Germany – The Realm of Silence

Ein Walzertraum (1925; Ger.; Ludwig Berger)

This week, a glamorous production overseen by Erich Pommer for Ufa in 1925. A young, starry cast, glorious sets, fabulous locations – and music. What more can one ask for? Ein Walzertraum was adapted from the eponymous operetta from 1907 by Oscar Straus (1870-1954) and was originally accompanied by a score compiled from this (and other existing music) by Ernö Rapée. Sadly, like many scores of its era, this no longer survives – a fact that may even have been the result of the difficulty retaining copyright on Straus’s music beyond the premiere performances. (Nina Goslar very helpfully details various aspects of the film’s history, music, and restoration in Stummfilm-Magazin.) For this centenary restoration, a new orchestral score has been commissioned from Diego Ramos Rodríguez. Rodríguez worked as assistant to Bernd Thewes on the reconstruction of the original Fosse/Honegger score for La Roue (1923) in 2019, and has more recently composed a rip-roaringly splendid new score for Lubitsch’s Kohlhiesels Töchter (1920). The music for Ein Walzertraum was recorded by the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz, conducted by Gabriel Venzago in the Staatstheater Mainz.

This film – and the prospect of this superb new restoration – thus has many things that appeal to me. I know a few of Straus’s operettas, especially Die lustigen Nibelungen (1904) and Der tapfere Soldat (1908), as well as some of his orchestral music – and, of course, his later scores for Max Ophüls (De Mayerling à Sarajevo (1940), La Ronde (1950), Madame de… (1953)). I had also seen and been utterly charmed by another Berger film, Walzerkrieg (1933), and am interested in the “operetta film” more generally. (Willi Forst is a favourite director of the 1930s-40s.) All in all, then, I was so hooked by the idea of this film that I thought I would go to Germany to see it – and work out some other research to do around the concert, thus justifying the trip. Alas, everything I had planned apart from the concert fell through, so I no longer felt it justified the expense of going. (I received the final blow to my plan two days before I would have to leave, by which point the price of everything had also gone up considerably.) Ironically, the one thing I had booked and had to sacrifice was my non-refundable film concert ticket. It was a good seat, too. (I would have it no other way.) Thankfully, ARTE has since put the film on their mediathek page, and one may watch for free. I have watched, and – inevitably – I loved it…

The Archduke of Austria (Karl Beckersachs) is engaged to Princess Alix (Mady Christians), daughter of Eberhard XXIII von Flausenthurn (Jakob Tiedtke). But the match is not a happy one, and when the Archduke’s adjutant Nikolaus Preyn, known as “Nux” (Willi Fritsch) is substituted to take Alix on a tour of Vienna, the pair soon fall for each other. Eberhard swiftly re-arranges matters and has Alix marry Nux – and move to Flausenthurn. But the hastiness of it all gives Nux cold feet, and he abandons his bride on their wedding night. In the Piesecke biergarten he meets Franzi (Xenia Desni), the leader of a women’s orchestra. Franzi doesn’t realize that Nux is married, so a romance ensues. Meanwhile, Alix wants to make herself more appealing for Nux, who clearly misses Vienna and all things Viennese. She engages Franzi, her official Kapellmeister, to teach her the waltz – and modern fashion. With his bride and his new home transformed into a more Viennese environment, Nux’s desire for Alix is reignited. But he must break things off with Franzi, who finally realizes the truth about her lover. The last image is not of the embracing couple but of the lone Franzi, walking into the darkness. ENDE.

This is a fabulous film. As one might expect from a mid-1920s Ufa production managed by Pommer, Ein Walzertraum looks gorgeous. The sets are superb, the lighting and camerawork superb, and the location shooting in Vienna superb. There are also some lovely passages of multiple superimpositions (often in combination with models/matte painting) and delirious kaleidoscopic lens effects. But despite all this, it doesn’t feel weighed down by its artifice. It has enough (real) fresh air to give it the breath of life, and of a sense of past and place that infuses its setting and characters. It is, per the cliché of numerous such films (and operettas), set in Vienna c.1900 – and then in the Ruritanian principality of Flausenthurn. (In the original operetta, this was in the state of “Rurislavenstein”.) Thanks to the use of real locations, one has a little more belief in this world – and can wander around the parks and streets of Vienna. It has the budget and the technical prowess to give us a world that feels rich and peopled.

The cast is also very good, with some of Ufa’s youngest stars taking the lead. Willy Fritsch’s Nux has all the boyish charm you could wish for, but also has moments of emotional depth – or at least, moments when he senses that his boyishness comes at a price for others. As Franzi, Xenia Desni is very sweet – and you can see why, with her backlit halo of hair, her sentimental music, and her earnest happiness, Nux falls for her. I admit that I was not as moved by her as a performer, as a presence on screen, as I was by her female co-star…

Indeed, the real highlight of this film’s cast is Mady Christians. This is the earliest film in which I’ve seen her. Even by the end of the 1920s, I’m used to her being a very adult, very sophisticated screen presence, one radiating intelligence and a kind of tolerant, patient superiority. It was something of a surprise to see her looking so much younger here in Ein Walzertraum. Younger not just in terms of her looking more girlish, but younger also in the sense of character. (One might also say in terms of star persona.) She still has amazing flashes of intelligence and insight, but she’s also far more emotional – and vulnerable. She’s also playful in a much more fun, childish way. In one early scene, she loses patience with her father and wrinkles her nose at him like a naughty schoolgirl. It’s a lovely moment where her frustration breaks out into comic exaggeration.

Christians also plays drunk fabulously well. When Nux takes her to the biergarten, her surprise and delight in tasting beer, then in becoming embroiled in the rowdiness of her surroundings, is such a pleasure to watch. Her kiss with Nux seems at once inevitable (in the way you see it coming) and sudden (in the way it happens so brusquely on screen). Alix watches the schmooziness of other dancers, then places her head drowsily on Nux’s chest, slowly angling herself (and her mouth) closer to him (and his mouth). He finally steals a kiss, and the slow play of anticipation is suddenly ended. “What was that?” Alix demands. “That was Viennese!” Nux replies. It’s funny and touching all at once.

But it’s the aftermath of this scene, when Alix goes back to her room at the palace, that shows Christians at her most playful. At home with her chaperone Fraulein von Köckeritz (Mathilde Sussin), she is lounging on the bed, dreamily, gigglingly reliving all the thrills of her evening. Christians is very funny here, but she’s also (if I may say so) very sexy: her glance, her smile, her slightly giddy enthusiasm. She is not just a schoolgirl but an adult, with adult desires. She even makes rather more than a pass at Köckeritz – first kicking her (by accident), then crawling over to her, kissing her, dancing with her, and kissing her again. Christians is wonderful here, but also in the alter scenes, when her hurt at being rejected by Nux is palpable: she’s an adult again, with adult depths.

Among the remaining cast, I would also praise Julius Falkenstein, who plays the servant Rockhoff von Hoffrock with comic exaggeration (per his comic romance with the bassist Steffi (Lydia Potechina)) and with surprising emotion later on, per his finding the note from Nux that he thinks is destined for Alix. In the latter scene, he is hurt that Alix will be hurt – a fact that adds depth (and personal history and loyalty) to the consequences of Nux’s affair.

But what make the whole thing work so well as a viewing experience is the way image and music work together in this restoration. It makes all the reasons why the film might work into an experience that does work. Rodríguez’s score is for a symphony orchestra, including a piano and harpsichord (and various other percussion). His score uses much Viennese music of the period, as well as some actual musical samples from historic recordings, and one or two subtle sound effects. Rodríguez has an interest in electronic music in his other work as a composer, but I feel that he has bent his style to this film rather than vice versa. I found myself rather won over by the way he incorporates unusual elements into the soundscape of Ein Walzertraum. He’s also a great orchestrator, able not only to cite repertory music with great skill, but to play with its mood, texture, and rhythms. There are many moments when the sweetness and neatness of the music frays at the edges, threatening to dissolve into something harsher. Rodríguez knows how to maintain control of uncontrol, and to switch between registers and tones.

This balance between old and new, the expected and the unexpected, is evident early on. After their comically protracted scene together, Alix and the Archduke walk away, disappointed and awkward, through a path flanked by huge hedges. The wind rustles the branches, and the score magically rustles with energy. The sound of the harpsichord, almost discordant, crackles beneath the woodwind, and a subtle sound effect – only just discernible – flutters through the instruments. It’s somewhere between the rustle of wind-blown leaves and the crackle and hiss of a needle on vinyl. It catches you unawares, and I found it weirdly effective.

After the Archduke excuses himself, Nux is ordered to take Alix on the tour of Vienna. This is an utterly enchanting sequence. The camera tracks alternative before, alongside, and behind the carriage. It cranes up at the theatres and spires, drifting through the Vienna of – not 1900, but of 1925. The people on the street are clearly staring at the camera, at the stars, at the people in imperial costume. Reality bubbles at the edge of the fiction. And so too in the score. Beneath the gorgeously slow waltz there seems to be a gentle, only just audible, patter of hooves. The sound is so subtle it might be an extra instrument, a softened rattle over a drum. When Nux shows Alix the statue of Johann Strauss II (“Your Highness, the Waltz King!”, he says; “We have a dance violinist in Flausenthurn too!”, she replies), we get a refrain from that composer’s “Wiener Blut”. But it’s not just the choice of music here that works, it’s the way the score – as a soundscape – adds to this moment. As the pair approach the statue, the music is underlined by the faint crackle and hiss of (what sounds like) ancient vinyl. It’s a very subtle effect, as though something is burbling in the background of the orchestral music. Suddenly, the scene draws on another level of cultural memory. It’s not just the memory of Strauss, but the memory of the memory. It is 2025 remembering 1925 remembering the nineteenth century. Beautiful.

Later, Rodríguez brings in a delightfully jazz-inflected rendition of various traditional tunes for the wine tavern scene. Decorum starts to unbutton here, as the princess and lieutenant encounter working-class revellers, soldiers, and fortune-tellers. Rodríguez also incorporates the clapping of the orchestra into the soundscape, timed perfectly with the clapping-along on screen. (It’s utterly infectious, and I would love to know if anyone at the Mainz performances tried to join in.) Later, when the servant turns up and interrupts their dance, exclaiming: “Your Highness!” the score matches the unease of the working-class crowd, who suddenly stop dancing and stare, then awkwardly begin to hail royalty. The music brings in a brief burst of (Johann Strauss I’s) “Radetzky March”, like a splash of cold water to sober up the revelry.

If there is fun and wit here, I also love the choices enhance the emotional depth. As Alix prepares for her wedding, Rodríguez cites a few bars of the second movement of Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 for the wedding preparations. It creates an immediate sense of solemnity that is brief but deeply moving. It’s suddenly very serious and meaningful. During the wedding itself, I also noticed a familiar Monteverdi fanfare (the opening toccata from L’Orfeo (1607)). I recalled Günter A. Buchwald’s recent use of this piece in his score for Casanova (1927); there, I didn’t like the way it was used for the harsh irony of its orchestration and employment, in absolute contrast to the tone of the film. See the difference to how it’s used here by Rodríguez inEin Walzertraum, which is delightfully pompous and in accord with the elaborate ceremonies that the servant relays via increasingly lengthy (and absurd) intertitles. The music is taken seriously, which is the point of the sequence – the pomp of the past, the pomposity of the court and its king. But it doesn’t stop the sequence being funny, indeed it enables it to be both funny and moving.

Rodríguez also knows when to step back, as when here he keeps the music rumbling at a low level through the elaborate “elevation” of Nux to noble status to marry the princess. It lets the film do the talking. We are told that this is “the wedding ceremony according to the House of Flausenthurn Regulations of the year 1611”. The list of ceremonial steps is so madly long that the scroll bearing this text soon whizzes past on screen. It’s very funny, and the score here incorporates part of a 1926/27 recording of tunes from Straus’s Ein Walzertraum. The sense not only of pastness but of ceremony is perfect: it’s an old, old celebration reliving itself, the recording both lively and ancient.

But then the Schubert is used again at the end of the ceremony, and the solemnity of it – and what Alix dreams it to be – sinks in. It’s a brilliant, beautiful choice. The wedding is also going to be “unfinished” in its unconsummated aftermath. The management of tone here, and throughout, is simply superb. Listen how Rodríguez adds the snare drum beneath Schubert’s haunting theme for woodwind, then suddenly switches to a Straus(s)ian melody on the glockenspiel, and then – for the “tearing of the bridal veil”, per the house regulations – weird percussive sounds and drums as Nux tears and tears and tears. There’s so much going on here: the solemnity, the air of childishness (and of inexperience), the expectation, the nervousness, the frustration, the pent-up energy… all incorporated into the music with great sensitivity and intelligence.

Nux’s romance with Franzi is also felt through the music. In the biergarten, the synchronization of Franzi’s female string group to “Wiener Blut” is perfect. (The programme for the concert on screen is even revealed in the notes Nux finds on his table, so the new score can clearly take its cue from this.) Franzi then takes her cue from Nux, who requests a Viennese waltz. Here, the score includes a historic recording of Strauss II’s “G’schichten aus dem Wienerwald” sung by Maria Ivoguen in 1923. The film dissolves to Nux’s daydream of the self-same Viennese woods, and dancing maidens, and the distant violinist. The song becomes a kind of dreamed sound, emerging from the film – even from the mind of Nux. (The film builds up the visual reverie with multiple superimpositions, kaleidoscopic effects of blossoms falling, piling up, and swirling like an abstract waltz.)

Meanwhile, Alix is learning the piano. She has chosen something marvellously assertive, a piece whose acoustic effect is surely beyond that of a piano reduction. There follows a brilliantly reorchestrated version of this very piece, “The Ride of the Valkyries”, with a manic piano accompaniment. It’s an amazing moment, funny and sad and furious (and sexual) all at once. It’s a woman expressing her rage and longing, the music and her emotions quite literally making the furniture quake with power. Rodríguez again shows great skill in keeping (musical) control of this outburst of uncontrol. Wagner’s music is being produced through sheer willpower, with only just enough skill to make it recognizable. The orchestra battles with the piano, which battles with the score; it’s a mess of fury and melody in sound.

When Nux and Franzi dance in her apartment, her friend Steffi plays the piano. On the soundtrack, a real piano accompanies a historic recording of “Leise, ganz leise” from Straus’s Ein Walzertraum, sung by Max Rohr in 1907. I love how complex this moment is: a real piano on screen being echoed by a real piano in the orchestra but accompanying a historic recording from the era of the film’s production. The idea of different eras, different styles, talking to one another is nicely echoed in the subsequent scene when Franzi teaches Alix a waltz on the piano. The princess’s rendition of “The Ride of the Valkyries” marvellously morphs into this waltzing melody.

