The entertaining form Pinschewer chose drew on Lotte Reiniger’s silhouette animations. It took him seven months to put together seventy thousand individual images to create a little film, 275 yards in length, loosely based on Andersen’s The Chinese Nightingale. The contents amount to an advertisement for Tri-Ergon films. This type of filming continues to pose several technical difficulties, of course, in spite of good continuing development, and the text for the plot had to be supplied by the tinny voice of an announcer, because a dialogue simultaneous with the moving images could not be achieved. Even so, this and other tests show that there is still much to be accomplished in this arena.
The film Fräulein Fähnrich (Miss Midshipman, 1929), now playing at the Primus Palace, is meant to be a witty story about the navy. The three writers did not shy away from listing their names and claiming responsibility for the tritest absurdities in witless situations and situationless witticisms. The highest degree of goodwill: not a word about them and their crimes. You have to feel sorry for Mary Parker, Fritz Schulz, and the whole big crowd of extras who had to act so sweet and dopey, and for the audience that had to watch this.
B. Z. am Mittag, March 5, 1929
Was eine Frau im Frühling träumt (What a Woman Dreams in Spring, 1929)
AT THE BAVARIA LICHTSPIELE
What does a little shorthand typist dream of in the spring? Naturally, that’s the kind of person this film is about, just like so many other recent films. And it’s just as natural that a sudden windfall, beautiful clothing, the French Riviera town of Nice, an amorous adventure, and a famous film star add up to the sum of all hopes and dreams. If a few more painful cuts were to be made, a nice film would result—or so Hans Bietzke and Curt Blachnitzky thought. But the events and emotions they picked up from the hit song by Walter Kollo are unoriginal and not told well enough to arouse more interest.
On top of that, Blachnitzky’s directing lacks rhythm. The whole thing could use a bit of sun, of spring. Colette Brettel looks quite nice but suffers from the lifelessness of the direction, as does Ernst Rückert, the movie enthusiast in the film. Kurt Vespermann and Julius Falkenstein provide some amusement.
B. Z., April 2, 1929
“Youth Stage”?
I wonder whether the youngsters, the drama students at the Deutsches Theater, had a part in choosing the play that was presented yesterday on the rehearsal stage of the Kammerspiele. I hope not! This play, Young Woodley, by John van Druten, employs his boyish charm, sentimental sparkle, and the pure folly of his marvelously youthful mentality, but in essence it is undermined by his know-it-all attitude and precocious panache. Even so, it is deftly constructed, with slick dialogue, and some of its clever lines attest to meticulous craftsmanship.
It’s about the old, yet eternally new, story of how a nice boy who is not predestined to tragedy nearly stumbles into a life-threatening situation when he takes his first steps into the seemingly paradisiacal existence of adults. If only Young Woodley …! […] the play would have been much more pleasant than one depicting a quick conversion to resigned middle-class life. Hans-Joachim Moebis in the title role, Franziska Benthoi as his idol, and Gustav Specht as an up-and-coming young comedian could develop into actors if they stay in good hands.
B. Z., May 18, 1929
Stroll through the Studios— They’re Shooting Silent Films
Sprengbagger at the Terra-Glashaus
Dr. [Carl Ludwig] Achaz-Duisberg calls his new film Sprengbagger 1010, and he’s shot it himself—his first time doing so. Hans von Wolzogen assisted as production manager, and [Artur] von Schwertführer as cameraman. The destruction of the earth by the expansion of industry forms the basis of the film. The actual plot, which is designed to sell tickets, features popular actors, the lovely Viola Garden and Ilse Stobrava first and foremost, as well as Heinrich George and [Ivan] Koval-Samborsky.
Marlene Dietrich’s Night Flight
At the airfield in Staaken is a plane that is wide, gray, and massive—illuminated in violet by the beacon lights. The wing and fuselage bear the number D 1231. So this is no ordinary airplane—it is the plane that has set a record by remaining in the air for sixty-five hours.
What’s it doing here at the Staaken airfield? It’s part of a film plot—in the Max Glass Film production company’s moving picture that is shooting Schiff der verlorenen Menschen (The Ship of Lost Men, 1929)—and stops here when Marlene Dietrich sets out for the night flight that pulls her out of the ballroom, only to race her off to the isolation of the ocean: the night scene shows the departure, which keeps being rehearsed, again and again, then is finally filmed. Reliable, true, and without a hitch, the aircraft plays along … it likely knows that after setting a record a victor has to be filmed, so it undergoes that process with propriety and grace.
