B. Z. am Mittag, August 30, 1927
Pat und Patachon am Nordseestrand (Ole and Axel at the North Sea Shore, 1927)
AT THE EMELKA PALACE
Seeing old friends after a long time is always a pleasure. And it was nice to see these two wacky, funny fellows, tall, skinny Ole and short, chubby Axel, who were coming from the North Sea shore, where they had experienced all kinds of things. The tales they told call to mind Münchhausen’s fanciful stories. They gave fishing a try but came to realize that they themselves could easily wind up being fished by a shark. They built a cabin, which the wind blew away one night, while they themselves wound up buried in the sand (inspired by a scene in Chaplin’s The Gold Rush). They were heroes, of course. Axel, undaunted even by ghosts, was the greater of the two. They won the hearts of the village beauties with their droll way of dancing the Charleston, freed a young man from the hands of his rival, and helped him find a way to marry the woman he loves.
These are amusing Don Quixote–style capers, harmless, goofy, executed with unflappable poise and hence amusing. Lau Lauritzen produced lovely outdoor shots and, in the scene where the castaways are rescued, created some suspense as well. It was a lovely evening.
B. Z. am Mittag, September 9, 1927
Funkzauber (Radio Magic, 1927)
AT THE PHOEBUS PALACE
For fans of radio—and there are quite a few of those!—this film has much to offer. It guides them through the broadcast studios in Berlin, acquaints them with the announcers on the major stations, especially with the much-admired Berlin announcer Alfred Braun, and gives them an instructive picture of the workings of broadcasting, affording them hours of the liveliest entertainment from a magical distance—not in dry images but in the framework of an appealing storyline by Jane Bess and Dr. Rino Ottavi, directed by Richard Oswald, overly sweeping in scope but still lively.
This film, with a humorous touch, is about a radio enthusiast who settles in for some serious listening without paying for the privilege wherever he goes, whether it be in the woods, as he happily munches on his sandwich, or at the police station, where he is brought in as a vagrant, or in his shack, to which his dream of inheriting a million has shrunk. Werner Krauss endows this character with an impeccable and easygoing humor. This radio devotee, his hat askew and a twinkle in his eye, is a peppy fellow. Krauss’s performance in this film is on a par with his magnificent portrayal of a petty official in A Royal Scandal.
Besides him, the actors are not very memorable: Xenia Desni, who once again has to play the role of a young girl, Fern Andra, is a welcome presence, and it would be nice to see her more often in roles that offer her more to work with; Leo Penkdert as a well-educated man who is a foe of radio and thus enraged; Anton Pointner as a slick scoundrel; Fritz Kampers as a policeman; and Gert Briese as a soulful lover. There was abundant applause from the audience.
B. Z. am Mittag, October 4, 1927
Frost in the Studio
A BATH AT TWENTY DEGREES FAHRENHEIT
Film actors certainly have it hard at times! One example could be seen recently at the studio in Staaken, where the French director Jacques Feyder is shooting the film Thérèse Raquin for the Defu. On the set is a tumbledown country inn with a giant pool, a “lake” in which the unfaithful Thérèse and her lover drown her feeble husband. In the summer, the actors would surely have welcomed a water scene of this sort. But they are to be admired for not losing their composure and willingly and eagerly carrying out the scene, with teeth chattering, at the cold temperature of twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Gina Manés, Wolfgang Zilzer, and A. H. Schlettow are this gutsy trio.
The Defu is at the same time filming Seine Mutter [aka Ehre Deine Mutter] (Honor Thy Mother, 1928), directed by Paul Ludwig Stein. The American actress Mary Carr plays the leading role. Then there is Frau Sorge (Dame Care, 1928), directed by Robert Land, which stars Mary Carr as well. Dieterle and Grete Mosheim are also leading cast members.
B. Z. am Mittag, November 29, 1927
Ole and Axel at Beba Palace
“On the Path to Strength and Beauty” completes the film’s title. And they might have added, “and to two lovely wives,” because these two schlemiels, who so often lose their hearts to creatures with skinny legs but always have to resignedly watch others be chosen in their place, are now able to come out ahead of two sweet and somewhat asinine young men.
