Wilhelm Tell (1934)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | William Tell |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1934 |
| length | 99 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Heinz Paul |
| script |
Hanns Johst Heinz Paul Hans Curjel Wilhelm Stöppler based loosely on the chronicle by Aegidius Tschudi , the eponymous drama (1804) by Friedrich Schiller and the story Der Knabe des Tell (1846) by Jeremias Gotthelf |
| production | Ralph Scotoni for Terra Film |
| music |
Herbert Windt Marceau van Hoorebeke |
| camera | Sepp Allgeier |
| cut |
Paul Ostermayr Lena Neumann |
| occupation | |
| |
Wilhelm Tell is a German feature film from 1934 by Heinz Paul with Hans Marr as Tell and Conrad Veidt as his opponent Gessler in the leading roles.
action
In the western Alps at the end of the 12th century. In the Waldstätten Uri , Schwyz and Unterwalden , the later original cantons of Switzerland, there is a rumble. The residents had received certain freedom rights from the deceased Emperor Friedrich II. Since the House of Habsburg has now taken over power again, different tones prevail. Uri and Schwyz send their negotiators to the court of the new Emperor Rudolf I to have their rights confirmed. But he declared the document to be invalid and sent the tough and brutal Reichsvogt Gessler, who quickly turned the Confederates against him. From now on, strict rules and regulations are imposed on the original cantons.
The crossbowman Wilhelm Tell also felt the consequences of the new state power when he went hunting, although this has now been banned and only Gessler and his followers are entitled to. Tell, a stubborn head of archaic justice, does not want to give in to this edict without further ado, especially since Gessler appears to him in an imperious manner that also signals great uncertainty. Gessler's next subordinate, Landvogt Wolfenschieß, does his best to add fuel to the fire in this tense situation. When a heavy storm hit the area one day, Wolfenschieß and his troop of riders look for shelter in the house of the upright Confederate Konrad Baumgarten. However, since only his wife is present, Wolfenschieß takes some things out and presses the woman. When Baumgarten returns, he hears his wife scream and kills the insolent intruder. It is Wilhelm Tell who then enables the couple to escape across the lake.
Soon Gessler let go of all inhibitions: the Waldstätter men were forced to labor, the population harassed more and more. Tell, initially averse to the uproar, changed his mind in view of the general need. The most important representatives of the region come together on the Rütli and take the oath to rebel against the usurpatory Gessler regiment. After Holy Mass on Martin's Day , Gessler presented a new chicane: He had an iron hat hung on a pole, which every citizen should greet from now on as if Gessler were personally present. When Tell passed the spot lost in thought and did not say hello, he was immediately arrested by Gessler's henchmen. In a show of force, the Reichsvogt demands that the crossbowman shoot an apple from the head of his son Walter. Tell aims, pulls the trigger and hits the apple. But he makes it clear to Gessler that he would have killed the tyrant with a second arrow if he had missed Walter's apple and hit his boy instead. Gessler has Tell kidnapped by his mercenaries, but he manages to escape while crossing the lake. When the Reichsvogt is on the way to Küßnacht , Tell lies in wait for him in the hollow alley and shoots him with his crossbow. This is the starting signal for the Waldstätter rebellion.
Production notes
The shooting of Wilhelm Tell , occasionally also with the subtitle The Freedom Drama of a People , began on September 23, 1933 with the outdoor shots, which were made in Switzerland. The film was shot on Lake Lucerne , in Flüelen , on the Rütli , in Seedorf , Sargans , Wartau , in the Schächental as well as in Ernen and Fiesch . The following month, the exterior shots were completed. From the beginning to the middle of November 1933, the studio recordings took place in the Terra glass house in Berlin-Marienfelde .
An English, a French and a Spanish language version were produced almost at the same time. The shooting of the British version, The Legend of William Tell , dragged on until the first days of January 1934. Director Paul was assigned a British dialogue director named H. Henning Hayes.