Franzi then refashions the princess to make her more appealing to her husband. This activity begins with Alix openly admiring Franzi’s legs as she bends over the piano. As in the earlier scene, the princess is rather curious about another woman – and aroused. Wanting to be more like Franzi, she puts herself in her (unwitting rival’s) hands. The two women undress each other, in order to then try on each other’s clothes. At first this extends just to the outer dress, then (as Franzi realizes how many underlayers Alix is wearing) to the underwear. As they do so, Nux’s biergarten note falls from Franzi’s garment to the floor. Alix picks it up and reads it and the pair exchange smiles. With its blend of role-play, sexual suggestion, and dramatic irony, this is an amazingly complex sequence. (It becomes more complex, and funny, as Franzi then returns to the biergarten to find Nux leading her band in a waltz.) Indeed, Nux later interrupts the two women dancing – a male intrusion into what might otherwise be an all-female romance. The fact that Alix is given a short, “Bubikopf” bob haircut (the very definition of 1920s’ women’s fashion) signals her liberation from an older, more traditional form of femininity. “Ich glaube, jetzt bin ich modern!” (“I think I’m fashionable [literally: modern] now!”) she says after Franzi has finished with her. It’s an intriguing scene of possibility, of alternatives for her desire – beyond her desire for Nux.

The outcome of the above scene is also intriguingly played. Alix has made herself attractive to Nux by mimicking Franzi’s appearance, and the way she reveals her new self – by half-hiding behind a chair, by leading Nux on, allows Christians another chance to show the sophistication of her performance. The film also plays on the fact that Alix is unwittingly recreating the very facets of her rival that drew her husband to Franzi. Alix’s gesture of retrieving her lighter from inside her top echoes Franzi’s retrieving of the note inside hers. (Meanwhile, Franzi echoes Nux’s gesture of tearing the bridal veil as she tears and refashions more of Alix’s clothes in the next room.) But instead of Alix consummating the marriage with Nux at the end of this scene, Alix ends up kissing Franzi in thanks for transforming her life. Across much of the flirtatious reconciliation of Alix/Nux, we hear the “Couplet der Ninon” from Straus’s Eine Frau, die Weiss, was sie will, sung by Fritzi Massary in 1932. But Rodríguez’s musicians in 2025 provide the orchestral force behind (and to some extent over) this historic recording. Indeed, the rumbunctious orchestra threatens to overwhelm the (female) voice, as Nux’s blood is up and he chases Alix around the room. There is comedy here, but also a faint air of threat. (Here, as so often, you have to admire the orchestration, which seems on the brink of disintegration into some far wilder, less tonally coherent.) It’s another incredibly suggestive way of using modern and historic music together, producing not just a pleasing sound but a sonic (and thus dramatic) tension. It also nicely echoes the film’s introduction of Nux, when he was chasing a woman around his office. Over this early scene, the orchestra accompanies another historic recording of “O-La-La” from Straus’s operetta Der lezte Walzer, sung by Fritzi Massary in 1920. Rodríguez’s score thus repeats the pattern of movement (a kind of barely-controlled waltz as man and woman chase each other round and round) and the pattern of musical citation.

In sum, I loved Ein Walzertraum. I admit I’m an absolute sucker for this kind of thing, when it’s done well. And it’s certainly done well here. This is a fantastic film, and a fantastic score. I normally don’t like music that uses pre-recorded material, i.e. sounds/sound effects, but here it is sensitively done – and often adds to the complexity of the viewing experience. These sections also nod forward to the many operetta films of the 1930s, of which Ein Walzertraum was a major predecessor. How I wish I’d been able to experience this film on the big screen in Mainz, with the orchestra and the crowd. I’d like to know how the pre-recorded sections of the score interacted with the orchestra (and the live acoustic), and how the audience reacted to these moments. Even if I didn’t get to sit in the seat I bought, I’m glad to have offered some token of support to the restoration and those who brought it about. Bravo to all involved.

Paul Cuff

Petronella (1927; Ger./Ch.; Hanns Schwarz)

Long-time readers may have registered my admiration for Viennese director Hanns Schwarz, whose sumptuous Ufa production Die wunderbare Lüge der Nina Petrowna (1929) is a favourite of mine. I have a forthcoming (I hope!) article on his marvellous Ungarische Rhapsodie (1928), a film which I will also write about here sometime in the future. Neither of these films is currently available on DVD, but they are at least accessible in some form or other. (Even if one must go to Berlin, as I did recently, in order to see anything like a complete print of Ungarische Rhapsodie.) Schwarz’s other silent films are a different matter. The one I’d most like to see is Die Csardasfürstin (1927), an adaptation of Emmerich Kálmán’s delightful operetta. Alas, the only extant copy of this film is currently not able to be viewed. (For unstated reasons, presumably the lack of a safety copy, the Bundesarchiv’s 35mm print is restricted to the vaults.) I have at least been able to see Die Kleine vom Varieté (1926) at the Bundesarchiv, and this enormously enjoyable film will be the subject of another post in future weeks.

Today, however, I want to talk about the only other Schwarz silent from the late 1920s that is available to see: Petronella (1927). I find that I have hardly mentioned this production in my writing on Schwarz, not because it is less interesting, but because it seems to stand out among his films of this period. My interest has primarily been on Schwarz’s work for Ufa, especially his operetta films leading up to the transition to sound. Petronella may have been made with Ufa’s involvement, and shot partially in Ufa’s studios, but it was a co-production with Helvetia-Film. Adapted from a Swiss novel, recreating an important period in Swiss history (and Swiss national identity), its exteriors shot on location in Switzerland, and premiered in Bern in November 1927, Petronella is a very Swiss film. Happily, and rather appropriately given its subject, Petronella has recently been restored by the good people of the Cinémathèque Suisse, to whom I am very grateful for allowing me to access a copy of the film. Though this production has been the subject of one or two pieces (exclusively devoted to Swiss film history), I came to Petronella with very little idea of what it would be like – or how it might compare to Schwarz’s other work. Today’s piece emerges from my growing fascination with this unjustly little-known director, whose films continually have the capacity to surprise…

Based on Johannes Jegerlehner’s novel of the same name (1912), Petronella is set during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1801, the inhabitants of Brunegg are fighting the advancing French army. The pride of their village, the church bell known as “Petronella”, is ordered by Father Imboden (Theodor Loos) to be taken away and hidden for safety – but it is lost in a crevasse en route. Meanwhile, Gaberell Schwiek (Ernst Rückert) is mortally wounded in the battle. His last wish is for his new tavern to be completed by his young wife Pia (Maly Delschaft). Time passes, and the village mourns the misfortune of the missing “Petronella”. Pia’s new tavern is built – but she will need a license from the local council to open for business. Since the death of her husband, Pia has attracted two rivals for her hand: one of her late husband’s friends, whom she loves, Josmarie Seiler (Wilhelm Dieterle), and the wealthy, older landowner Fridolin Bortis (Oskar Homolka), whom she despises. Spurned by Pia and jealous of Josmarie, Fridolin goes to the council and denounces Pia as a woman of ill-repute – thus scuppering the approval of her license. However, Father Imboden intervenes and the license is duly granted. The rivalry between Josmarie and Fridolin reaches tipping point, and in a fight between the two Fridolin is killed. As punishment, Josmarie is exiled from the land. The misfortunes of the village continue, as there is a deadly illness at large. A local “witch”, Tschäderli (Frida Richard), is blamed and persecuted by the villagers. Further misfortune strikes when the church silver is stolen by Father Imboden’s ex-convict brother (Fritz Kampers). Realizing the truth, the priest confronts his brother – and accidentally kills him. Distraught by the deaths of Tschäderli and his brother, Father Imboden enters a monastery. Finally, Josmarie finds the “Petronella” and returns to Brunegg, where he is absolved of his sins and can marry Pia. ENDE.

Petronella is an impressive film. The cast is strong, the performances realistic, and the setting and staging often very striking. Most obviously, the film’s prelude introduces us to the village and the surrounding spaces through the drama of a battle between French soldiers and Swiss locals. Schwarz uses the rocks, streams, and slopes of the valley to great effect. The camera peers down over successive ranks of fighters, or glances up at groups swarming over the precipitous ridges. Clouds of smoke disguise and reveal the landscape, just as the advance and retreat of figures show the difficulty of traversing it. It’s a great way to start the film.

I described this as “a very Swiss” film, and throughout there is a clear effort to show off the real landscapes and buildings of the region. (I have read conflicting reports as to where exactly it was shot. Though Brunegg is a real municipality in the canton of Aargau, the production seemingly used multiple exteriors elsewhere.) The film also engages with local (traditional) dress and culture, most obviously in the fight between the two cows that will decide who gets to marry Pia. The tone here, and throughout, is often quite broad. This is not only an outdoorsy film, rooted in the local/national/traditional, but a film that invites a popular audience. The drama and its telling are clear and free of fussiness. I suppose this is a nice way of saying that Petronella struck me as less visually inventive as some of Schwarz’s other films, especially those shot by Carl Hoffmann. The cameraman for Petronella was Alfred Hansen, who shot five films with Ernst Lubitsch in the 1910s, including Carmen (1918). If these productions link Hansen to one of the great directors of the era (and of all time!), his involvement was with films that are not primarily admired for the elaborateness of their photography.

I realize that I am adding quite a few caveats here, but I don’t mean to lessen the achievements of Petronella. Though it offers a broad, popular, unfussy treatment of its material, there are lots of moments that stand out for their subtlety and effectiveness. The end of the prologue is very striking. Here, Gaberell lies wounded in bed. To aid his recovery, Tschäderli – the local “healer” – is called. She is initially treated as a bit of a joke, and her actions are cause for some comedic touches. She forbids Gaberell fresh air and banishes Pia’s pet black cat. Josmarie cautiously picks up the cat and drops it out of the window in a scene that is so odd that it becomes funny. (It is surely played for a laugh.) But things swiftly turn serious. When Tschäderli leaves, she promises Pia that Gaberell will be up and well within two days; if he isn’t, it will be cause of some malign influence wielded by the black cat. Pia goes about her business, but on returning from fetching water she sees the black cat sneaking back out of the house. It’s a disconcerting moment, since we last saw the animal being ejected. It has clearly returned, and is now making its getaway. Since the earlier moment of the cat being dropped from the window was treated for comedy, Pia’s terrified reaction here comes as a shock. Clearly, these characters take such superstition seriously.

Pia rushes back to the house. She pauses on the threshold and, through the open door behind her, we see the snowcapped mountains. It grounds this moment – a pause before a death – in the reality of the landscape. There is also a sense of release outside the confines of the home, of a wider context to life within the home (or death within the home). Only now does Schwarz cut to a view of the bed. We are placed at a distance, like Pia, unable to intervene. The early interior scenes in this space played out in medium and close shots, and now we find ourselves looking at it in a new, less familiar way. Framed by the dark walls of the inner doorway, we see Gaberell lift and then drop his arm – as if reaching for help, or raising an alarm. Seen from a distance, through the doorway, this moment of death is rendered stranger and more sudden by this framing and distance. The oddness of how we see Gaberell’s death seems to vindicate Tschäderli’s warning. There is something unexpected, sinister even, in this domestic space. (Later in the film, there are many more moments where important gestures/actions are seen through the windows of the house – including Josmarie’s return to Pia at the end of the film, as though he has now returned to the space – literal and symbolic – vacated by Gaberell.)

At this point, I should say that I tracked down the original censorship report from 11 October 1927, a month before the film’s German premiere in Berlin (a week after the Swiss premiere in Bern). This was very interesting, as the intertitles it lists are different in order and in number from the those preserved in the Cinémathèque Suisse restoration of Petronella. The Berlin censor’s list of titles, together with its notes about cuts, also helps flesh-out two rather complex, and rather subtle, subplots that the film lets bubble away without quite resolving them.

The first is that of Tschäderli, whose first scene I discussed above. This character returns later in the film, when the village is beset by illness. In the 2024 restoration, we see Tschäderli blamed by the locals for the curse upon Brunegg – she is spat at and ushered from the village. But this is the last time we see her in the film. The censorship report includes extra intertitles here, indicating that the locals chase Tschäderli to her hut, accuse her of various forms of witchcraft, and then attack her. She is defended by the priest, but the locals taunt him that he isn’t trustworthy since his brother is a convict. Though the censorship report from October 1927 doesn’t offer a description of what happens on screen here, a second censorship report (for a regional release of the film in Baden in December 1928) does describe the action. According to this, Tschäderli’s hut “is set on fire, and she herself is finally killed while fleeing into the mountains”. This deadly encounter immediately presages the return of Father Imboden’s brother, his theft of the church silver, and his own death at the hands of Imboden.

Talking of this character, the censorship reports are also important in revealing a detail lost from the surviving version of the film. This relates to the second subplot I mentioned earlier. When Father Imboden intervenes to win Pia her licence, she is overjoyed and goes to embrace him. Realizing this might be overly familiar for a priest, she withdraws. However, Imboden reaches for her hands and begins stroking them – just as he fixes her with an odd expression. Pia goes to get him the first glass of wine she is now legally allowed to serve. She hands it to him, and Schwarz frames the priest holding the glass in a medium close-up. An iris subtly closes in to isolate this vessel, and then a dissolve transforms it into a chalice; the iris now expands and reveals that this second vessel is being held by Imboden at mass. It’s a surprisingly sacrilegious moment, affirming the crossing of professional and personal boundaries by the priest.

Before the film was censored, this sequence originally had an even more startling sequel. Imboden is leading mass. Standing before the altar, he glances up to the statue of the Virgin Mary. In the words of the Berlin censor: “the face of […] Pia appears to the priest instead of the face of a Madonna; she nods and smiles. This [shot] appears twice.” This startling interruption makes explicit what was going on in the earlier scene. It also explains the tortured, surprised reaction of the priest, filmed from a high angle: it’s his vision (and repressed love for Pia) as much the Madonna who looks down on him. The punch of this moment is rather lost without the close-ups of Pia, long since excised by the censors in 1927.

Even if the film’s current form makes these elements less effective (or even visible), they indicate how Petronella complicates its depiction of place and people. It may be a genre film, but it does interesting things with its story. In this respect, Petronella makes an interesting companion piece to later German films depicting the same period and (broader) region. Most obviously, Luis Trenker made two films dealing with Tyrolean resistance to the French: Der Rebell (1932) and Der Feuerteufel (1940). Though the Tyrolean revolt of 1809 took place in what was then the Holy Roman Empire and is now northern Italy, the story and landscape make Trenker’s two historical dramas very similar to Petronella. Yet the tone and treatment are very different. Trenker is more interested in the male hero (played, naturally, by Trenker himself) and the martial aspect of resistance to foreign occupation.

The 1932 film feels very much like (and was taken at the time to be) a statement against French occupation of German territory in the wake of the Great War. It ends with the martyrdom of Trenker’s titular rebel, shot by firing squad – exactly the kind of heroic national figure that attracted the Nazis. But if the Nazis loved Der Rebell, they were much more cautious towards Der Feuerteufel. By 1940, the image of popular resistance to an invading force looked too much like sympathy for Poland (or Czechoslovakia, or France, or anywhere else the Germans had invaded).

