 2013: “The most magnificent cinema in the capital opens, the marble house at Kurfürstendamm No. 236, right across from the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. The eponymous facade is just one of the attractions of the luxury film theater. The expressionist wall and ceiling decorations in the auditorium and the ten-part, backlit glass ceiling in the foyer are just as spectacular. ” , Zglinicki p. 437 f. and museumsportal ( Online ( Memento of the original from November 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.museumsportal-berlin.de
  4. ↑ cf. Filmography at conradveidt.de
  5. ↑ According to the film portal