But the tall skinny one and the short chubby one come in handy for many things. There are two jolly girls who have been fleecing their uncle in the country under the pretense of studying painting and sculpture in the city, and when the uncle decides to drop in to visit his nieces, the two men play along with a plan to pose as Roman and Greek statues. Then they act as a droll pair of teachers in a dance and gymnastics school that the girls set up in their uncle’s country home. Paying them with love is the least the girls can do.
The plot is very amusing. Ole and Axel wind up in any number of tricky situations and always find a delightful way out. Lau Lauritzen, their standard director, staged this film with humor and a good deal of verve, thus providing quite a fun evening, received with hearty applause.
B. Z. am Mittag March 9, 1928
Der Geliebte seiner Frau (His Wife’s Lover, 1928)
AT THE MARMORHAUS
The subtitle, “A Fling into the Marriage Bed,” holds out the promise of a bawdy, funny film. But the authors, Fritz Zoreff and Siegfried Berenfeld, have diluted their wine with quite a bit of water. To their credit, they refrained from any coarseness, but they did not come up with the light touch and liveliness that would have made this overused subject matter worth seeing one more time in a silly little comedy.
The story—of the commoner’s daughter and the impoverished count who are supposed to marry to get him out of debt and get her the count’s coronet she longs for but who fall in love before the wedding without realizing who their partner actually is—is not a new one. But there’s too much squeezed in here. We’ve seen these motifs and situations in far more pleasing and appealing forms. Max Neufeld’s role as director lacks pacing and subtle nuances. Dina Gralla is not shown off to best advantage in the leading role, and her acting is uncertain. Her partner, Alfons Fryland, is equally weak. Claire Lotta tries and utterly fails to infuse her role with any spirit. Richard Waldemar, however, does breathe life into the role of a delightful old charmer.
B. Z. am Mittag, March 30, 1928
From the Studios
Out in St. Pauli, a disreputable part of Hamburg, is “The Good Anchorage” bar. The sailors who hang out there are not exactly the best. The two really bad guys are “The Nipper” (Wolfgang Zilzer) and “The Doctor” (Fritz Rasp), to whom the most beautiful girl in St. Pauli (Jenny Jugo) lures victims so they can be robbed. She is known as the “Carmen of St. Pauli,” a name that gave the title to the film (Docks of Hamburg, 1928) Erich Waschnek is now shooting in Neubabelsberg with cinematographer Friedel Behn-Grund and set designer Alfred Junge. A good and honest sailor (Willy Fritsch), who happens into this sort of bar for the first time, also winds up in her clutches. These people! We’re secretly glad that we’re only meeting up with them in a faithfully replicated St. Pauli.
The film Karneval der Liebe (Love’s Masquerade, 1928), on which Augusto Genina is working, takes us into a different milieu, friendly, light, and fun-filled.
B. Z. am Mittag, May 8, 1928
Greed (1924)
AT THE KAMERA
This small repertory theater, on Unter den Linden, which has already brought new glory to many an old film, has now become the advocate for this Stroheim film, which had to be canceled abruptly after its premiere in Berlin. There are no more signs of the outrage that erupted back then over this cruelly naturalistic depiction of the depths to which humans can sink.
But it is depressing to watch this depiction of the human condition, which consistently brings the flip side of more accustomed outcomes to the screen, yet it is also lopsided and full of meaningless symbols. Still, parts of it
paint a stirring portrait of the soul of a woman whose greed arouses all her baser impulses, and the poignancy of the acting also makes it gripping. Seeing this film is not relaxing, but it is still a pleasure, though different from the usual kind.
B. Z. am Mittag, July 10, 1928
A Blonde for a Night (1928)
AT THE SCHAUBURG
It is hard to tell what the title of this film has to do with the transformation of a confirmed bachelor and misogynist into the most respectable husband. During these dog days the film could certainly seem enticing. You’d almost be sorry to get caught up—unwittingly—in this silly set of circumstances if the film weren’t made in such a buoyant and humorous manner. Marie Prevost deploys all her charm and bubbly nature, Franklin Pangborn his dry humor, and Harrison E. Ford his great acting to offer light and pleasant entertainment.