However complex these contexts, both of Trenker’s films stand in contrast to Schwarz’s Petronella. It seems to me that the latter has a much more complex and ambiguous viewpoint to its subject and its “national” community. For a start, the war against the invaders is the setting but (I would argue) not the subject of Petronella.Unlike Der Rebell, which continually depicts acts of violent resistance, and ends with a big battle sequence, Schwarz’s film gets the fighting with French troops out the way fairly quickly at the start of the drama. Though the battle scenes are extremely impressive, they act only as the prelude to the real drama. Petronella is primarily the story of a woman’s struggle to gain independence from intrusive male power (the rich landowner, the council) – and from intrusive male desire (the landowner, even the priest).

The local population is not merely a united, heroic force of resistance to foreign influence. Rather, it is a complex and often parochial society. Superstition is rife, not merely in the figure of Tschäderli but in those of her accusers (especially in the lost scenes of her persecution and death). There are plenty of tensions here, and the view that Brunegg is somehow cursed by the bell’s absence smacks of an era that seems older than the dawn of the nineteenth century. When the local elders announce the “indulgence” (i.e. wiping clean of sin) for anyone who recovers the bell, their notice proclaims that among their misfortunes is the arrival of “Seuchen”, which might be translated as “epidemics” but also as “plagues” – a rather medieval way of looking at the world. (Indeed, it is worth noting here that one of the reasons that the Tyrol rebelled against French occupation in 1809 was the order that the locals be inoculated against smallpox.)

It is the symbol of the bell, with its feminine name “Petronella”, that brings the community together. The rediscovery of the bell enables forgiveness and reconciliation – and forgetting. But how convincing is this ending? The German censors of 1927-28 were a little concerned at the film’s depiction of the “indulgence” issued to resolve the drama, and whether it too easily gave exemption to Josmarie not merely for his legal crime but for his sins. What was still a potentially awkward question of civic and religious law in the 1920s is less so today. More intriguing is how we are to take the broader “indulgence” of the community itself. How much of what we have seen is to be “indulged”, and by what authority? Given that we have seen superstition, manipulation, deceit, and violence at work in Brunegg, there is surely a note of doubt hanging over the ending. Beyond the loving couple, how comforted are we that all is well and stable in this community?

Thinking about how local or national identity plays out in Petronella, it is worth noting the fact that the screenplay was co-written by Schwarz and Max Jungk, both Jewish émigrés from the former Austria-Hungary. (Schwarz was born in Vienna; Jungk in Myslkovice (now in the Czech Republic).) Jungk had co-written two of Schwarz’s earliest films, Nanon (1924) and Die Stimme des Herzens (1924), neither of which I have been able to see. (Nanon, at least, survives, but the only copy lies in an archive beyond the bounds of my current travel budget!) Whether or not there is something of an outsider’s eye at work in Petronella, the involvement of émigré artists indicates the complex context in which to see this ostensibly Swiss production. In this light, Petronella might be seen as a film about belonging and expulsion. Tschäderli and Josmarie are expelled from the land, just as Father Imboden exiles himself to a monastery. (One might also add Pia’s unfortunate black cat to this list.) Imboden seeks to send his brother away from Brunegg, an act which ends in the latter’s death; the locals force Tschäderli to flee, an act which ends in her death. Only one exile returns alive to be forgiven and reintegrated: Josmarie. It feels inevitable that I must mention the fate of Schwarz and Jungk: both men would be forced to flee Germany in 1933; neither returned.

I have written this piece on Petronella because the film has lingered in my mind in the days since I saw it. I admit that I was surprised by how different it seemed from other Schwarz films. Less obviously stylish, I initially found it less engaging – and less moving – than his contemporary work. But the more I think about it, the more it seems quietly innovative. While exhibiting the trappings of many “mountain films”, as well as the historical drama, Petronella feels a little peculiar. It is not a Trenker-style (or Riefenstahl-style) mountain film about conquering peaks, heroism, and death-defying stunts. Nor does it offer a simplistic us v. them narrative of a historical-national drama. The war quickly recedes into the background, and its consequences exacerbate the various personal and social tensions in the village. As I have tried to indicate, Petronella is rather more complex and curious than its generic parameters suggest. I’d love to see how it plays before an audience, especially with a good score that brought out the tensions in the drama. Hanns Schwarz, you continue to intrigue.

Paul Cuff

My great thanks to the Cinémathèque Suisse, especially Saskia Bonfils, for allowing me to access their restoration of Petronella.

Pordenone from afar (2025, Day 8)

Day 8 is our final day of films from Pordenone, and it’s another busy schedule. Our first programme takes us on a journey from the Middle East to South America and eastern Europe, from haphazard observations to machine-tooled propaganda. Our second programme gives us a comic fantasy and a comic reality, taking us from wartime Ruritania to postwar America. It’s a great range of films, and they appealed to me in unexpected ways…

Aleppo (c.1916; Ger.; unknown). Camels kneel and rise. Soldiers and civilians mill around. Awkward looks at the camera. Views of the city, of a cemetery, of ruins, of waterways, of Arab children. It’s very beautiful to see this faraway land, and this faraway time, so calmly recorded. But of course this is 1916, and the world is at war. This is a Syria under Ottoman rule, and the European men in tunics and caps are the Turks’ erstwhile German allies, still confident in victory. These uniforms and trucks, these crowds of Turkish soldiers – they are all part of some other continuity, some other subject. The film cannot but admit that something is going on elsewhere, something unnamed, something momentous. In this other place, everything is decidedly not calm. But here are the boys and their donkeys, and the old men and their pipes, and the ruins of epochs long gone. This is a world in waiting, then, getting on with life somewhere between ancient history and the crucible of the twentieth century. The film ends, and in the fade to black, history surely intervenes.

La Capitale du Brésil (1931-32; Br.; unknown). Fed information by title cards, we arrive by sea. The camera slowly bobs with the ship’s passage through the waves. Crowds await us. The camera is on the shore and onboard. Our view changes with the ease of a page turned in a travel brochure. From the rooftops, we see sunlight fall over the streets of Rio de Janeiro. The camera pans over the coast, the mountains, the distant houses. The world goes about its business. The beaches are crowded, the waves lap over the shore. Cable cars and light railways take us up the mountain of Corcovado, and – after so easy an arrival – we glance down towards the distant city, the huge arcs of hills, the bay. At sea again, we take the ferry and glide past beautiful islands. Then to the institutes, museums, gardens – the taming of this wildness. Then to views of sport, from rowing to football and tennis, and the Jockey Club. Crowds of men and women beam at the camera. A sea of hats and smiles. We visit the gold club, the polo club. A smiling, hatted, patient, affluent crowd. Life stretches out amiably before them. We are tourists, and they are showing us the life to which we might aspire. It’s very bourgeois, very decorous, very charming. (There is little life.) The last we see of this world is the patient spectators of a peaceable game, watching their world play out. The film stops, and they are swept away into the past.

Narysy Radanskoho Mista [Sketches of a Soviet City] (1929; UkrSSR; Dmytro Dalskyi). A swirl of images, an advancing tractor, swaying fields of wheat, piles of vegetables. Here are forests, and the trees being felled. Here is produce and fuel, and here are the men and women, and the trains and ships, and the factories. “From all sides of Ukraine…”. Trains arrive at Kharkiv, and Kharkiv is at work. The streets, viewed from new buildings. This is a past that is very busy. They like to think they are building the future, and perhaps they are. “The future belongs to us!”, and the film cuts to a dinosaur skeleton, to museums of ancient artefacts, to statues and books. “This all belongs to the workers”, and the workers study and read. But such a film leaves its viewers little time to think. All the thinking has been done for us. The film is merely the precis of a conclusion already written and approved. It is all madly exciting, madly busy, madly optimistic. The past here surges with energy. There is no time to dwell or to reflect. Everything is happening now. “Not a step back from the current pace of industrialization!” Slogans fill the screen, and the workers work at insane pace, in insane numbers, across every conceivable facet of production. With a last surge of statistical overachievement, the film ends. But it might just as well have gone on forever.

The whole thing reminded me of the montage in Fragment of an Empire (1929), wherein the factory workers convince the newcomer of the benefits of the Soviet system. But as I wrote about that film, the unending montage of Sketches of a Soviet City is unconvincing as any kind of argument. Indeed, it isn’t an argument so much as an unceasing statement: a statement of achievement, a statement of intent. The film is organized into a series of visual slogans, interspersed with written slogans. Though it has momentary glimpses of real life, the film bundles everything together into a package of remorseless optimism that loses sight of the human beings it claims to represent. The pleasure one takes in this film a century later is not the message so much as the glimpses of people and places it contains. These pleasures are fleeting, since the film is in such a mad rush to boast about how these people are being mobilized toward ever greater productivity. Everything is a resource to be moved, pushed, pulled, dug up, processed, transported, melded, welded, stacked, cemented, launched, turned, electrified. It’s impressive, but it quickly becomes exhausting. Unlike Aleppo, this film is at least up front and explicit about its political context. But there is more real life, both in its spatial randomness and temporal slowness, in Aleppo than in Sketches of a Soviet City. For all its avant-garde technique, the Soviet Ukrainian film is less enticing as a vision of progress, and an enticement to visit (or at least admire) than the bourgeois world presented in La Capitale du Brésil.

So to the day’s second half. We begin with the half-hour short, Soldier Man (1928; US; Harry Edwards). Harry Langdon is the soldier the army forgot. He has been left behind in “Bomania” after 11 November, not realizing the war is over. He stumbles around, fleeing phantom enemies, confounding local peasants. Meanwhile, King Strudel the 13th of Bomania (also played by Langdon) is fighting revolution, secretly being fermented by General von Snootzer. The Queen of Bomania hates the King for his drunken loutishness. The King is duly kidnapped and hidden in a remote barn, to be killed in due course. But the King’s loyal courtiers encounter Harry and recruit him to impersonate the missing monarch. He does so but is immediately the target of an assassination attempt by the Queen. However, it turns out that he’s a better kisser than the real King, so the Queen is disarmed. Things turn suddenly romantic, but Harry is tired. He goes to sleep on the King’s bed and wakes up in his real home with his real wife. He is a common soldier, after all, and the war is over. THE END.

I confess that I’ve seen very little of Harry Langdon in my life. The handful of features and shorts I have seen left me curious, but clearly not curious enough. So I was very glad to see him here, exhibiting all the curiosity I remember. He’s not quite a child and not quite an adult. He seemingly has sex appeal, but of an innocent kind. His appetites are easily assuaged: all he really wants is a bite to eat and a place to kip. In Soldier Man, I love the way he traverses the world so harmlessly. His gun is broken, but when he fixes it it’s only to shoot a scarecrow. When he takes cover behind a cow, he pauses to marvel with curious pleasure at its udders. He is about to paw at the suspended teats but withdraws his hands before any kind of groping might take place. The cow bends its neck to look at him, so he smiles – so innocently and friendlily – back at the animal. It’s a curious, charming, silly, almost sad little moment. It’s all incidental, puncturing the chance of threat, denying the danger of physical contact. It’s making nothing out of something.

Though Langdon also plays the King, his double, this character is swiftly bundled off screen before Harry arrives. There is no attempt made for Harry to meet his doppelganger, to see the kind of man he might otherwise have been (aggressive, selfish, sexual, powerful). It is the innocent Harry who wears the outsize royal robes, and we might wonder how they can be outsized when they were made for his other self – for him. It is as though he is figuratively smaller than his own doppelganger, so that even identical clothes do not fit. His royal regalia are superfluous to his needs. He offers his crown to a courtier, as a vessel for him to vomit in – since Harry is so innocent he cannot think of another reason why the man should bow forward. Somehow, perhaps by sheer lack of arrogance, the Queen is seduced by him. Harry is hardly interested in her at all. She tries to kiss him, to distract him from her dagger, but he’s too busy eating a biscuit to have his mouth and lips ready. He doesn’t flinch away (he’s too obliging, too unquestioning, too accepting), but apologetically motions that he has his mouth full, insists upon chewing his food properly before swallowing. His kiss is successful despite himself, and when he retreats to the royal bed it isn’t for an act of consummation with his Queen but to curl up into a ball and go to sleep.

The very title of Soldier Man is a curious conjunction of roles and titles, and a syntactic separation of those two ideas of “soldier” and “man”. It’s a very charming film, and its lightness belies the oddness of Langdon’s persona. It’s not sentimental, which is a bonus, and allows Langdon the chance to wander innocently through at least two different genres of film. There is the war drama, which the film immediately removes all possibility of pomp or danger; and there is the Ruritanian drama, with its crowd and court and mistaken identities, which the film makes immediately absurd and parodic. It’s quietly radical, gently ironic. When Harry awakes, we wonder what the meaning of his dream might be. Does it have a meaning? It’s a fantasy in which the dreamer does nothing more than wander aimlessly, ignoring all possibility of heroism (in the war drama) or romance and power (in the Ruritanian drama). The dreamer wants nothing more than to continue sleeping. When he wakes, he seems as innocent of the real world as of his fantasy. Yes, indeed, this is a curious film. It makes me want to see more Harry Langdon…

After Langon’s short, we begin our main feature – and our last: Are Parents People? (1925; US; Malcom St. Clair). James Hazlitt (Adolphe Menjou) and Alita Hazlitt (Florence Vidor) are a married couple on the verge of divorce. Their daughter Lita has been called back from school to hear the news of the separation. Lita plots to find a way to “cure” her parents’ symptoms. At school, Lita’s roommate Aurella (Mary Beth Milford) has a crush on both the film star Maurice Mansfield (George Beranger) and on the local Dr Dacer, who is also the object of Lita’s affection. When Lita’s parents visit the school, each offers her a different vacation option – but she prefers to stay at home. When a teacher finds photos and letters to Maurice Mansfield, she accuses Lita of being the culprit – and plans to expel her. Mansfield is shooting a film nearby, and takes an interest in Lita – but she arrives home to discover she has been expelled. Lita pretends she is the culprit in order to ensure her parents have to meet and discuss her future. Mansfield is summoned to Alita, and he assures her he has never met Lita – and proceeds to flirt with Alita. Lita seeks refuge with Dacer, who doesn’t realize she is in his home until the early hours of the morning. When Lita returns to her parents the next day, arguments and accusations ensue. Lita seeks solace with Dacer, who is wooed by her charm, and the Hazlitts manage to reconcile their differences (at least for now). THE END.

