When the dead speak
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | When the dead speak |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1917 |
| length | approx. 72 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Robert Reinert |
| script | Robert Reinert |
| production | German bioscop |
| camera | Helmar Lerski |
| occupation | |
| |
When dead speak is a German silent film drama from 1917 with Maria Carmi in the leading role.
action
Leonore von Radowitz is a beautiful aristocrat who is adored and adored by her husband Edgar. The pain is all the deeper when one day the servant rushes into the room and announces that he has found Leonore dead in the bedroom. In the following years, Leonore's sister Maria von Brion, who is exactly like the dead, is an emotional support for him, even if Edgar cannot get over the death of his wife. Like a man possessed, he tries to understand her demise, immersing himself again and again in the love letters that had been found in the hands of the deceased. When the revolver that put an end to Leonore's life is found in Edgar's desk, Maria suspects that Edgar might be a wife's murderer. She reports him and the police arrest Edgar. Before he disappears behind bars, Edgar puts the letters in the hands of the old house servant for safekeeping and tells him that no one is allowed to read these letters. As a loyal lackey, he knows what to do and buries the letters in his own park.
Maria now visits her dead sister's grave frequently and is always amazed that there are fresh flowers on it. It is a scowling young man of ascetic appearance who makes a pilgrimage to the grave every day. When one day he and Maria meet in the same place, he is downright shocked to see Maria, as she resembles the dead like one hair to another. This man's name is Richard Worth and has been magically drawn to Maria, in whom he obviously sees a kind of reincarnation of Leonore, since they first met. He does not give up his efforts to win her favor, even when Maria makes it clear to him that she had always loved Edgar and that it was hard to get over it when he chose Leonore as his wife.
The day of the start of the trial against Edgar von Radowitz has come. Everything in the trial speaks against him, and since the defendant is silent on the whole matter, things don't look good for him. Finally the old servant is questioned. According to his statement, a hooded man approaches him and promises him to hand over a document that could unequivocally prove Edgar's innocence, if the old servant would hand over the buried letters to him, the stranger. With a heavy heart the servant agrees to this horse-trading and rushes back to the court with the document he received. The document is nothing more than a letter that the deceased had written to the stranger in which she announced her own suicide. Edgar is acquitted, but he would rather have stayed behind bars than having to live in public with the "shame" that his wife first killed a lover and then killed herself.
He angrily searches for the man he, Edgar, sees as the destroyer of conjugal happiness. Little does he suspect that this man is Richard Worth, who is currently working hard for Maria. Edgar looks everywhere, just not where he might find something. And so Worth has free rein to finally get Maria to promise him her yes. Richard wants to finish with his past around Leonore and throws the letters received from the servant into the fire. But Maria is able to save some half-charred specimens and devours the contents. Now she knows the whole thing. Edgar returns, and Maria tells him that the man he's been looking for all along is Richard Worth. In anger, the horned widower wants to pounce on the former rival, but Maria mediates. She asks Edgar in front of Richard's eyes to be allowed to make up for him, the widower, for everything that his former, faithless wife had destroyed through her adultery. Nothing stands in the way of a marriage between Edgar and Maria.
Production notes
When Dead Speak was created in April and May 1917 in the Bioscop studio in Neubabelsberg and had four files spread over 1,482 meters in length. The film passed the censorship in June 1917, the premiere took place on July 27, 1917 in Berlin's Tauentzienpalast .
The film structures were designed by Robert A. Dietrich , executed by Artur Günther . Hanns Lippmann was production manager.
The same team (director Reinert, producer Lippmann, film architect Dietrich and the three main actors) had shot the melodrama The Way of Death for Deutsche Bioscop the year before .
Reviews
“A Maria Carmi film whose criticism can be summed up in the words that it means the best of the best. A touch of sadness and elegy runs through the dramatic plot, which has a tremendously atmospheric effect. The heavy, gloomy splendor of the castle, in which the action takes place, forms the serious framework for the dramatic events that take place in the minds of deeply and passionately designed natures. The crown of the whole, however, is the exemplary representation. (...) Maria Carmi's great art draws us into true enthusiasm. "
The cinematographer praised Maria Carmi's profound artistic feeling, named her as currently the most important film actress in the country and described Carl de Vogt as her equal. Another issue of the same publication three weeks later said that there was a great advantage in this film in the fact that a complicated and true-life story was captured in deeply real images.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Neue Kino-Rundschau from August 25, 1917. p. 65
- ^ The Kinematograph (Düsseldorf) of August 1, 1917
- ^ The Kinematograph (Düsseldorf) of August 22, 1917