B. Z. am Mittag, July 17, 1928
The Valley of the Giants (1927)
AT THE SCHAUBURG
Splendid, these gigantic, thousand-year-old redwood trees, near whose mighty trunks people look like Lilliputians, splendid, these primeval forest landscapes, in which weather-beaten people perform their strenuous daily tasks. They form a superb backdrop for a story—and unfortunately an all-too-American one—of two dogged rivals in the lumber industry.
We don’t understand these unwritten laws in which the fist rules. But there are several scenes, such as the swift descent, that are gripping, and in parts there are welcome injections of humor that provide a break from the near-constant nasty fighting. Enjoyable actors, Milton Sills and Doris Kenyon, ably assist the director, Charles J. Brabin, in presenting an unfamiliar but interesting milieu.
B. Z. am Mittag, July 27, 1928
Die grosse Liebe (The Last Night, 1928)
The Jacobins are camping in the Tronville castle hotel. These tough, grim men form into groups on bits of straw. Between them are pyramids of weapons, with large cooking pots hanging down. The fire slowly dies out. Some of the soldiers are already awake, enjoying themselves while splashing on some water at the castle well. Then the whole group comes alive. Three horsemen burst through the castle gate. Their leader delivers an important message to the officer. On they gallop, while back in the courtyard commands are shouted out, short and sharp—the day will begin with a bloody tribunal. A traitor in front of a tribunal.
An exceedingly picturesque scene from the Terra-Film The Last Night, which is now being shot on the grounds and in the Terra-Glashaus. The script is by Norbert Falk and Robert Liebmann; the director is A. W. Sandberg. In the leading roles are Fritz Kortner, Gösta Ekman, Diomira Jacobini, Karina Bell, and Walter Rilla.
B. Z. am Mittag, July 31, 1928
In the Name of the Law (1922)
AT THE PRIMUS PALACE
The navy, the army, the air force, and now also the police, everything that represents state power over the public and embodies it, is held up high in American films of late. If this film had not aspired to be more than a detective story, it would have had enough elements of suspense to captivate viewers. But a mawkish story about an elderly policeman was tacked on, the inanity of which spoils things and doesn’t even let the suspense added on toward the end work its magic.
Emory Johnson’s direction veers off into a series of subplots that go off on tangents, and it eventually loses the necessary momentum in portraying the battle of the police, represented by the aging policeman and his son, who is a police pilot, against a gang of jewel thieves. On a technical level, the film is a disappointment. And the airplane pursuit of the ringleader of the gang makes us painfully aware of its makeshift studio work. The final battle at the jeweler’s lacks the kind of bone-chilling escalation you expect from American suspense films, even though there are explosions, fires, and a great number of firemen at work. The acting is on this same level.
B. Z. am Mittag, August 3, 1928
Sounds Are Recorded
THE STUDIO SHOTS
Imagine you’ve been invited to be a guest at a house and you show up on time but find the doors locked. That’s what happened to me recently when I visited a studio. A servant stands in front of the door yet doesn’t open it for the visitor; instead, he holds it firmly locked and keeps a good eye on it, refusing to let anyone enter. Here’s why—a talking picture is being filmed.
And now we know: sounds, words, and noises may be produced, spoken, and generated, but only when they are suitable for the scenes, whereas reverberating steps of arriving guests are unlikely to have been intended for the scene being shot. So we wait outside until there’s a break.
Then we can watch Max Mack, who once made the first German Autorenfilm, a signature film of the era, now cranking out the first German sound film using the Tri-Ergon system, silently directing his actors with miming movements of his head, hands, and sometimes his feet, as long as it’s not with his mouth.