Well, this was a diverting film. It has a simple setup, and it delivers a well-directed and well-played result. I always enjoy watching Adolphe Menjou, and his interactions with Florence Vidor – as the pair bicker, argue, flirt, joke, and reconcile – are both amusing and poignant. (Florence Vidor, by the way, was the wife of director King Vidor. Curiously enough, the pair had divorced shortly before the production of Are Parents People? One wonders quite how she felt filming such scenes.) As Lita, I found Betty Bronson very charming and engaging. But there is little depth in her character, just as Dacer – and Lawrence Gray’s performance – is a bit flat. Though George Beranger has fun parodying a pretentious film star, acting out a whole film and trying to seduce Alita, his character is likewise paper thin. And this rather sums up my reaction to Are Parents People?, which was restricted to being charmed. I cannot say that I was moved, nor that I laughed a great deal. It was all very… pleasant. In comparison with the only other Malcolm St Clair I’ve seen, A Woman of the World (1925), Are Parents People? seems rather tame and unremarkable.

That said, it is certainly fluently and sensitively directed. Though there are no really striking images, the drama plays out nicely through small details, especially some very good cross-cutting between the two parents. Their actions and reactions mirror each other, creating all kinds of subtle little parallels and contrasts. And much of this takes place without dialogue. The opening sequence is ten minutes of wordless action, through which we grasp the whole drama through glances and editing. When there is dialogue, it is often short and snappy – echoing the back-and-forth repartee of the editing. But St Clair isn’t Lubitsch, nor is this script one of any depth or lasting resonance. Its charm is only so charming, its amusements only so amusing. I’m glad I’ve seen it, but I suspect my memory of this film will quickly pale.

In terms of the presentation, it’s a shame that Are Parents People? survives only in a 16mm copy, which is very soft to look at. Though it is nicely tinted, the amazing pictorial quality of many of the films shown earlier at Pordenone (and even the other films in Day 8) show the gap in preservation status. If this is a visually downbeat way to end the online Pordenone, it is at least a reminder that so much of film history is lost to us, and what remains is precious. Music for the first three films of Day 8 was by Mauro Colombis, and for Are Parents People? by Neil Brand. The all-piano soundtrack here was very good, though I cannot but note that past editions of Pordenone online have ended with orchestral (or at least ensemble) scores. Combined with the lesser visual quality of the film, and my reservations about the film itself, it felt like a slightly limp way end to the festival. But hey, we can’t always end with a bang, and I’ve enjoyed so much already – so I shouldn’t complain.

My experience of Pordenone from afar in 2025 has, as ever, been absorbing and exhausting. There is no other festival that offers so much, and of such diversity. We’ve traversed the globe, and we’ve traversed the era. The emphasis is not on presenting masterpiece after masterpiece but about widening our appreciation of the silent era as a whole. In this, Pordenone is unique. Even the online material, which is but a tiny fraction of the festival offered on site in Italy, is a tremendous cross-section of people, places, themes, genres, and contexts. One can only be exceedingly grateful for so much marvellous, and so much entirely new, material. For a single ticket, the quality and variety of films Pordenone offers online is exceptionally good value. Bravo to all involved in this amazing festival.

Paul Cuff

Pordenone from afar (2025, Day 7)

Day 7 of Pordenone delivers us into the safe hands of Ufa for a film about the unsafe world of hyperinflation and theatrical exploitation…

Die Dame mit der Maske (1928; Ger.; Wilhelm Thiele). Alexander von Illagin is from a wealthy émigré family but now scrapes a living working for the Apollo theatre in Berlin – just as his friend, the Russian émigré Michail, works as a cab driver. Alexander meets Doris von Seefeld, the daughter of impoverished Baron von Seefeld, and advises her to try the theatre. Her father, meanwhile, owes money to the parvenu millionaire Otto Hanke, a timber merchant. Otto boasts to his girlfriend Kitty that Seefeld’s money will help him take over the Apollo, where Kitty works. Kitty’s lacklustre performance frustrates the theatre director, who immediately casts Doris in her place. Doris objects to the risqué costume she must wear. As a compromise, she becomes the anonymous “Lady with the Mask”. Doris pretends to her father than she has sold the rights to his memoirs and lies about the nature of her new employment. But “The Lady with the Mask” is an instant sensation, and Otto is enraptured. Meanwhile, Alexander discovers that his family had hidden jewels in his boot before they fled to Germany. However, he gave his boots to Michail, who in turn exchanged them at a broker… Doris and Alexander admit their feelings for one another, but Otto prepares to reveal Doris’s identity if she doesn’t submit to him. The baron discovers that Doris has been deceiving him, and follows her to the Apollo, where he realizes his daughter’s sacrifice. After escaping the clutches of Otto, Doris finds her father with Alexander, who has recovered the boot and his fortune – and the couple are reunited. ENDE. [As revealed in the post-film restoration notes, the original German version had a much more complex ending. There, Otto is reconciled with Kitty, and Doris and Alexander reunite via a more complex series of events – just as the recovery of the boot is woven more thoroughly into the denouement. The export version that survives clearly contains not just different editing and/or titles, but different footage shot expressly for it.]

What a wonderful treat! This is a visually rich and dramatically engaging production. The lighting and camerawork are superb, evident from the fabulous “inflation” montage that opens the film. Here, multiple superimpositions, overlaid text, slow motion, rapid cutting, and complex movements and dissolves take us dizzily through time and space. Though it is setting the context for the film, and providing us with information about time/place, it is more than anything a way of plunging us into the unstable world of contemporary Germany. The mad flurry of images is confusing, disturbing, bewildering. We cannot find our feet, just as the characters have had their world pulled from under them. These are characters who grew up in the pre-war world of stable, not to say repressive, imperial orders. Alexander is from an unnamed eastern land, perhaps Russia – as his name and friendship with Michail suggests – or perhaps just a former part of Austria-Hungary. Doris’s family likewise sports an aristocratic ”von”, and father writes memoirs of hunting in Africa, suggesting an old Prussian family with colonial connections.

Though the film signals these various intriguing contexts, Die Dame mit der Maske is ultimately quite a light treatment of poverty and hardship. The opening titles announces the story as one of the “silent tragedies” of hyperinflation, but even if it is more a drama than a comedy, I certainly wouldn’t call it a “tragedy”. Nothing tragic happens, and the characters might be struggling but they all end the film with money – and some kind of restoration of the meaning of their various aristocratic titles. Michail is the only really lower-class character, and he cheerfully acts as a kind of servant to Alexander. He is the comic sidekick whose adventures with his newly-bought taxi and his efforts to find the fortune-bearing boot serve as light relief to the drama. In general, though, the upper-class characters (Doris, Alexander, Seefeld) are well-mannered and sympathetic, while the lower-class ones (Otto, Kitty) are brash and occasionally violent. Otto’s pursuit of Doris attempt to bridge the class barrier, but the film concludes by each couple (Alexander/Doris, Otto/Kitty) re-established within their own class. In the end (at least, as far as the original German version is concerned), all the characters end up affluent and emotionally reconciled. No-one dies, and I’m not sure anyone has learned any lessons, either.

The cast perhaps reflects the overall tone and thrust of the film. French actress Arlette Marchal is believable and sympathetic as Doris, though one never has a real feeling of emotional depth to the character. Marchal ably signals the self-sacrifice and wounded pride of Doris as she performs in her scanty costume, but the film doesn’t ask her to do more than this. A more complex drama (or a different performer) might suggest a sense of liberation or exploration through her stage performance, i.e. the allure of stardom. But Doris wants nothing more than to support her father and (presumably) live an old-fashioned domestic life. The film might exploit her body and show off her allure, but it is neither so cruel as to expose her (literally and figuratively) to true degradation – nor to use her stage persona to explore her sexuality. Indeed, the relationship between Doris and Alexander doesn’t have a strong sexual dimension.

As Alexander, the Ukraine-born Wladimir Gaidarow is very charming, but the drama goes not provide his character with real complexity to explore or express more emotional depth. Though we get fleeting references to his former life, the film (at least in this surviving export version) does not give any glimpse of what he might have done to survive, or what kind of person he or his family were before they came to Germany. Did he fight in the war, or in the Russian civil war? There is absolutely no sense of trauma here, nor any emotional baggage from his past. The only thing tangible from his former life is his title and the jewels cached in his boot. Again, a more interesting or daring film would have at least suggested some complexity of Alexander’s past.

The most interesting female character in Die Dame mit der Maske is surely Kitty. But though I love seeing Dita Parlo march around being spiky and pouty and self-confident (all while wearing an extraordinary set of Weimar hotpants and bra), I couldn’t say she embodies a particularly complex character. She makes Kitty into an entirely believable figure – ambitious but unskilled, jealous and proud. But the film doesn’t give her the chance for any more than this. Though we might guess that her past was tough, even tragic, to have attached herself to the loutish Otto (and saved herself from far worse), the film gives not the slightest hint of backstory.

For me, Heinrich George is the best thing in this film. Every time I see his name on the credits, I perk up. He never disappoints. In Die Dame mit der Maske, he’s that wonderful combination of the spoiled child and the violent adult. He’s both pathetic and dangerous, pitiable and contemptible. The way he lurches from self-pity to fury, from depression to aggression, is brilliant. Every time he appears on screen, you know the scene might change at any second. He might deliver a laugh, or make you gasp in fear. He is brilliant as the parvenu millionaire, smarmily puffing his cigar or smothered in foam in his bath, raging and thrashing in petulant fury. His round, shining cheeks are babyish – but his sheer bulk has real menace. When he seems about to force himself on Doris in the penultimate sequence, you really believe he has the will and the callousness to assault her. But when he relents and lets her go, you realize that he’s more complex than this – that there is some kind of conscience at work. Otto is not, quite, a monster. It’s a really great performance by George.

I must conclude by saying, once again, how enjoyable Die Dame mit der Maske was to watch. It isn’t a masterpiece of any depth, but it is a fascinating – if somewhat superficial – portrayal of this period of German history. I wish that it had more to say about the context and characters it mobilizes, and I wish it mobilized them to more interesting ends – but I was never frustrated while watching the film. For this presentation, the piano music by Günter Buchwald was first rate, though I’d be curious (as ever) to know what the original orchestral score was like in 1928. (Unlike many such productions of this period, I cannot find the name of the arranger/composer responsible for the music at the premiere.) It’s a great shame that only the export version of Die Dame mit der Maske survives, but it’s great that the restoration credits so openly explain this, and suggest how the original German version was different. Far too many digital versions of silent films gloss over or deliberately obscure this complex issue. So my compliments to the FWMS for being so transparent and informative. A highly enjoyable and interesting film to watch.

Paul Cuff

Bonn from afar (2025, days 9 and 10)

The final two days of streaming from Bonn provide us with two variety-themed melodramas. The first is more familiar, at least in terms of its cast; the second was a complete surprise, and yet another welcome discovery…

Day 9: Song. Die Liebe eines armen Menschenkindes (1928; Ger./UK; Richard Eichberg). As with Saxophon-Susi on Day 2 of Bonn this year, I found myself in the curious position of having already seen Song – likewise at the (online) Pordenone festival of 2024. As I did last week, I will refer readers interested in Eichberg’s film to my post from that earlier occasion.

In lieu of commentary on the film, I observe in passing that there is a musical connection between Saxophon-Susi and Song: both were originally scored by Paul Dessau in 1928. Though Dessau’s later work (including sound films, orchestral and chamber works, and several operas) is well represented in terms of DVDs and CDs, these two feature film scores do not seem to be extant. As with so much absent silent film music, one wonders if this is a case of genuine loss or simply a case of no-one having been willing or able to look. (The most typical case would be that both films are released on DVD/Blu-ray with a modern substitute, only for Dessau’s scores to be rediscovered and lovingly reconstructed. More typically still, these scores would then be performed just once at a festival I cannot attend and hear about only retrospectively, and forever after remain unavailable due to lack of interest and/or finance for appropriate recordings to be issued with a new home edition. I would then be left with years of regret and frustration, with occasional outbreaks of false hope when a rumoured broadcast recording failed to appear – or one that remained unavailable outside a restricted copyright region of central Europe. Such is often the fate of original orchestral scores, and of those who long most fervently to hear them.)

For the presentation of Song from Bonn this week, Stephen Horne performed on piano (and various other instrumental interpolations) – just as he did for this film at Pordenone. Both iterations were excellent. However, given that the restoration and musical score were from the same sources, I merely dipped in to this presentation from Bonn, finding myself (as before) marvelling at how nice the film looked – but remaining just as ungrabbed by the characters or drama. Not without some guilt, nor without regret at once more not seeing this with an audience, I skipped the rest for the sake of time.

Day 10: Sensation im Wintergarten (1929; Ger.; Gennaro Righelli). The circus acrobat “Frattani” (Paul Richter) returns to Germany after many years abroad. His real identity is Count Paul Mensdorf, and as a child he ran away from home to avoid his new father, the Baron von Mallock (Gaston Jacquet). Presumed dead by his mother, the Countess Mensdorf (Erna Morena), he joined the circus and rose to become “Frattani, King of the Air”. Arriving in Berlin as an adult, Paul re-encounters his childhood sweetheart Madeleine, who earlier left the circus – and now hopes to rejoin. Meanwhile, Mallock has been cheating on his wife and gambling away his fraudulently-earned money. At the Wintergarten, Mallock’s roving eye is caught by Madeleine, whose debut is a triumph. But Madeleine worries about Paul’s dangerous stunts, just as Paul comes to worry that he is endangering their budding romance. (A worry enhanced by the sight of the former “King of the Air”, who is now one-legged and unemployed.) Paul recognizes Mallock and strikes him down when he tries to grope Madeleine. Revealing his true identity, Paul’s reappearance is a joy to his mother but to Mallock a threat to his estate. Threatened by his creditors, Mallock grows desperate and tries to sabotage the trapeze ropes – only to plunge to his death. ENDE.

A very enjoyable film, if a tad generic. Its story might be from any variety- or circus-themed film of the silent era, from the earliest features onwards. Danish producers, for example, made a speciality of them in the early 1910s (Den flyvende circus, 1912; Dødsspring til hest fra cirkuskuplen, 1912), remade some of them in the 1920s (Klovnen, 1917 and 1926), and even directed them in Hollywood (The Devil’s Circus, 1926). Romantic rivalry playing out against a backdrop of circus stunts was clearly an appealing setting. And despite the satisfaction of the narrative in Sensation im Wintergarten, the ending is a bit of a dud. The machinations of Wallock amount to very little and his threat goes instantly awry, killing him before anything has happened.

But narrative ingenuity or dramatic depth is probably not the point here. Sensation im Wintergarten is distinguished by its superb staging and camerawork. Even if this could be a story from 1910, its cinematic realization truly belongs to 1929. The film is impeccably lit, impeccably staged, impeccably edited. From the outset, it is filled with fine sequences. The opening flashback to Paul’s childhood, for example, stages his first sight of the circus performers through the windows the school gymnasium. There is a very nice dissolve at the end of the scene to the same space, now deserted and lit only by the streetlamp. It’s evocative and moody, just as when Paul first enters the circus. Here, we see the clown Barry (Wladimir Sokoloff) is introduced in the centre of the rink, pulling an animal from the wings via a lead. The beast that emerges is in fact a tiny dog, who slides reluctantly across the sand. The camera slides before the dog, making the sight both novel and comic. It is a shot of pure delight, allowing us to share the kind of delight that the child Paul feels as he looks on from the wings.

