Miracle of creation

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Movie
Original title Miracle of creation
Country of production Weimar Republic
original language German
Publishing year 1925
length 92 minutes
Rod
Director Hanns Walter Kornblum
Johannes Meyer
Rudolf Biebrach
script Hanns Walter Kornblum
Ernst Krieger
music Ignatz Waghalter
camera Max Brinck
Hanns Scholz
Friedrich Weinmann
Friedrich Paulmann
Hermann Boehlen
Bodo Kuntze
Wera Cleve
occupation

Miracle of Creation is a German educational film produced in 1925 that tries to present all of the knowledge about the universe known at the time . The script was written by Hanns Walter Kornblum and Ernst Krieger . The film is about the solar system , its origin and mechanics, gravity , the stars and the nature of the galaxies .

The film is considered a prime example of the cultural film genre and is a forerunner of modern documentary film . It contains a variety of special effects and animations, as well as depictions of hypothetical journeys in the solar system and to the stars.

The footage was colored for the special effects .

The film was reconstructed in 2008 by the Munich Film Museum in collaboration with the Mediakasvatus- ja kuvaohjelmakeskus in Helsinki and the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin. The current rights holder is the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation .

file

Act 1 - Towards Truth
The story of cosmology is explained.

Act 2 - The night sky
The moon , its movement and phases , tides, lunar eclipses and the fixed stars , the Berlin observatory , constellations , the North Star , comets , meteors and falling stars are shown.

Act 3 - The star of the day
are sunspots , auroras , eclipses , prominences , the night, the day and the meridians shown. The heat of the equator is contrasted with the cold of the poles and the earthly seasons are illustrated.

4th act - A flight to the moon
A fantasy ship is shown, which is powered by electrical energy and is called a spaceship. The start of the ship is shown, the essence of the vacuum , the idea of ​​a lunar day is discussed. In addition, the earth is observed from the moon.

Act 5 - The Sun Children
The fantastic journey continues to Mercury (at that time the scientific status was still that Mercury always turned the same side of the sun), Venus and Mars , where you can find its seasons and polar caps and those of the Earth can recognize from observed channels. An imaginary landing is shown, on the subsequent shore leave the astronauts seem to hop due to the low force of gravity. Then the asteroid belt is crossed. A depiction of Gulliver's journey to Lilliput serves to explain the size of Jupiter . The moons of Jupiter are presented. It shows a person who tries hard to crawl on the surface of Jupiter, as well as giants who live on Jupiter. The rings of Saturn are represented as innumerable little bodies; the rings and moons of Saturn are observed from Saturn. The journey continues to Uranus and Neptune , whose discovery and the only large moon can be seen.

6th act - At the gates of infinity
It is explained that there is no "above" and "below" in space and tries to depict people in weightlessness . There is fog discussed. Travelers use a flat screen to receive news from the earth while observing historical events. As the spaceship moves faster than light, travelers observe the same historical events in reverse order. The ship then flies much faster than light to visit binary stars - Algol in the constellation of Perseus and globular cluster . The fantastic journey ends when they leave the last star of the Milky Way . In 1924 it was controversial whether the Milky Way contains the whole universe.

7th act - Becoming and passing away in space
This part deals with the relative movement of the stars and shows that the shapes of the constellations are a matter of perspective; one shows how a quantity of gas can take the form of a spiral disk in which nodes form to become planets - in the initial stage they are gaseous and then form a solid core - the formation of earth-like planets; the erosion of the earth's surface and prehistoric creatures are depicted.

There is speculation about the future of the earth - one shows people freezing, then an inflated representation of the earth that burns after colliding with another celestial body.

Other contributors

Scientific Advice:

Buildings:

Reconstruction of the film

"Thanks to":

  • Antti Alanen
  • Annette Groschke
  • Juha Kindberg
  • Konrad and Wolfgang Kornblum
  • Eva Orbanz
  • Jon Wengström

Reception and aftermath

The film was described as "overwhelming" and was, in contrast to the later and better known Ufa production Metropolis , a great success.

Scenes from the film are often seen as precursors to space science fiction films, most notably Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey .

The spirit and content of the film shows parallels to Carl Sagan's television series Our Cosmos .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b In Depth: Miracles of Creation , 2006 interview at Dundee Contemporary Arts.
  2. ↑ a b Entry for Miracles of Creation in Silentera.com
  3. ↑ Five things you always wanted to know about silent film (but were afraid to ask) , article at WOW
  4. ↑ Entry for Miracles of Creation in Edition Filmmuseum
  5. ↑ Entry for Miracles of Creation in the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation
  6. ↑ Alexander Scharow, Igor Novikow : Edwin Hubble, The Discoverer of the Big Bang Universe . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993, ISBN 978-0-521-41617-7 , pp. 34 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed December 7, 2018]).
  7. ↑ Lichtbühne , Volume 18, Number 179, September 15, 1925. See also Archived copy . Archived from the original on July 19, 2011. Retrieved March 4, 2010.
  8. ↑ Entry for Miracles of Creation in Filmmuseum Potsdam

Web links