What's going on at the Beely Circus?
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | What's going on at the Beely Circus? |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1927 |
| length | 130 (1927) 85 (2004) minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Harry Piel |
| script | Max Bauer based on the templates "The Secret of the Barre Circus" and "The Rider Without a Head" |
| production | Heinrich Nebenzummer for Nero-Film GmbH, Berlin |
| music | Hans May |
| camera |
Georg Muschner Gotthardt Wolf |
| occupation | |
| |
What's going on at the Beely Circus? is a German circus and crime film by and with Harry Piel from 1927.
action
Harry Peel receives a call from his old friend Robert Jackson at an evening party. He recently returned home from Lima . Jackson tells him that he wants to seek medical treatment for his daughter Rose, who has been blind since childhood, in the hope of a cure. In the middle of the phone call, the conversation breaks off, as if Jackson had been torn from the phone. The mysterious call came from the Beely Circus, and Harry immediately rushes there to look for his friend. But it seems to have been expected there. Suddenly a huge tiger gets in Harry's way. After overpowering it, Harry enters the circus cellar, where he finds the lifeless Jackson. As a final message, he finds Jackson's words scrawled on the wall: Robert wanted Harry to look after his daughter in the future. In addition, the dead friend asks Harry to look for an important document hidden in the circus.
Anita de Moran, a circus dancer, saw Peel doing his secret activities and then called the police. The rustles just at the moment when Harry wants to leave the circus area with the dead friend in his arms. Police Commissioner Bull then wants to arrest the alleged murderer Peel, but the police quickly evade him. Harry now wants to search for the killer on his own. A little later, Rose Jackson, led by her old servant, turns up at the circus because she is also looking for her father. She doesn't know yet that he has already passed away. There she is in great danger, from which she has to free Harry Peel. He takes her to safety in the sanatorium that Jackson has chosen to specialize in eye diseases.
Jackson's notary informs Harry a little later that this ominous document is a letter of credit. If it got into the wrong hands, the new owner would get hold of all of Jackson's fortune. Peel suspects the solution to the tricky case in the Beely circus, which is clearly not right, is not wrong. In order to be able to conduct inquiries inconspicuously, he smuggles his way there as an artist. His main opponent is a creepy man in a mask that he tries to track down. In a duel, Peel is knocked down by a henchman of the masked villain and disappears into the sinking beneath the circus ring. But the jack-of-all-trades Harry is able to free himself a little later and rips the mask off the criminal's face in the final battle: it's Allan Kean, the managing director of the circus company. He and his accomplice are handed over to the police and the important document is tracked down. To the good end, Rose will soon be able to see again thanks to an operation.
Production notes
The ten-act film, shot in October and November 1926, had an unusually long length of 3549 meters. It passed the censorship test on December 10, 1926 and was premiered on January 14, 1927 in Berlin's Alhambra. Was shot u. a. in the Circus Renz in Vienna .
What's going on at the Beely Circus? was advertised as Piels 75th film; it was also his first big film with a circus at the center of the action. Author Bauer wrote his 15th screenplay for a Piel film here. For the first time, Piel used a hit act with a tiger that was so popular in his films as a staging highlight . This big cat, already a little old and used to humans by a trainer who was always present during the shooting, was two and a half meters long, was called Bylard, weighed about 273 kilograms and came from the Leipzig Zoo . Another impressive scene is Piel's breakfast together with his animal film partner: They both sit together at the table in the circus restaurant, and Piel feeds his friend with bread rolls and hard-boiled eggs. Then Piel receives a very special tiger kiss for it.
Ten years earlier, Piel had already discovered dangerous big cats as a film highlight for the film genre he served and used them for the first time: In 1916, he had two more or less starved lions brought to Berlin from Hagenbeck's zoo , to show them as "wild beasts" in his sensational film Under Hot Zone market". The fight with a lion in the circus was also one of the sensational highlights in Der Reiter ohne Kopf .
In 1926, Piel and Phoebus-Film, which had been producing him up to then, had split up in an argument. Then Piel switched to Heinrich Nebenzahl's Nero-Film AG that same year . She was generous, giving Piel a free hand in creating his circus film and a budget of 200,000 Reichsmarks .
The film structures for What's going on at the Beely Circus? designed by Ernst Lubitsch's long-time film architect Kurt Richter, Walter Zeiske was one of two production managers.
The film was shown in Austria under the title The Great Circus Attraction . On September 24, 2004, the film was first broadcast on TV on ARTE .
reception
This film had all the ingredients of a typical Harry Piel production. Oskar Kalbus wrote about the actor, director and producer's recipe for success: Harry Piel, the “European Douglas Fairbanks”, above all frees his sensations from everything convulsive and always lets them appear as the content and climax of an exciting plot. From a Piel film, the viewer demands the adventure story that has become pictorial, which could also take place in his own environment and whose external course he can control with the experience of his own brain.
The Munich Film Museum writes: “A crime film from the circus milieu in which director Piel has to master the most dangerous situations and is confronted with predators and poisonous snakes in secret passages, traps and dungeons. The plot is complicated, but always remains exciting and enjoyable. The unusual speed of the action is probably due to the fact that the film has only been preserved in a short version intended for export, in which unnecessary lengths and byways of the plot have been consistently removed. "
The lexicon of international films writes: “Silent detective film in a circus environment, tailored to the once popular star Harry Piel, who never stood still in the intoxication of speed, chases and adventure. The rediscovery and restoration of the film turned out to be a stroke of luck: the camera work, the economical editing and the new dubbing, which set nuanced accents, were excellent. The highly entertaining film is thus condensed into a portrait of a time of supposed carelessness and nonchalance. "
The online presence of Cinema writes: "Under wild animals and dark figures he risks head and neck when a friend is murdered in the circus ... Kintopp delicacies in a viraged (colored), restored version."
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gerhard Lamprecht: German silent films 1923-1926, Berlin 1967, p. 877.
- ↑ [1]
- ^ Oskar Kalbus: On the becoming of German film art. 1st part: The silent film. Berlin 1935. p. 90.
- ↑ ibid.
- ↑ What's going on at the Beely Circus? on artechock.de
- ↑ What's going on at the Beely Circus? in the Lexicon of International Films , accessed on November 20, 2013.
- ↑ What's going on at the Beely Circus? on cinema.de