I single out this moment to emphasize that the mobile camerawork is interesting not just in the obvious examples of trapeze-mounted shots for drama, but the less expected ones. Then there are the beautiful travelling shots through 1929 Berlin, the camera gliding marvellously along the streets towards the theatre. But the interior sequences filmed inside the real Wintergarten are simply dazzling. It’s a glorious space, gloriously filmed – you can really feel the size of it, the buzz of the crowd, the drama of the performers on the real stage.

I love the tracking shot in which the side doors of the theatre open and we glide slowly toward the huge space within. It’s like a more realistic version of the shot in Ben-Hur (1925) in which the camera similarly tracks forward into the huge space of the Roman arena. Indeed, in some ways the shot in Sensation im Wintergarten is more enticing. Unlike half real, half matte-painted space of the Circus of Antioch, the Berlin theatre is tangibly real – and the sense of being inside this real space, with its real stage, real seating, real walls, real ceiling, is itself exciting. The unchained camera – swinging from the trapeze, leaping through the air – is a continuation of this sense of a real space being physically explored on screen.

Director Gennaro Righelli takes advantage of this amazing pre-built set by placing his camera everywhere he can: in the audience, behind the audience, in the wings, behind the stage, in front of the stage, in the orchestra pit, behind the orchestra pit, in the corridors, in the dressing rooms… You really get a sense of this location as a complete world in itself, a life that a performer might long for and not want to leave. The real sets are likewise full and rich and complete. There are fine interiors of the Countess’s home, but I was more interested in the smoky restaurants where the show people meet. The sense of a full reality created by the shots that introduce the real streets of Berlin continue into these interior spaces.

For all this, some may feel that it lacks the aesthetic or dramatic punch of Germany’s most famous vaudeville film of the era: Varieté (1925). I dare say I would agree. But this comparison to the most conspicuously well-known film of its genre does Sensation im Wintergarten an injustice. If Gennaro Righelli is not E.A. Dupont (I admit I had never knowingly heard of Righelli), this is no reason to snub his work. Nor should one snub his cast, even though it does not boast anyone as famous as Lya di Putti or Emil Jannings. But Sensation im Wintergarten does feature a reliable ensemble of familiar(ish) names. As Paul, Paul Richter offers no great emotional depth, but he is believable and likeable. (My familiarity with his face is as Fritz Lang’s Siegfried from 1924: another role of presence without depth.) Believable and likeable are also qualities I might say of Claire Rommer as his love interest. They are a charming couple, if one whose inner lives are only sketches rather than detailed portraits. As Mallock, Gaston Jacquet is perfectly suave, perfectly calculating, perfectly callous – a character designed not to possess any depth whatsoever. As Paul’s circus friend, Wladimir Sokoloff is a familiar face from various small roles in this period (including several Pabst productions), and his distinctive features – warm, kind, expressive, comic – make for an engaging sidekick to the lead. If I find I have little else to add to these sketches, it is because the film makes of its characters little more than sketches. They are entirely effective, but nothing more.

Again, I do not mean to talk down this film. Sensation im Wintergarten is a worthy production, and very entertaining. And it’s always good to widen one’s perspective on lesser-known films and directors. As much as I like Varieté, I’d really rather see something new and unknown. Sensation im Wintergarten is most certainly new and unknown. This presentation from Bonn is in fact the world premiere of the new digital restoration, which also provides detailed credits at the start. Per these very useful notes, the original German version of Sensation im Wintergarten remains lost, so this restoration is based on the version released in Sweden. Various missing scenes and shots have been indicated with inserted text, which is much preferable than leaving out important details for the sake of visual continuity. (I wish restorations would do this more often, as it is otherwise impossible to know the differences between original and restored copies.) Despite some missing material, the film looks great – filled with crisp, rich, detailed images. The music here was provided for piano and various other solo instruments by Günter A. Buchwald and Frank Bockius. Catching the rhythms and sounds of the circus, in particular, makes for a very engaging experience. They caught the drama and its tone very well, and I was entertained throughout.

Stummfilmtage Bonn 2025: Summary. As ever, by the time I have finished writing these festival pieces, the festival itself seems long over. And, as ever, I have mixed feelings about my online attendance. I have not engaged at all with online discussion (let alone in-person conversation) about what I have seen, nor have I explored any related festival material other than the brief descriptions of each film on the “details” sidebar for each video. My body and brain have certainly been having to work hard, though in a very different way from those present in Bonn. My early mornings have been a pell-mell flurry of simultaneous viewing and notetaking, followed by late mornings with an equally pell-mell flurry of rewriting and image-capturing. My wrist aches, something odd happened to my lower back, and I feel like I’ve had to cram more quickfire viewing and thinking into this last ten days than I have in many weeks. But ultimately I do enjoy the feeling that I have been forced to live according to the rhythm set by the festival, even if only via online portals with preset time restrictions. While a solitary pleasure, writing gives me a sense of something that will last beyond the ten days – and will hopefully stick in my memory, if not anyone else’s.

It goes without saying that the Stummfilmtage Bonn is an absolutely superb festival. The programme is always filled with some real discoveries, as well as the chance to review some familiar and very worthwhile films. Impeccably presented and prepared for online streaming, I cannot possibly bestow enough praise on everyone involved. (My conversation with the co-curator, Oliver Hanley, last year only led to a greater appreciation of the mad amount of effort involved in putting this on – especially for both live and online audiences.) I hope I will be able to attend in person one year, and indeed to have the kind of lifestyle that would enable me to do so. Until then, I will happily let my life be taken over by the Stummfilmtage Bonn for ten days each year. Long may this opportunity last.

Paul Cuff

Bonn from afar (2025, day 8)

Day 8 of this year’s line-up from Bonn takes us to Hungary, where we plunge into a crime melodrama…

Rabmadár (1929; Hu./Ger.; Pál Sugár/Lajos Lázár). In the women’s prison in Budapest, the resident doctor (Charlotte Susa) takes pity on Prisoner No. 7 (Lissi Arna), who begs to be let loose just for one night. She explains that she let herself be arrested for the sake of a man. The doctor believes her intentions are noble, so swaps clothes with the prisoner and allows her to escape. Meanwhile, at a hotel in the city, the head waiter Jenő (Hans Adalbert Schlettow) dotes over his pregnant girlfriend Birdi (Ida Turay), while also eyeing up the new maid (Olga Kerékgyártó) – and then the new arrival, the artiste (El Dura). As Jenő forces himself on the artiste, Prisoner No. 7 rushes into the hotel. Spying on the pair from the next room, she sees the artiste turn the tables on Jenő – praying on his vulnerability (his lowly status), she lures him into making more of himself for her sake. The artiste thus inveigles Jenő to distract the hotel manageress (Mariska H. Balla), while she herself empties the manageress’s safe. This she does, but Prisoner No. 7, now armed, confronts the artiste just as she’s about to make off with the money – and without Jenő. Jenő re-enters and now the Prisoner confronts him, too. She phones for the police. The artiste makes a run for it, plummeting to her death in a faulty lift. The prisoner tells Jenő he mustn’t escape this time. Jenő claims he loves her and somehow lures the Prisoner into his arms. The police enter and find the body in the lift shaft. Jenő goes downstairs to becalm the police. Meanwhile, Birdie encounters the Prisoner – and we learn that her name is Annuska. Birdie reveals that she will be married to Jenő, and that she is pregnant. The shocked Annuska leaves, pursued by Jenő. On the riverbank, Annushka asks him to be decent and marry Birdie. He swears he will, and Annushka heads back to prison. ENDE

My word, what a film this is. My experience of late 1920s/early 1930s Hungarian-directed films has, perhaps by accident, tended towards the dramatically and expressively extravagant. If Rabmadár doesn’t quite have Pál Fejős (aka Paul Fejos) levels of emotional and aesthetic intensity, passages nevertheless have an amazing and unexpected potency. The film revels in dark, often sinister or oppressive interior spaces – from the jail cell to the hotel rooms and shadowy niches, and the dark or dawning streets outside. In particular, the prison setting boasts some wonderful imaginative camerawork and editing. As well as finding great angles to frame the prisoners, especially No. 7 – from up above, through grates – there is a superb sequence of Annushka’s claustrophobia. In tight close-ups, we see her eying the walls, the door, the ceiling, and the camera tracks in towards each surface, pressing them slowly into the lens. Multiple superimpositions and ever-closer shots of her face and mouth and eyes make us share the madness of confinement, as the film shoves us closer into its imprisoning world. Later, there are any number of superb close-ups. Even when the artiste is fleeing with the money, the film shows us the chasing figures in facial close-ups as they hurtle through the hotel, shouting and screaming. The set-up and story might be entirely generic, but my word this film makes the most out of the material. A simple story of crime and betrayal becomes a weird chamber piece, draped in a febrile mise-en-scène. This is what impressed me most: the fact that every aspect of design and camerawork gets used to heighten and intensify the emotional tone. Everything in this film seems intense.

But this isn’t merely an aesthetic exercise. The characters are the reason for the intensity, and the cast form a superb ensemble. Lissi Arna’s face carries such amazing fierceness of feeling, from the despair of jail, of shock, of fear, of betrayal, to the heights of gratitude, of longing, of love, of vicious triumphalism. It’s quite a performance, matched by the sultry, moody, dangerous presence of the others in the cast. El Dura is a remarkable presence. She’s such a slight figure, but she moves with amazing purpose – turning what seems to begin as a rape scene into something weirder and unexpected, turning on her would-be attacker and bending him to her will. It’s a mad, uncomfortable twist of narrative logic, but somehow El Dura pulls it off. And Hans Adalbert Schlettow as the superficial Jenő – always seen glancing at himself in mirrors, in glass, in any reflective surface – has just enough fun to make his character a believably engaging narcissism and charm over the women.

But it’s the women in the cast that have the most enjoyable, intense performances to offer. As the manageress, Mariska H. Balla has enormous fun falling for Jenő – proffering him with drink, with frilly sweets, with kisses. Their seduction/distraction scene together is delightful, almost absurdly so. When Jenő gets out his guitar and starts singing, you realize the almost autonomous strength of the scene and its performers – it’s like another, equally good, film is breaking out of the one we’re watching. Then there are the intensely believable performances of Ida Turay as the madly besotted, innocent Birdi, and Olga Kerékgyártó as the maid who, even in a handful of appearances, is somehow realistic, intense, emotional, and wholly believable as a person. Finally, the ostensibly minor role of the doctor is turned, by Charlotte Susa and by the intensity of the mise-en-scène, into a tangible, almost too powerful, emotional presence.

Speaking of the latter, I wondered quite what the connection between the doctor and her prisoner was to be, so febrile and physically intense were their jail scenes together. Even before they are seen together, the cigarettes that the doctor sends to Annushka trigger a dreamy, smoky vision of the doctor on the wall of Annushka’s cell. “Isn’t there someone you can’t live without?” the prisoner asks the doctor, on her knees before her, kissing her hands, pressing her year-stained face into her lap. (There is an implicit scene of mutual undressing, which the film avoids via a swift fade to black.)

Later, when Birdi encounters Annushka in the hotel, it is Birdi who utters Annushka’s name for the first time in the film. It’s the first moment of identification, a form of intimacy. And Annushka embraces Birdi and kisses her several times on the mouth. This, too, is the first sincere kiss of the film. (We have seen Jenő kiss many women, always insincerely.) It is as if only without the central man in the story can any of the women find comradeship, tenderness – even physical tenderness. And at the end of the film, Annushka returns to the doctor – an odd and touching reunion of this couple. But the last image is of Annushka, alone, closing the shutters of her cell. It’s like the whole film has been some kind of nightmare of confinement, release, fear, and anger. No resolution is possible but a kind of sinking back into sultry longing.

A word must also be said about the history of the film and its restoration. A Hungarian-German co-production, boasting cast and crew from both countries, this film made a splash in 1929 but was long unavailable thereafter. The original Hungarian title was Rabmadár (“Slave Bird”), but only the German iteration – Achtung! Kriminalpolizei! (Gefangene Nr. 7) – survived in a print saved in the Netherlands, which was passed to Filmarchiv Austria, thence to the Budapest Film Archive. More cent discoveries enabled a longer restoration to be completed by the National Film Institute Hungary. Given the complex print history, outlined in the excellent restoration credits at the start of the presentation, the film looks sumptuous. Rich blacks, glowing highlights, detailed textures, glorious close-ups… quite simply, a delight to watch. My one reservation about the restoration would be the framerate. To my eyes, it looked like the film was transferred at a slower-than-natural framerate. For a print of 2171m, per the credits, the near two-hour runtime would indicate a framerate of 16fps, which seems unusually slow for a film shot in 1929. I can easily imagine 20fps working better.

Finally, the piano accompaniment for this Bonn screening/streaming was by Elaine Brennan. A rich, attentive score, engaging and sympathetic, perfect for the film. As ever, an excellent presentation from Bonn of a film that deserves to be better known.

Paul Cuff

Bonn from afar (2025, day 4)

After yesterday’s exploration of vagrancy and destitution, today we return to the world of the bourgeoisie and to the genre of light comedy. This film was just as much an unknown to me as yesterday’s, and just as welcome a treat…

Was ist los mit Nanette? (1929; Ger.; Holger-Madsen). Otti (Ruth Weyher) is married to the night editor of a newspaper, Richard Curtius (Georg Alexander). Unbeknownst to Richard, Otti has saved him from bankruptcy by living a double life. By day she is a dutiful housewife, but at night she works as “Nanette”, a successful vaudeville dancer. Richard still believes the money came from the will of Otti’s late aunt Finchen, from Batavia. However, things get complex when Aunt Finchen (Margarete Kupfer) turns up on their doorstep. Otti pretends Richard is deeply unwell, so hides her aunt in the attic, along with her pet monkey and a huge amount of luggage. Richard’s rich friend Toto (Harri Hardt), who has a crush on “Nanette”, also comes to stay. Inevitably, events soon spiral out of control. After various farcical chases and confusions, Richard realizes that his wife has been lying to him. Accusing Otti of disloyalty, he decides to pursue other women. First among them is “Nanette”, whom he invites to a night out at the Trocadero club. There, the truth emerges. Richard learns of Otti’s double life and her sacrifice for the sake of their marriage. After recognizing that they still love each other, the couple reconcile. ENDE.

This was the only film produced by Ruth Weyher-Film, the company founded by the star. (She would quit acting at the start of the sound era.) I have seen and liked Weyher in a few productions from earlier in her career, but she is more striking here in this lead role, which drives the whole film. It is very interesting to think of Was ist los mit Nanette? as the work of a female producer and star, since its central concern is with a woman’s agency in the face of male expectations. Otti is introduced very deliberately as “Frau Dr. Curtius”, which is formally correct, but markedly eliminates her given name altogether. By contrast, her friend is introduced as “Anita Morell” (Maria Mindszenty), a woman “widowed young” and “halfway to being remarried”. It is as if the shedding of the dead husband has already given her back her name, and the possibility of agency. We might wonder if being “halfway” to marriage is rather more satisfying than being married. Weyher herself gives a delightful performance. Yes, it’s a chance for her to show off before the camera. She gets to dance on stage, run around, and don disguise. But she always bristles with intelligence and wit, her eyes flashing with playful cunning. The film also gives her plenty of close-ups in which something deeper is revealed, glimpses of emotion (doubt, frustration, longing) that lie beneath the play.