The world premiere of the strip took place on January 12, 1934 in Berlin's UFA-Palast am Zoo , in Switzerland, Wilhelm Tell was shown in Zurich on January 17, 1934. The Vienna premiere, in which the Swiss ambassador Maximilian Jäger also took part, fell on June 12, 1934.
The film structures were created by Robert A. Dietrich and executed by Bruno Lutz . Conrad Arthur Schlaepfer and Max Hüske served producer Scotoni as production managers . Co-author Hanns Johst was also the artistic director of the film. Franz R. Friedl was the musical director. The cameramen Franz Weihmayr , Hans Karl Gottschalk and Josef Dahinden worked on head cameraman Sepp Allgeier . Linus Birchler , Robert Durrer , Eduard Achilles Gessler, Paul Lang and Eduard Probst were hired as historical advisers . Alfred Bader took care of the costumes and props. Emil Specht and Fritz Seeger provided the sound. The recording manager was Conny Carstennsen , the camera assistant was Sepp Ketterer .
For Marr (as Tell) and Veidt (as Gessler) this cinematic material was a déjà-vu : both had embodied their respective roles in the silent film of the same name by Rudolf Walther-Fein and Rudolf Dworsky exactly ten years earlier (1923) . Conrad Veidt starred in the remake for the last time in a German film.
The film was a commercial failure.
Political background and entanglements
The film was made by the Swiss businessman and owner of the German Terra Film , Ralph Scotoni , a supporter of German National Socialism . Despite his party membership since 1933, Scotoni had to sell his company shares under German pressure in 1935.
With director Heinz Paul, screenwriter Hanns Johst, who later became president of the Reichsschrifttumskammer, and eponymous Hans Marr, artists who had been very close to the regime since 1933 were also hired. Emmy Sonnemann , who embodied Tell's wife Hedwig, became the wife of the Prussian Prime Minister and later "Reichsmarschall" Hermann Göring in 1935 .
For Gessler actor Conrad Veidt, who was brought home from England especially for this remake, and who had gone to London with his Jewish wife in 1932 to fulfill a film contract, this return to Germany, which had meanwhile become National Socialist, turned out to be a high personal risk, especially since he was right there Beginning of the shooting of William Tell in England the title role in the philosemitic film Ahasver, the eternal Jew embodied. Obviously this fact was not yet noticed in Berlin at that time. At the end of the shooting of Wilhelm Tell , the Germans tried all sorts of tricks not to let Veidt go and to hold him back in Germany. Kay Wenigers says about this complex that more is taken from you in life than given ... :
“At the end of 1933 he returned to Berlin for the last time to play Gessler again after ten years in a remake of 'Wilhelm Tell'. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels tried by all means to hold back the popular star in Germany after the shooting was over. Veidt's supposedly poor state of health, which allegedly makes a departure impossible, was the reason for this action. Only a doctor sent by Veidt's British contract company was able to examine the actor, who was married to a Jew, confirm his ability to travel and thus enable Veidt to return to London. "
reception
“ 'Whether legend or truth is not the question here. The pearl of every fable is the sense! ' This formula from the 'Tell shots' is the film's solution and at the same time the solution to the question of the plot's outline. The spiritual pioneers, strengthened by the testimonies recorded in old sources and reports, stuck to the popular idea. Nevertheless, the material is freed from the theatrical illusion. The figure of the Swiss freedom hero is activated, the tool has become the leader. Heroism found the creative element in myth, William Tell is a hero of nature; he elevates freedom to the throne in the grandiose landscape of central Switzerland, the heart of which is Lake Lucerne. The poet Hanns Johst determined the artistic direction according to opinion. With Schiller, from whom the film distances itself not only in language but also in the sequence and context of the events, Tell is a quiet man and what he does is his father's revenge. The film turns him into a negotiator in Lucerne, he shoots the bailiff 'in the just self-defense of a people'. [...] The Tellstoff gave the camera the chance to show optical and acoustic impressions of everything that goes on behind the scene in the theater. Ultimately, the audience should and wants to experience it with the artistic means of expression of a higher technology that is less tied to space and time. So there is a lot in film that the stage withheld. "