“Crank” is not really the right expression, because the camera, four times as large as the usual camera used for films, doesn’t actually have a crank. Once it is adjusted and everything is ready for the shoot, the cameraman activates it by means of an electrical contact, and automatically the camera records the images and sounds on a rolling celluloid tape in parallel strips—incorporating the sounds by electrically converting sound waves into light oscillations—to make image and sound form a complete unit.
The volume is controlled and relayed by the amplifier, an equally complicated machine, which is electrically linked to the camera. The reigning king, Joseph Massolle, inventor of the Tri-Ergon system, is on-site, monitoring the sound design, which requires a comprehensive balancing of the acoustic conditions. For this purpose the room undergoes some degree of soundproofing, because sound comes across differently on a big set than in a closed room.
Microphones are mounted, out of sight, wherever the actors will be standing at a given moment, to make sounds and gestures match up perfectly and coordinate with where the sounds are directed. The actor, who has to pay attention not only to his facial expressions but also to the text and the way the words are expressed, faces substantial difficulties that necessitate exhaustive rehearsals.
The plot of this first talking picture [Ein Tag Film (A Day in Film, 1928)], which is expected to be about five hundred yards long, was also created by Max Mack and offers many avenues to employ speech and other sounds. The viewer experiences all that goes on behind the scenes. A woman (Georgia Lind) who wishes to become an actress against the wishes of her husband (Kurt Vespermann) is instructed to play a scene and bungles it, then has repeated confrontations with the director (Paul Graetz) and production manager before conceding her ineptitude.
We will only know the extent to which the resistant acoustic material has been successfully integrated when dialogues, sounds on the set, and film music are shown in the finished product. The advanced Tri-Ergon system, however, might well raise our hopes that we have moved ahead nicely in sound film.
B. Z. am Mittag, August 21, 1928
The Threepenny Opera, for the Fiftieth Time
At the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, The Threepenny Opera has now reached its fiftieth performance. The opera’s enduring appeal owes to its fusion of outrageous wit and social criticism. Kurt Weill’s music is a large part of that appeal. The Beggar King is now played by Hans Hermann Schaufuss, and his daughter, Polly, is Charlotte Ander. Rosa Valetti is superb as “a woman tailor-made for procuring and for the Gypsy trade,” whereas Harald Paulsen is a very likable murderer, robber, and swindler. Kate Kühl invariably gets extra applause for her brilliantly trenchant performance. Kurt Gerron lends tragicomic tenderness to the role of the sheriff of London, who takes kickbacks from that scoundrel Mackie. There was just as much applause for this fiftieth performance as there had been for the first.
B. Z. am Mittag, October 22, 1928
Frühling in Palästina / Aviv be’Erez Israel (Springtime in Palestine, 1928)
Twenty-five years ago a barren desert with noxious swamps, today a city with forty-five thous
and residents, lovely wide streets, handsome garden villas, schools, sanatoriums, factories, the future seaside resort of the Orient—Tel Aviv. The second powerful impression is that of Haifa, the port city of Palestine, now being greatly expanded. The many communities appear before your eyes in vibrant images, extensive orange plantations, which already yield two million crates a year, the main export product, and there are fields and forests.
All wrested in hard, tedious work from the sandy, rocky soil. We see European girls from bourgeois families who did office work or studied at universities back home now building streets, men previously unaccustomed to agrarian life now cultivating the soil. Also of interest are the images from the interior of Palestine, of Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee, the rapids of the Jordan River, which will now be used to generate electricity.
This film is a unique cultural document, a paean to willpower and work. Josef Gal-Ezer made it quite skillfully. The applause was enthusiastic.
B. Z. am Mittag, December 11, 1928
First Silhouette Sound Film
FRÄULEIN FÄHNRICH (MISS MIDSHIPMAN, 1929)
Who doesn’t know the little [Julius] Pinschewer films, those amusing little animations that form the core of the preliminary program in many moving-picture theaters? Pinschewer has now gone a step further, and we’ve been following his experiment with great interest as we watch the results. The goal is to connect advertising films with sound films using the Tri-Ergon system.
Billy Wilder on Assignment Page 16