As her husband Richard, Georg Alexander is perfect. I think I’ve seen him in more sound films of the 1930s, so I am rather familiar with his distinctive voice, but here on the silent screen he makes the perfect foil for Otti. Everything about him is fussy, particular – a little vulnerable, a little defensive, a little rigid. His married life quickly unravels, and we realize how limited is his conception of a romantic union. From being a loving husband, he reveals the smallness of his mindset. He soon draws on cliched images of a “painted and deceitful” woman to describe Otti. “They used to burn people like you!” he cries at one point. Otti replies that she won’t forget that insult, and neither will we. It’s an absurd thing to say, but it is said in earnest and in spite. But since this film is, ultimately, a comedy, Richard gets his chance to learn. When he hears Otti’s true history of sacrifice – and a sacrifice for love of him – we see him realize his mistake. Alexander’s performance has enough reality to it (enough seriousness) that we might just have hope for his future with Otti.

Around these two leads are a number of interesting supporting performance. The most significant is Margarete Kupfer as Aunt Finchen. I thought this was a marvellous creation. Her hypochondria makes for some delightful use of costumes and props. Obsessed with her own glands, she travels with a monkey and an enormous spray-pump to ward off germs. The latter she uses as a splendidly phallic weapon to chase Richard around his own home. The former animal is the source of slapstick, but also of some great lines of dialogue. (“My glandular baboon! Preserver of my youth!” Finchen blubs at one point.) But this comedy also enables something more interesting. It is noteworthy how much of the physical slapstick in the film is driven by the women (the wife, the best friend, the aunt, the maid), who give out as much as they take. Echoing Otti’s use of disguise, the aunt also finds the liberation of being in costume. With the aid of Otti’s theatrical manager, Finchen undergoes a beauty treatment, emerging from her frumpy outfit and curled hair into glamorous eveningwear and tastefully modern bob cut. We have come to think of her as a purely comedic, almost buffoonish, character – but in the last act she reveals her worldly wisdom. It is she who advises Richard to feign illness, take to his bed, and earn Otti’s sympathy. He duly does, and the trick reunites husband and wife. Not so daft and dowdy, after all, these aunts.

I have so far talked about the film’s performers and themes, but more broadly I must praise how nice Was ist los mit Nanette? looks, and how well the action is directed. The sets – the house, the office, the theatre, the nightclub – are great, richly detailed and beautifully dressed. Amid all this, Holger-Madsen provides lots of nice touches, such as the striking high-angle shot of the characters looking up through the ceiling light when they hear the noise from upstairs. The shot emphasizes the shock, momentarily turning this into a moment of suspense. The characters are taken by surprise with a sound, and the film transforms this into a moment of surprise for us through visual means. More imaginative camerawork is involved in a rather brilliant dream sequence in which the drunk and depressed Otti dreams of being judged and condemned by Richard in a court of law. Superimposed over Otti writhing in her sleep, this courtroom scene is a little comic gem of editing and choreography. (Compared to yesterday’s dream sequence in Der Vagabund, also involving a character dreaming of being tried and condemned, the equivalent in Was ist los mit Nanette? is much more technically sophisticated and rhythmically polished.) It also links nicely to the opening scene of Richard waking up, when he drowsily reaches for the alarm clock and we see it spinning in a kaleidoscopic multiplication of itself. Both scenes are about the vulnerability of the two characters, each experienced in scenes by themselves. It’s one of many fine touches in Was ist los mit Nanette?, which is filled with pleasing details to reveal character and emotion. The whole film is well staged, well photographed, and well edited. Though one reel of the film suffers from some bad decomposition, it is a great example of how good a film of this era can look.

Music for this presentation from Bonn was by Maud Nelissen and Mykyta Sierov. Their combination of piano and oboe is playful, sympathetic, rhythmic, and melodic – a great accompaniment to the film. Though the live presentation of the film in Bonn (so the online notes tell me) was prefaced by an introduction and rare footage from the Weyher estate, which I would have loved to have seen, Was ist los mit Nanette? by itself is a great feature with an enjoyable score.

I said at the outset that Was ist los mit Nanette? is a very different world to yesterday’s film, Der Vagabund. But Weyher’s comedy also has an edge and offers, in its own way, a subtle critique of the bourgeois world in which it is set. Socialist drama it ain’t, but it also finds a sophisticated way for us to think about what we’ve seen, and question the assumptions we might have: about gender roles, about performance and disguise, and about our expectations and assumptions of what an equal relationship might be. I very much enjoyed this film, which was a total unknown to me. A delightful surprise, beautifully presented.

Paul Cuff

Bonn from afar (2025, day 2)

Day 2 of Bonn and already I must take a kind of detour from the programme. Today’s streamed film is Saxophon-Susi (1928; Ger.; Karel Lamač), the same restoration of which I saw via the online Pordenone festival last year. I refer readers interested in the film to that earlier post, while today my comments will primarily address the differences in presentation between the two festivals.

The first thing to note was that Bonn offered two versions of Saxophon-Susi. Aside from the version with musical accompaniment (discussed below), there was a version with Germany an audio-description version for the visually impaired. (Though another audio-description video has text and narrator credits, I couldn’t find any for this specific film.) I was curious to know if this was presented with the soundtrack beneath the descriptive text. It was not, so offers a very curious experience – at least for this non-impaired spectator. I would be very curious to know more about the audience for silent films with audio description. When I attended the online HippFest festival earlier this year, I wrote about the audio-description texts offered there. These were very elaborate, intended for live audiences as much as online spectators, and the texts described the music as well as the action. HippFest also offered brail text for the deaf to accompany screenings, though I cannot comment on the content of these. The Bonn audio description is simpler, offering a straightforward description of the action and a rendition of all the intertitles. Obviously, I am not the intended audience for these alternate presentations – but I would be very curious to know more about (or hear from) anyone who has experienced these presentations as intended.

The second thing to note was the version with musical accompaniment. My comments here require some context… Though this 2023 restoration of Saxophon-Susi has not yet been released on DVD/Blu-ray, it has already accrued at least three new scores. The first was presented in August 2024 at the “Ufa filmnächte” festival in Berlin, where it was accompanied by Frido ter Beek and The Sprockets film orchestra. (Alas, the “Ufa filmnächte” is no longer a streamed festival, so I cannot report on how this score sounded.) For the version streamed from Pordenone in October 2024, there was a piano score by Donald Sosin. As I wrote at the time, this was delightful: catchy, rhythmic, playful, and fun. That said, I regretted the fact that the titular saxophone-playing sequences in the club and on stage had no saxophone on the soundtrack. At Bonn, the musical score offered was for piano and saxophone, and was composed/performed by M-cine (Dorothee Haddenbruch and Katharina Stashik, as they are identified on the video details page). It was great to hear a saxophone as part of the musical accompaniment, since this is a film whose very plot demands this instrument by featured. But the score itself was curiously chaste, which is to say that I found it less overtly fun than Sosin’s piano score from Pordenone.

At the premiere in 1928, Saxophon-Susi was accompanied by a jazz orchestra – and the poster for the film’s release in France also includes the promise of a jazz orchestra in the cinema. The film also had a tie-in song, “Die Susi bläst das Saxophon”, composed by Rudolf Nelson. (Both Sosin and M-cine cited this song in their scores, and as I presume did that of Frido ter Deebk in August 2024.) This morning, I dug a little into some contemporary reviews to get more of a sense of the original music. It certainly seems to have been a major part of the value of the live performances. For example, Der Kinematograph (4 November 1928) cites the arranger/conductor Paul Dessau’s “musical wit” and “truly comedic touch” in his score – and live performance at the premiere. The reviewer reports “enthusiastic applause from the laughing, amused audience” at the dance sequences etc. Oh, to see the film with live music and audience…

Lacking an orchestral score in 2025, I spent the rest of this morning listening to the many recordings of “Die Susi bläst das Saxophon” made in 1928 in the wake of the film’s original release. There were various instrumental versions made, such as the peppy version by Efim Schachmeister and his orchestra. The melody was clearly an international hit, as it was exported to the British/US market via The Charleston Serenaders, who recorded a charmingly upbeat rendition outside Germany in 1928. One can also sample a version with lyrics, as sung back in Berlin by Paul O’Montis in the company of the Odeon Tanzorchester. But by far the most pleasing version is the deliciously slow, relaxed instrumental account provided by Marek Weber’s band. I absolutely adore the slow tempo, the way this gives extra space and time for the various soloists to take their turn with the melody. You get the feeling that you’re eavesdropping on a Berlin dance night in 1928. It’s a simply joyous little number in their hands.

Looking up the identities of these various musicians is itself an interesting exercise. The composer of the song, Rudolf Nelson, was a popular cabaret and theatre musician. He was also Jewish, and in 1933 was forced to flee Germany, settling in the Netherlands – where he had to live in hiding during the German occupation. This grim period of history interrupts the biographies of the recording artists of Nelson’s song, too. The Austro-Hungarian Marek Weber was a musician of the old school and purportedly disliked jazz (perhaps this explains his slow tempo in “Die Susie bläst das Saxophon”?), but nevertheless ended up recruiting some of the best jazz musicians in Germany and recording plenty of popular tunes. As a Jew, he saw which way the political tide was turning and left Germany in 1932, ultimately settling in the US. Efim Schachmeister was born in Kiev to Jewish-Romanian parents but made his name in Berlin in the 1920s. He fled the Nazis and eventually ended up in Argentina. Paul O’Montis was Hungarian by birth and made his name on the Berlin cabaret scene. Openly gay, he was forced to leave Germany when the Nazis came to power. Sadly, he was one of many who didn’t flee far enough. After finding refuge in Vienna, after the Anschluss of 1938 he relocated to Prague – but was arrested there in 1939 and, after various relocations, ended up being killed in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1940. Such stories are common when researching artists of this period, but somehow the combination of such light-hearted numbers as “Die Susie bläst das Saxophon” in the context of their makers’ lives is especially sobering.

One upshot of this rather divergent morning is my desire to hear a jazz band score for Saxophon-Susi, something in the vein of Marek Weber’s recording of the theme song. If the film gets released on home media, it rather depends on how much effort (i.e. money) someone wants to put into it. What so often happens is that special scores are composed for live show(s), then no money is made available for that score to appear on home media with the film. There are many examples of expensive film restorations released with the cheapest musical option on DVD/Blu-ray. I do hope that Saxophon-Susi gets the score it deserves.

Paul Cuff

Searching for Der Evangelimann (1923; Ger.; Holger-Madsen)

This week, I’m writing about not being able to write. I’d love to be telling you all about the beauties of Holger-Madsen’s film Der Evangelimann (1923), but all I can do is write about my entirely unsuccessful efforts to find a copy. While I am therefore unable to offer much insight into the film itself, I hope to offer some reflection on the intractable difficulties of writing about film history – and finding it.

Why am I interested in Der Evangelimann? Well, as previous posts indicated, I have a growing curiosity about the work of Paul Czinner and Elisabeth Bergner. I have a longstanding project on their Weimar films, but I am also interested in their work before their first collaboration in 1924. Der Evangelimann was Bergner’s first film role, and her only pre-Czinner work for the cinema. This Ufa production was made in Germany but was directed by the Danish filmmaker Holger-Madsen and premiered in Austria in December 1923. Contemporary reviews were mostly favourable, but since its general release in 1924 it has virtually disappeared from the record.

I am also interested in the cultural background to Der Evangelimann. The film was based on an opera of the same name, composed by Wilhelm Kienzl (1857-1941). As even semi-regular readers of this blog may be aware, I am a devotee of late romantic music – and obscure operas by lesser-known composers have their own attraction for me. Since it swiftly became apparent to me that Der Evangelimann was going to be a difficult film to see, I turned my attention to finding a recording of the opera. As it turned out, Kienzl’s music was an absolute delight. A pupil of Liszt and a devotee of Wagner, by the 1890s Kienzl had become a successful composer and music director in various central European cities. Der Evangelimann (1895) was his greatest hit and became a regular production for opera houses into the first decades of the twentieth century. However, Kienzl never produced another opera that established itself in the repertoire to this extent, nor did he write much in the way of substantial music in other genres. By the 1930s, he had withdrawn from active work and by the time Europe emerged from the Second World War he was dead, and his work largely neglected. (His support for the Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938 cannot have helped his posthumous reputation.)

The opera Der Evangelimann is a pleasing blend of late romanticism with a touch of verismo (i.e. something rather more realistic than romantic drama). The libretto, adapted by Kienzl from a play by L.F. Meissner, is also a kind of ethical drama. Act 1 is set in 1820 around the Benedictine monastery of St Othmar in Lower Austria. The monastery’s clerk Matthias is in love with Martha, the niece of the local magistrate Friedrich Engel. Matthias’s brother Johannes is jealous of this romance, since he covets Martha for himself. Johannes betrays the lovers’ secret relationship to Friedrich, who furiously dismisses Matthias from his job. Seizing his chance, Johannes proposes to Martha, but he is angrily rejected. Matthias arranges with Martha’s friend Magdalena that he will meet his beloved late one evening, before he leaves town to seek work elsewhere. Their nocturnal meeting is witnessed by Johannes, who storms away in a fury of jealousy. As the lovers say a sad farewell, a fire starts in the monastery. Matthias tries to help but is swiftly blamed and arrested for the crime. Act 2 is set thirty years later, when Matthias returns to St. Othmar. He has spent twenty-five years in prison, after which he became a travelling evangelist, preaching righteousness and justice. He encounters Martha’s old friend Magdalena, who now looks after the ailing Johannes. We learn that Martha drowned herself rather than submit to Johannes’s proposal, and that Johannes has since attained great wealth but is haunted by enormous guilt. Magdalena ushers Matthias to see Johannes, who receives Johannes’s dying confession of guilt for the fire. Matthias forgives his brother, who dies in peace.