Vienna's Neue Freie Presse reported three days after the Vienna premiere in its edition of June 15, 1934: “In the script by Hans Johst and Heinz Paul, Tell approaches the Schiller figure, which has already become traditional. The Tell shot, the hat scene, the political murder in Hohlen Gasse, the Fronfeste - the Schiller example is visible everywhere [...] Little was added to his own invention. [...] Above all, however, the film has gained the most important helper: nature itself. [...] Under Heinz Paul's direction, the depiction, like the book, which is poor in dialogue, takes the direction of the heroic. Sharp, sleek faces, placed on defiance, hatred and victory, among which one particularly shines out in kindness: Hans Marr as Tell. This warm-hearted man-maker, he combines the apparently most heterogeneous, male drive with childlike kindness. [...] Conrad Veidt is his opponent in every sense: not the comfortable tyrant, as Schiller once called him, but the dark one, in whose mind a whole snake's nest of desires seems to be brooding as if by a visor from the world. "
In the Österreichische Film-Zeitung of June 16, 1934 you can read about Wilhelm Tell on page 2: “The gripping events of the Tell saga appear on the screen in an abundance of beautiful pictures, the main features of which were based on Schiller's drama, although the cinematic requirements are taken into account to a large extent. Hans Marr as Wilhelm Tell and Conrad Veidt as Geßler embody the two towering characters in the film with haunting art. The incomparable Swiss landscape provides the backdrop for the imposing film, for which the original locations of the action were used as far as possible. As Geßler, Conrad Veidt gives an interesting character study. "
“ The experts and the public were more than excited about the sound film 'Wilhelm Tell', in any case all film fans who still remembered the old silent film by Tell. […] The poet Hanns Johst and the director Heinz Paul shaped the old material of Schiller's drama into a film. Not with luck. Each scene is completely isolated, like a colossal painting in a panorama. When the scene is over, you can literally hear the curtain of the Meininger speaking stage rustling. What Friedrich Schiller has shaped enormously for the theater and into immortal folklore is difficult or impossible to transform for the film. [...] Schiller's masterful dynamism was missing, the underlying and always vibrating poetic tension without which a drama and especially a film can never live. Hanns Marr gives Tell a new meaning and effect, without pathos and without play. More farmer than hunter, more husband and father than human, more heavy-blooded son of his free country than born revolutionary. Conrad Veidt is an evil, tough, sinister, insidious and cruel Reichsvogt, a sadist - unfortunately in a uniform that is reminiscent of Russia. Tell's wife is the beautiful Emmy Sonnemann, who always exudes motherliness and understanding womanhood. - Despite some shortcomings: there is a lot of work and seriousness in this heroic song of home and fatherland. This film epic is already a cultural act. "
See also
Web links
- William Tell in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- Wilhelm Tell at filmportal.de
- Wilhelm Tell discussion In: Die Filmwelt
Individual evidence
- ^ Boguslaw Drewniak: The German Film 1938–1945. A complete overview. Düsseldorf 1987, p. 490.
- ↑ Kay Less : "In life, more is taken from you than given ...". Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. ACABUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8 , p. 652.
- ↑ Wilhelm Tell In: Die Filmwelt, issue No. 3 from January 21, 1934
- ↑ "Wilhelm Tell". In: Neue Freie Presse , June 15, 1934, p. 9 (online at ANNO ).
- ↑ "Wilhelm Tell". In: Österreichische Film-Zeitung , June 16, 1934, p. 2 (online at ANNO ).
- ↑ Oskar Kalbus: On Becoming German Film Art Der Tonfilm , Berlin 1935, p. 47 f.