Yorck (film)
Yorck is a German historical film about the important Prussian military leader of the same name, Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg . He plays against Napoleon at the time of the Wars of Liberation . Directed by Gustav Ucicky , Werner Krauss will play as the title hero and Rudolf Forster as his king .
action
Europe 1812. In the course of the coalition wars , Napoleonic troops conquered large parts of the continent. Prussia is militarily on the ground and is forced to make common cause with Napoleon. Now the emperor also wants to finally overthrow Russia , with Prussian troops as flanking support. The veteran generals of the Prussian king stand firmly by the orders of their monarch, while the young officers begin to grumble and even rebel against Napoleon in order to be able to chase him out of their own country. Even the brave officer Yorck no longer wants to be a puppet of the megalomaniac conqueror and intends to quit his service in the army . He warns of the consequences that Prussia's struggle on the side of the French could have for the country, but finally bowed to the king's wish to become the new commander-in-chief of the Prussian auxiliary corps.
Yorck's immediate superior is the French Marshal MacDonald , who, however, deeply distrusts Yorck. In Courland , Yorck's troops are supposed to cover the left wing of the Napoleonic army. For his own safety, MacDonald sends his confidante, the Viscount de Noailles, to the Prussians to watch Yorck closely. Noailles should inform him, MacDonald, immediately of Yorck's misconduct. In fact, they give Yorck's men little motivation in the fight against the Russians. Yorck's big hour dawns when the French are defeated by the Russians for the first time and have to withdraw. When MacDonald calls on him to heroically sacrifice himself and his men for France's 'Grande Armée', the Prussian patriot changes fronts. He meets with his Russian counterpart, Field Marshal Diebitsch-Sabalkansky , at the Poscheruner mill and signs the Tauroggen Convention , which regulates an armistice between Prussia and Russia.
However, Friedrich Wilhelm III hesitates. For a while longer to terminate the brotherhood in arms with France and consider having his high-ranking officers Yorck, Kleist and Gneisenau declared high traitors under pressure from MacDonald, whom he received. But MacDonald treats the king so presumptuously that he changes his mind. Eventually the monarch realizes that Yorck's actions are right. He even tears up a pro-French regulation and the state treaty with France. Finally Friedrich issues an appeal, To Mein Volk , with which he finally declares war on the hated occupant. When Yorck moves into Berlin, he is enthusiastically received by the crowds with cheers.
Production notes
The film was shot from August 24th to October 13th, 1931 in the Ufa studios in Neubabelsberg , today's Studio Babelsberg , and at original locations in Berlin, including in front of the Brandenburg Gate . The premiere of the film took place on December 23, 1931 in the Ufa-Palast am Zoo . Exactly eleven months later, Yorck was also performed in the USA .
Yorck is the only film that Ufa production manager Ernst Hugo Correll has ever personally produced. There the main actor Krauss made his sound film debut, theater actor Lothar Müthel took on his only sound film role with his part of Clausewitz .
The film structures were made by Robert Herlth and Walter Röhrig , Herbert Frohberg served as their assistant architect. Günther Anders assisted head cameraman Carl Hoffmann . The film editor Eduard von Borsody also assisted director Ucicky. Eduard Kubat served as manager , Walter Tjaden took care of the sound.
Reviews
The screenwriter and director Philipp Lothar Mayring wrote in Film-Kurier with some pathos about the preparatory work: “The topic - the fateful hour of Prussia, in which the first dawn of a German empire dawns. The splendor and collapse of the grande armée of the great Corsican, the French Empire, the Russian winter campaign and Prussia's uprising provide the grandiose framework from which the monumental figure of the "iron general" emerges. Ufa's head of production, Ernst Hugo Correll, took over the production management of this film, clearly recognizing the obligations attached to this task to history, art and moral obligations, which, like the historical figure once did, require unswerving work and intellectual discipline, the most conscientious dedication. Corell set himself the goal of awakening the sense of responsibility and moral seriousness that inspired his work in all workers at the plant, and also to keep them awake. Shape and time required the artistic fulfillment of their own form of expression. The form and custom of the decisive years around 1813 call for awe. "
Oskar Kalbus ' About the Becoming of German Cinematic Art enthusiastically raved about the interpretation of the title character: “In his first sound film“ Yorck ”(1931), Werner Krauss forms the core character of the Prussian myth of fate, as he grew up tragically and spiritually after the great death of Friedrich: Yorck . In the Yorck film this magician of facial metamorphosis appears as a new Prussian, as a new expert on the great necessities of changing the law. Yorck also has to deviate from the conventional law, has to break it in order to fulfill a higher one. ”A little later on Rudolf Forster's performance as king, it says:“ Here the maturing Forster, the king's player, now becomes another, a Prussian, a prince with an almost too difficult fate on his shoulders. This king does not play with power, does not play with the bold thoughts of a new time that is dawning around him, does not dream of an empire that he wants to found, knows no hunger for power and no religious struggle. This king is a straight, quiet person who suffers the tragedy of his Prussian deeply and, even in the deepest case, does not abandon his God, who commands him to keep contracts, even if the enemy has given them up. [...] Forster forms the Prussian king with his royal means - very restrained, completely withdrawn, completely renouncing the tinsel and the grand gesture of the mime. ”Regarding the directorial work, it can be read:“ Gustav Ucicky and his actors Werner Krauss and Rudolf Forster conjured up the spirit of 1812 […] ”. In line with the new spirit that has ruled Germany since 1933, Kalbus' résumé is consistently positive: “It has become a real ethos film in the highest sense of the word. The attitude that speaks from it is: above everything the fatherland! "
Film theorist Rudolf Arnheim, on the other hand, scoffed at the Weltbühne : the audience could "read from the screen that it is advisable to mobilize against France on a private initiative if the government has been too long to exchange diplomatic papers with the hereditary enemy."
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lost Films: Yorck . www.lost-films.eu, accessed May 22, 2018.
- ↑ Film-Kurier No. 300 of December 23, 1931
- ^ Oskar Kalbus: On the becoming of German film art. Part 2: The sound film. Berlin 1935. p. 75 ff.
- ↑ Weltbühne from January 12, 1932
Web links
- Yorck in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Yorck in filmportal.de