Kienzl’s opera is gorgeously orchestrated and contains at least two rather wonderful melodies. The most famous, “Selig sind, die Verfolgung leiden um der Gerechtigkeit willen”, is Matthias’s evangelist hymn. Kienzl, knowing he had written a good tune, cunningly makes Matthias teach a troupe of children this melody on stage. We thus get to hear the melody several times in a row, and it becomes the leitmotiv of reconciliation and forgiveness between the brothers. But my favourite scene of the opera is in Act 1. Rather than a set-piece number, it is a scene of anxious, hushed dialogue between Mathias and Magdalena. They are arranging Matthias’s final meeting with Martha before he leaves, and as they talk the bells are ringing across town for vespers. Kienzl creates a spine-tingling atmosphere that has remarkable depth of sound: from the slow, deep ringing of the cathedral bell to the warm halo of strings, then to the bright chiming of a triangle. A simple downward motif is thus given greater emotional resonance: you can sense the space and warmth of the evening, but also the sadness of departure, the steady pressing of time upon Matthias. In Act 2, when Matthias meets Magdelena again, the midday bells sound: suddenly, the scene evokes the past through an echo of its warm, chiming orchestration. It’s a beautiful scene, perfectly realized. (At this point, I pause to recommend the 1980 recording of Der Evangelimann conducted by Lothar Zagrosek. It has a great cast, too: Kurt Moll, Helen Donath, Siegfried Jerusalem. Though the EMI set is out of print, it is readily available second-hand. A must for anyone interested in out-of-the-way late romantic opera.)

The 1924 film maintains the same basic plot and setting as the opera, though it has one or two curious departures. Per the opera, the first part of the film replicates Mathias (Paul Hartmann) and Martha (Hanni Weisse) being betrayed by Johannes (Jakob Feldhammer) to Friedrich Engel (Heinrich Peer), followed by the fire in the monastery and Mathias’s arrest. Years pass, Martha has married Johannes and together they have a young daughter, Florida. Martha then discovers that Johannes was the real arsonist (when he talks in his sleep) and ends her life rather than continue in their doomed marriage. After her death, Johannes moves to America – leaving Florida in the care of Magdalena (Elisabeth Bergner). Twenty years after the fire, the dying Johannes returns to St Othmar – as does the newly-released Mathias, now known as “the Evangelist” due to his preaching of holy justice. After Magdalena and the teenage Florida (now played by Hanni Weisse) go in search of him, Mathias eventually meets the dying Johannes – who then confesses to his brother and receives forgiveness.

I initially pieced together a synopsis from those available via various online sources, plus evidence from contemporary reviews. However, online sources do not provide the sources of their information, and I was left uncertain of numerous details. After a more thorough searching of the documentation catalogue of the Bundesarchiv (Germany’s state archive), I located the German censorship report of July 1923. Thankfully, this had been digitized and made available for public access. (As have many such censorship documents from the period.) The censorship report includes a complete list of all the original intertitles for the film, together with an exact length (in metres) for each of the six “acts” (“act” usually being a synonym for reel). Though there is no accompanying description of the action (i.e. what’s happening on screen), the titles provide a much clearer picture of the film’s structure and action. The document demonstrates how significantly Holger-Madsen expanded the ellipsis between the opera’s original two acts. The film’s second and third acts are set after the trial and the first years of Mathias’s imprisonment, allowing a glimpse into the minds of both brothers and of Martha – and showing us Martha’s discovery of Johannes’s guilt, and then her suicide.

Yet even the list of titles leaves some aspects of the narrative unclear. The film’s invention of a daughter for Martha/Johannes allows Hanni Weisse a double role as both mother and daughter. But I am unclear as to what (if any) dramatic function Florida has to the plot (she is evidently not a suicide deterrent!), or how exactly Mathias’s return is handled. Does Magdalena have a crucial role in this, or does he find his way back by chance – or by his own volition? Does Mathias encounter Florida, and what is his reaction to seeing the spitting image of his lost love? The titles do not make this clear.

Would other documents help? I know that if I visit the Bundesarchiv collection in person, I can inspect a copy of the programme for Der Evangelimann which may (or may not) clarify the issue. But where else to turn? I cannot find evidence of the film being released in France, in the US, or in the UK, and thus cannot find any other easy source of a more elaborate synopsis or of additional still photographs.

What of sources on Bergner? In Germany, there are many books devoted to her life and career on stage and screen – as well as her own memoirs. Ten years after the film was released, Bergner recalled being so disappointed with her experience on Der Evangelimann that it inspired her “contempt” for the entire medium of cinema (Picturegoer, 18 August 1934). In her later memoirs, Bergner claims that Nju (1924) was “my first film” (69) – erasing altogether the memory of Der Evangelimann. Those subsequent biographers or scholars to mention the film do so only in passing, but most accounts simply ignore its existence. The only account that even suggests familiarity with the film is that of Klaus Völker, which provides a meagre synopsis in its filmography and describes Bergner’s “slightly hunchbacked” appearance (398). Had Völker seen Der Evangelimann, or was this description based purely on publicity photos of the production? (The book contains only one other reference to the film, which repeats Bergner’s own grave disappointment in the role and the medium as a whole.)

Elsewhere, Kerry Wallach’s very interesting discussion of suicide in Bergner’s films (and contemporary Weimar/Jewish culture) makes passing reference to Der Evangelimann (19), but nothing that suggests familiarity with its content. Given Wallach’s interest in suicide and love triangles across Bergner’s films, it is odd that nothing is made of this first screen role being in a film that has both. I am curious, too, that Holger-Madsen chose to cast Bergner in the secondary role of Magdalena, since Martha is a much more interesting character – and her off-screen suicide (“in the waters of the Danube”, according to Matthias in the opera) would have directly foreshadowed the deaths of Bergner’s later characters.

All of which brings me to the nub of the issue: does any copy of Der Evangelimann survive? Has anyone seen it? Of course, the first source interested parties are usually advised to consult is the Fédération internationale des archives du film (FIAF) database. This is designed to be a collaborative database for information on archival holdings from across the world. Search here, and you can find the details of a film and a list of archives that hold material relating to it. That, at least, is the theory. In practice, it relies on data from its member archives that is not always available, complete, accurate, up-to-date, or forthcoming. I have long since accepted that the absence of a film on the FIAF database does not mean it is absent from the archives. This acceptance brings hope but creates other problems.

The next step, at least for a German production, is the usually (but not always) reliable filmportal.de. It is usually a decent indicator of the film’s survival in German archives and will also list the rights holders to the film and/or any restored copies. In the case of their page on Der Evangelimann, it lists the rights holders as the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung – the inheritors of much German cinema of the pre-1945 era. The FWMS lists details of the film on their website but (having asked them) they do not themselves possess any copy. Such is often the case, where the legal possession of a film does not coincide with the physical possession of a copy – or even the guarantee that a copy exists.

Where next? Well, the Bundesarchiv helpfully provides an accurate database of its film holdings – but this too yields no copy of Der Evangelimann. Various catalogue searches and archival contacts in Germany, Austria, the UK, and Russia have likewise yielded no result. Given that Holger-Madsen was Danish, I did also consult the Danish Film Institute about the film – but Der Evangelimann is not even listed on the DFI filmography of Holger-Madsen’s work, and they profess to have no copy. (Or at least, did not profess so to me.)

If Der Evangelimann had been restored, it would likely appear on more archival or institutional catalogues available online. But it seems scarcely to have made any mark on film history before proceeding swiftly to oblivion. Indeed, the only record I can find of any screening since 1924 was at the Internationales Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg in 1963, where Der Evangelimann was part of a retrospective of Bergner’s work. Was this a complete print? Was it even shown, or just listed as part of the line-up? (Needless to say, I have contacted the IFFMH to see if they have any record of which archive loaned them the print, but I have not yet heard back.)

My only remaining option is to contact every film archive in the world, but there is no guarantee (as I have already discovered) that any of them will reply to a private researcher undertaking a wild goose chase. If an institution, restoration team, or legal rights holder were to make this inquiry, I imagine the process would be much more likely to yield results. As an individual, I have only a handful of contacts in the archival world, and limited resources of time, money, and patience to feed into this search. I cannot issue a convenient “call for help” that summons responses from across the world.

All of which makes an illustrative example of the problems of film history. What I have experienced scouring public resources for traces of Der Evangelimann is a frequent and frustrating instance of a common issue. The film may well exist in an archive, but without any publicly available acknowledgement of its status it might as well (for the purposes of film history and film historians) not exist. That which cannot be seen cannot be studied. It is also frustrating that no scholar on Bergner has ever taken care to admit either that they have not seen the film, or that the film does not exist – and that therefore future scholars should not waste time trying to locate it. Filmographies are infinitely more useful if they include information on a film’s original length (in metres, not duration), together with its current restorative status in relation to its original form of exhibition. These are quite basic facets of film history, but it is amazing how rarely scholars ever cite them – or are required to do so. (I am myself guilty of this.) As regular readers will know, it is a bugbear of mine that many restorations and home media editions likewise provide viewers with so little information on the history of what we are actually watching. It perpetuates a cycle of missing information: the material history of a silent film – the most literal evidence of the medium itself – is too often taken for granted and simply left out of its presentation, either on video or in written texts.

In the case of Der Evangelimann, a century of critical and cultural disinterest has left me with very little evidence to go on. Does the film survive? I do hope so. Even if it is a failure, and even if Bergner’s performance awful, I just want to see it and find out. A film doesn’t have to be a masterpiece to deserve recognition and restoration. I just want to see it! I will continue to pester archives, but in the meantime I suppose I can also pester you, dear reader. Do you know anything about where a copy of Der Evangelimann might be held? Any information would be most gratefully received.

Paul Cuff

References

Elisabeth Bergner, Bewundert viel und viel gescholten: Elisabeth Bergners unordentliche Erinnerungen (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1978).

Klaus Völker (ed.), Elisabeth Bergner: das Leben einer Schauspielerin (Berlin: Hentrich, 1990).

Kerry Wallach, ‘Escape Artistry: Elisabeth Bergner and Jewish Disappearance in Der träumende Mund (Czinner, 1932)’, German Studies Review 38/1 (2015), 17-34.

Two films by Henrik Galeen: Der Student von Prag (1926) and Alraune (1928)

This week, I reflect on two films by Henrik Galeen that have been released on a wonderful 2-disc DVD set by Edition Filmmuseum in Germany. I have been awaiting this set since it was announced nearly two years ago, so keenly pounced on it at the first opportunity. This pairing also makes a nice sequel to my last post on horror films inspired by German silent films – and Galeen’s script for Nosferatu (1922) in particular. So, in chronological order, let us begin…

Der Student von Prag (1926; Ger.; Henrik Galeen). Galeen’s film is a remake of the 1913 film, written and co-directed by Hanns Heinz Ewers and starring Paul Wegener as the titular student. I wrote about that version some time ago, and I was very curious to see how Galeen’s version differed from the original. The plot is essentially the same. The student Balduin (Conrad Veidt) is convinced by the devilish Scapinelli (Werner Krauss) to sell his reflection for enough gold and status to seduce the aristocrat Margit von Schwarzenberg (Agnes Esterhazy). Balduin attains wealth and success, much to the jealousy of the besotted flower girl Lyduschka (Elizza La Porta) and Margit’s fiancé Baron von Waldis (Ferdinand von Alten). Balduin’s success is dogged by his doppelganger, who fights and kills von Waldis in a duel and ruins his reputation. It all goes downhill from there, as the film’s opening shot of Balduin’s gravestone promised…

I’m afraid I found the first one hundred minutes of this film a slog to sit through. While the photography is exquisite, especially the gorgeous exterior landscapes, the drama moves exceedingly slowly. The lean, concise psychological drama of 1913 has become a rather baggy melodrama. The character of Lyduschka becomes a rather more sycophantic presence (but not a more sympathetic one), while the scenes between Balduin and Margit are more lengthily (but no more convincingly) elaborated. Furthermore, Galeen restages many of the same moments of the 1913 version: the meeting of Balduin and Scapinelli at the inn; the confrontation with his mirror image; the meeting at the Jewish cemetery; the duel fought by Balduin’s double. While the in-camera double exposures are as excellent as the 1913 version, none of them are as well staged or as dramatically effective. As I wrote in my piece on the earlier film, the long takes of the 1913 version give all the trickery an extraordinarily uncanny quality: the unreal seems to emerge directly from within the real. There is nothing as effective in the 1926 version.

What bothered me especially was the tone of Werner Krauss’s performance as Scapinelli. He seemed to be almost parodying his performance in Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari (1919). In Der Student von Prag, he out-hams anything Emil Jannings ever did. His eyes bulge, he puffs out his cheeks, he gurns and grimaces. It’s faintly creepy, but it’s so outrageously different from any other performance within the film that it’s simply not frightening. Even his beard looks exceedingly artificial, almost like it’s been painted on. Indeed, Krauss’s whole demeanour is extrovertly artificial. Why? He’s either been told by Galeen to clown about like this, or else Galeen has utterly failed to rein him in. Everyone else in Der Student von Prag performs their roles with a degree of dramatic realism. It’s a fantastical story, but the performances are realistic. All except Krauss. Fine, Scapinelli is a faintly otherworldly figure, but I can’t believe that his clownish appearance and mannerisms are the best choice to signify this. (Again, the performances are far more consistent in the cast of the 1913 version.)

Exacerbating this factor is Galeen’s editing. So oddly were some scenes put together that I wondered if I was watching a print reconstructed from different negatives (i.e. a blend of “home” and “export” versions). When Scapinelli first propositions Balduin at the inn, Galeen cuts between a front-on mid shot of the two men to a shot that is captured from a side-on angle (in fact, more than 90 degrees from the front-on shot). It’s a peculiar choice, and the cutting between oddly different angles here and elsewhere in the film is very striking. (It’s also something I observed in Alraune, per my comments below.) This isn’t an issue of continuity: I don’t care how a film is put together, so long as it is effective. It’s because Galeen’s editing often lessens the tension in a scene, even the tension created within a particular shot, by cutting to a mismatched alternate angle or distance. Why, Henrik, why? The film is full of brilliant images, but I’m simply not sure Galeen can quite mobilize them into a truly convincing sequence of images.

All of that said, the last half hour of Der Student von Prag is a knockout. Balduin, having lost everything, proceeds to a drinking den where he drinks, dances, and revels. The band wears weird clown make-up and grotesque masks and blindfolds, and the double-bass is being played with a saw. Clearly, something odd has the potential to break out, and break out it does. Balduin starts to become more and more manic, and the sequence around him likewise grows more and more manic. Handheld camerawork turns the crowded, shadowy interior into a stomach-churning blur. But Balduin hasn’t had enough by far. He starts conducting the dancers with a riding whip; then he starts smashing crockery, then fittings, then furniture… The sequence lasts nearly ten minutes, and it just keeps going. I’m not sure (per my above comments) that Galeen really puts the shots together in a way that builds a convincing montage, but the sheer length of the sequence has its own manic sense of energy: it just keeps going, its obsessive cheer becoming less and less amusing and more and more unsettling. Veidt’s performance, too, grows subtly more manic. His face has moved from resignation and grief to a kind of enforced, frenzied joy.

There follows a series of scenes in which Balduin races through the night, encountering Margit and then his doppelganger. What really makes the sequence work is the way the wind haunts both interior and exterior spaces: whipping the trees, the curtains, the clothing… It gives a marvellously unsettling, threatening sense to every scene. This is where everything in the film works. Scapinelli (thankfully) is simply forgotten from the narrative and Balduin is left alone to face the consequences of his actions. Galeen abandons location shooting in favour of studios, which gives all these final “exteriors” the aura of nightmarish interiors, half-empty spaces filled with shadows and shards of buildings. Everything is sinister, malevolent – and empty of everything but Balduin and his sinister double. The final scene before the mirror is fantastic, filled with striking images of the shattered glass, and Veidt’s performance is superbly convincing: mad, violent, and tender all at once.

This is a fine way to end the film, but my word the rest was a slog to sit through. Even though the 1913 version consists for the most part of long, unbroken takes for each scene, it manages to tell the entire story succinctly and swiftly in barely 80 minutes. The 1926 version (in this restoration) is over 130 minutes. That’s fifty extra minutes to tell the same story. As good as the finale is, I think that the 1913 version is a far superior film. (So too is the version directed by Arthur Robison in 1935, starring Anton Walbrook as the eponymous student.)

Alraune (1928; Ger.; Henrik Galeen). Having re-adapted Ewers’s Der Student von Prag, a year later Galeen embarked on another adaptation of this author’s work. Ewers’s novel Alraune (1911) was a huge hit and republished many times in the early twentieth century. It still retains something of a cultish reputation among certain circles. In the anglophone world, there are two English translations available. One was issued in the 1920s and presents a rather prudishly reduced/edited text. The other is a recent, self-published edition, that offers a “complete, uncensored” text – but alas sacrifices fluency in English for the sake of adherence to the original. (My references below to Ewers’s text are therefore sourced from the original German edition.)

Ewers’s novel remains an impressively nasty piece of work. The story concerns Jakob ten Brinken, a scientist who inseminates a prostitute with the seed of a hanged murderer in order to study the offspring. “Alraune” is a female mandrake, a horrific vision of modern womanhood: she drives men to their deaths with violent desire, until she discovers her true origins and kills herself.

The author of this spectacular tale was a renowned provocateur. In a career spanning literature, philosophy, propaganda, acting, filmmaking, and occultism, Ewers was also sexually and politically radical. Homosexual, he was twice married; a supporter of Jewish enfranchisement, he embraced National Socialism. (Inevitably, his views and lifestyle led to a fall from grace under the Nazis.) Ewers’s literary avatar was Frank Braun, who appears in Alraune as a hotblooded student, arrogant and ironic, who urges his uncle to test the bounds of human power – and to challenge God. Braun had already appeared in Ewers’s novel Der Zauberlehrling (1909), in which he infiltrates and subverts a religious cult, and would reappear in Vampir (1921), which explores his moral and literal transformation into a vampire.

The male narrator of Alraune is an obtrusive, prurient presence in the text, lingering over his imagined muse as he writes. This muse morphs from a “blond little sister” into a “wild, sinful sister of my hot nights”, her “wild soul stretches forth, glad of all shame, full of all poison” (7). (And so on, and so on.) Returning perpetually to this fantasy, the narrator himself becomes vampiric, metaphorically drinking “the blood that flowed from your wounds at night, which I mixed with my red blood, this blood that was infected by the sinful poisons of the hot desert” (174). The violence of this fantasy grows across the book, fixating with gruesome glee upon the imagined sister’s body – “eternal sin” bidding him tear into “the sweet little child’s breasts, which had become the gigantic breasts of a murderous whore” (333). This imagery characterizes the book’s peculiarly salacious tone. (There are, by my count, no less than thirty references to women’s breasts – not to mention numerous depictions of physical and mental torture to animals and humans.) Just as the narrator desires the sister he imagines, so the scientist within the narrative succumbs to his desire for the mandrake he creates – and, as ten Brinken’s nephew, Braun’s desire for Alraune crosses from the familial to the sexual. But Alraune is also a satirical novel, the first half of which is a profoundly critical overview of bourgeois conservatism at the turn of the century. In a world of institutionalized hypocrisy, corruption, and vice, both Frank Braun and the narrator are perverse Nietzscheans, willing to overturn every norm.

For the film version of Alraune, Galeen wrote his own screenplay, retaining only the barebones of Ewers’s novel (the first half of which does not even feature the figure of Alraune). Professor ten Brinken (Paul Wegener) has created animal life artificially and plans to do the same with a human subject. Harvesting the seed of a hanged criminal (Georg John) to inseminate a prostitute (Mia Pankau), he raises the offspring as his daughter Alraune. Seventeen years later, Alraune (Brigitte Helm) runs away from her boarding school with Wölfchen (Wolfgang Zilzer). En route, she meets the magician Torelli (Louis Ralph) and joins his circus. Ten Brinken tracks her down and forces her to accompany him to southern Europe. Here, Alraune’s flirtation with a viscount (John Loder) makes ten Brinken jealous. Discovering her origins, Alraune sets out to destroy her “father” by feigning a seduction and then ruining him at a casino. She also enlists the help of ten Brinken’s nephew Frank Braun (Iván Petrovich), with whom she eventually elopes. Financially and morally exhausted, ten Briken collapses and dies.

Alraune was premiered in Berlin in February 1928 in a version that measured some 3340m; projected at 20fps, this amounted to over 145 minutes of screen time. When the film was distributed outside Germany, numerous changes began to reshape the film. In the UK, the film was released as A Daughter of Destiny and cut from 3340m to 2468m. Critics blamed the cuts and retitling for the disruptive sense of continuity of this version. (This did not stop it being a big hit.) In France, where the film was released as Mandragore in February 1929, censorship was likewise blamed for producing narrative unevenness. In Russia, Alraune was released only after Soviet censors removed all supernatural aspects of the storyline. (The copy of this version preserved in Gosfilmofond is 2560m.) Most severe of all was the board of censors in the Netherlands, where the film was banned outright from exhibition in January 1930.

This history is important to remember when examining the film on this new DVD edition. No copy of the original German version of Alraune survives. The restoration completed in 2021 by the Filmmuseum München relies on two foreign copies (from Denmark and Russia), using archival documents to restore the correct scene order and (where possible) the original intertitles. What it cannot restore is the original montage, from which 300m of material remains missing. Until 2021, the only copy readily available was an abridged version derived from a Danish print, to which a previous restoration inserted new titles translated into German. As well as missing and reordered scenes, the titles of this Danish version are both more numerous and more moralistic in tone than the German original (as restored in 2021). While the 2021 restoration offers a version of the film that is closer to the original, I am left wondering about how coherent the original actually was. As I wrote with the case of Gösta Berlings saga (1924), new restorations cannot help films with inherently confusing or incoherent narratives. You can make them resemble original texts as much as you like, but that won’t help if the original is itself uneven.

Seen in the beautifully tinted copy presented on the new DVD, Alraune is a splendidly mounted and photographed film. Galeen creates a pleasingly rich, louche world, complete with telling expressionist touches (especially ten Brinken’s home/laboratory). But some of the issues I had with the tone and editing of Galeen’s Der Student von Prag are also evident in Alraune. The cutting is sometimes rather odd, as though the montage has been reassembled from fragments. I am uncertain whether this is the fault of Galeen or of the pitfalls of lost/jumbled material inherent to the prints used for the new restoration.

For example, late in the film, when ten Brinken is alone in the hotel room (Alraune is meanwhile meeting Frank Braun) the film keeps cutting back and forth between close-up and medium-close-up shots of ten Brinken. At this point, the Danish print inserts the vision of Alraune transforming into the mandrake root seen at the start of the film. In the German version (as restored in 2021), the vision of the mandrake is moved to an entirely different scene at the end of the film – but the editing of the shots of ten Brinken becomes no more coherent. What kind of effect is being sought by the back-and-forth shots of ten Brinken? Is the slight change in shot scale meant to convey doubt, hesitancy? What kind of reaction are we meant to have? What is the significance of this choice (if, indeed, it is a choice, rather than a textual anomaly)? Why break up Wegener’s performance into oddly mismatched chunks? I can perfectly well understand why the Danish editors of 1928 choose to interpolate the vision of the mandrake here: they wished to make sense of this otherwise inexplicable sequence of cuts, to suggest what it is that ten Brinken is thinking. As restored in 2021, Galeen’s montage is such an odd, indecisive, unconvincing way of putting together the scene. Again I ask: why, Henrik, why?

If the editing is sometimes odd and might be blamed on the complex textual history of the film, other aspects are surely to do with narrative and narrational problems. Some of the most basic elements of the narrative are left weirdly open. Though the film abandons the fatalistic conclusion of Ewers’s novel, the happy ending of Alraune running away with Frank Braun is entirely unsatisfactory. I understand how and why Alraune wishes to leave ten Brinken – the film makes it clear that she finds his lies and manipulation abhorrent. But why does she elope with Frank? The film sidesteps Frank Braun’s complicitly in inspiring and realizing ten Brinken’s experiment to create Alraune in the opening scenes, just as it offers no clarity on how or why Alraune decides to contact him – nor on how and when she develops feelings for him.

Again, a comparison between the 2021 restoration and the earlier Danish copy is instructive. In the only scene of Alraune/Frank together, the Danish version inserts additional intertitles to try and clarify the narrative. In this version of the scene, Frank begins (in good expositional fashion) by saying that Alraune has summoned him via letter. Alraune then replies at length: “In read in my ‘father’s’ diary all that happened before my birth. Have pity on me… I am eager to know everything.” In the German version, Frank says nothing at all, while Alraune merely says “Thank you for coming.” The inserted text in the Danish version is a clunky attempt to clarify the narrative, which in the German original is almost inexplicable. How did Alraune even come to know of Frank’s life (or even existence), given that Frank has been travelling for the past seventeen(?) years? And why does she suddenly send him a letter to come to meet her in southern Europe? And where/when exactly did she write to him, or know where to write? Given the supposed romantic relationship that develops between the characters (again, hardly seen in the film), these are perfectly reasonable questions to ask.

The film also remains ambiguous about the reality of (and thus our potential attitude towards) ten Brinken’s tenebrous theory of heredity. In the final scene (as restored in 2021), ten Brinken suffers delusions in his last stages of mental and physical collapse. He finds and rips from the ground a piece of vegetation he thinks is another mandrake root. As he gazes at it this perfectly ordinary root, we see a vision of the mandrake from his old collection transforming into the person of Alraune. This is clearly a fantasy, totally at odds with what we have just seen on screen. Yet the final shot of Alraune shows the ordinary root clutched by the dead ten Brinken transforming into the mythical mandrake. After showing us the scientist’s deluded folly, the film suddenly tempts us with a final trick. Do we believe? Was Alraune really a spirit of malign femininity, or just an ordinary young woman? What does the film think, or ask us to think?

I seems to me that the film invites us to ask these narrative or cultural questions not by choice (I don’t think it makes an effort even to frame such questions) but by the nature of its loose coherence and narrative gaps. (The Danish version simply cuts this entire final sequence, as if the editors had no hope of making it coherent.) As I hope I have articulated here and in my comments on Der Student von Prag, I am unconvinced that Galeen quite has a coherent thesis to suggest, proffer, or invite examination thereof.

None of these issues should detract from the greatest feature of Alraune: Brigitte Helm. I never cease to be amazed, delighted, and enthralled by this astonishing performer. And despite the emphasis in popular and scholarly writing on Alraune being a horror film, I cannot help but feel that Helm plays this film as a sinister comedy of manners. Though her character grows enraged at her “father” and in one sequence approaches him with half a mind to attack him (her attempt ultimately stalls before being enacted), for the most part she is a half-detached, half-curious figure who outwits and (in all senses) outperforms her male peers. As Alraune encounters (and seduces) a series of men, we see amusement spread over her face as the men grow jealous and fight or become sullen and despair. Only with ten Brinken does she deliberately set out to destroy a man (and for good reason), but always she recognizes masculine weaknesses. Alraune has an uncanny ability to adapt and survive, to make intelligent decisions that triumph over male desires and instincts.

In one of the climactic scenes, Alraune pretends to seduce ten Brinken. She does so to unnerve him, to prove her superiority and his weakness, and thus (in the film’s slightly hazy dramatic logic) to make him liable to ruin himself on the gambling table. In the scene in their hotel suite, Alraune walks from ten Brinken to a chaise longue, where she bends provocatively over the cushioned expanse of silk. While Alraune’s forward posture emphasizes her cleavage, her face is all innocence: eyes wide, brows raised, then a flutter of her lashes. Here, as in her every interaction with men on screen, Helm’s performance is defined by playfulness. One marvels not only at the transparency of her every gesture, but also at the way such readability invites collusion with the viewer. This is a performance designed to make us enjoy the pleasure of her seduction, to enjoy watching feminine cunning triumph over masculine vanity. The controlling, stern, selfish ten Brinken – with his enormous physical bulk – is here slow, stumbling, hesitant. Laid resplendently on the chaise longue, Alraune motions him over to offer her a cigarette, then gently nudges his leg when he hesitates at her side. Languorously taking the cigarette, she raises herself to receive the light – only to lower herself slowly as it is offered. Drawing him down towards her, she smokes, pouts, and spreads her body invitingly. As ten Brinken struggles to control his desire and confusion, Alraune finally bursts into laughter. Through Helm’s extraordinary control of movement, gesture, and expression, this whole sequence teeters deliciously on the border of self-parody. Her climactic laugh is both a release of tension and an acknowledgement that such performative vamping – femininity itself – is always a game. If Alraune is dramatically uneven, it is given emotional direction by Helm; whatever the plot, we can follow her performance.

In summary, after watching these two new restorations of his work, I remained unconvinced that Galeen was a great director. I love many qualities in these films, and each is (in its own way) very memorable. But they are also overlong and dramatically/tonally inconsistent. I am open to the possibility that some of their problems (editing/montage) derive from textual confusion and restorative lacunae, but others (performance style, narrational clarity) seem to me the result of artistic choices. Veidt and Helm (and Wegener) are superb in their respective roles, and Helm in particular is reason enough to treasure much of Alraune. But I admit that I prefer other adaptations of these same stories. I have already stressed my preference for the 1913 version of Der Student von Prag, and I here add that I prefer Richard Oswald’s version of Alraune from 1930 – also starring Helm. The latter version is also somewhat ragged, but its raggedness lets in a degree of dreamlike atmosphere that Galeen’s lacks. Oswald’s film is weirder, nastier, more extreme. Ten Brinken is more monstrous, Alraune more frenzied – and more vulnerable. (For those wishing to hear more on both films, I advise eager readers to consult my own forthcoming book on Brigitte Helm. It may be a while before it reaches print, but I hope it will be worth the wait…)

Finally, I must praise the Edition Filmmuseum DVDs of the two Galeen films. As ever from this label, the films are impeccably presented and the accompanying liner notes (and bonus pdf book) are highly valuable. But could we please have the 1930 version of Alraune released on disc? And the 1935 version of Der Student von Prag too?

Yours optimistically,

Paul Cuff

References

Hanns Heinz Ewers, Alraune, die Geschichte eines lebenden Wesens (Munich: G. Müller, 1911).