The New Henny Porten Film
A few months ago a strange case of a longing for motherhood drove a woman to steal someone else’s child. Henny Porten read the report in the B. Z. and then could not let go of this subject and built on it. Friedrich Raff and Julius Urgiss wrote the script for the film, which she now shot with Georg Jacoby as the director. Her scenes, which were shown in Staaken, are stirring: simple, sincere, teary—real tears, her mouth trembling as if she’s experiencing this herself, as her hands searchingly grasp the child, a surprisingly gifted child actress, that little Inge. The child’s parents are played by Elisabeth Pinajeff and Ernst Stahl-Nachbaur.
Dieterle Is Once Again Making a Film
Wilhelm Dieterle, who seemed to have disappeared altogether from the stage and screen for quite a long time, can be seen in the studio again working on a new film. Using a screenplay by his wife, Charlotte Hagenbruch, he plays the leading role in Frühlingsrauschen—Tränen, die ich dir geweint (Rustle of Spring—Tears I Shed for You, 1929) with Lien Deyers, Vivian Gibson, and Elsa Wagner; Dieterle directed the film himself.
Experimental Films
Filmstudio 1929 was founded as the first German film studio under the leadership of Moriz Seeler, Robert Siodmak, and Edgar Ulmer. Filmstudio 1929 will make experimental films on a cooperative basis, independently of any industry requirements. The studio is launching its work with the film Summer 29. The cast consists entirely of nonactors.
The New Ufa Program, 1929–30
The new Ufa production comprises twenty lavish productions, most of which are being produced as Ufa sound films. The necessity arises to shoot completely independent silent versions for all the Ufa sound films; that is, hundreds of yards are shot for these films that are not incorporated into the sound film version, but have to be made in order to supply a first-class silent film to theaters that cannot play sound films. On the other hand, the silent films for the theaters that are equipped to show sound films get a sound film entertainment consisting of music, background noises, and sound effects.
The Richest Woman in the World
This French Travel Adventure in Two Parts of the World is a complete failure. You don’t even get to enjoy the enticing Egyptian landscape and the ancient cultural monuments, because the photography is deeply flawed. It would be best to lay a veil of charitable silence over the contents, which are pure unadulterated kitsch. The directors (M. Bandal and Ch. Delac), who poured a great deal of tedious love into it, and Lee Parry—oh, don’t get me started!
B. Z., June 21, 1929
Das verschwundene Testament (The Missing Will, 1929)
AT THE KAMMERSPIELE
When Carlo Aldini, a detective, is on a case, fighting on two fronts, the vagabonds in front of him and the police behind, there is sure to be tension, shockers. Pursuit, attack, escape, chase scene—wild adventures, which he handles with fabulous verve and astonishing acrobatic agility. A real man!
All Rolf Randolf, scriptwriter (with Dr. Emanuel Alfieri) and director, had to do was give Aldini the catchwords and put him into the right position. He did so exceedingly well. It offers peppy entertainment. There is also a healthy dose of humor with the delightful supporting character
that Siegfried Arno plays to gripping comic effect. Daisy d’Ora is also quite nice. Hans Junkermann, Jack Mylong-Münz, and J. W. Speerger complete the animated ensemble. There was hearty applause.
B. Z., July 9, 1929
The Winged Horseman (1929)
AT THE UFA PAVILION
These stories from the Wild West, involving villainous caretakers, rapacious neighbors, and brutish highwaymen, are certainly rough-hewn, and the episodes are naïvely devised right down to the end, yet there is something impressive about these prairie films. When they are shot with as much experience and as much zest as Arthur Rosson has done here, their effect is disarming and rousing, particularly with a hotshot like the incomparably quick-witted Hoot Gibson in the lead role. And he also has a compelling sense of humor. Ruth Elder, the aviatrix, does not do badly at all in her introduction to film. There was hearty applause.
B. Z., August 13, 1929
Männer ohne Beruf (Men without Work, 1929)
AT THE UFA PALACE AM ZOO
Harry Piel goes after traffickers of girls! A multitalented fellow who makes mincemeat out of the bad guys, hounding them through the crooked alleys and hideouts of Marseille, and the result is great fun.
Robert Liebmann proves to be an excellent guide through the labyrinth of convoluted pathways of an interesting, gripping detective adventure rich in humorous incidents. And Harry, an accomplished actor, knows just how to set the scene for these kinds of things, with verve and wit, captivatingly and entertainingly.
As an actor, Piel [also the director] is as endearing as ever. Dary Holm, acting alongside him, is quite striking, and the large additional cast, most interesting among them the jovial Albert Paulig and the talented Edith Meinhard, works well in their supporting roles. The success was strong and genuine.
B. Z., August 14, 1929
Laubenkolonie [aka Die lustigen Musikanten] (The Merry Musicians, 1930)
AT THE PRIMUS PALACE
An amusing sound film. The milieu is Berlin, not always on the mark, but seen with humor and performed entertainingly. Franz Rauch and Max Obal, who also directed it with zest and gusto, have taken a clear-eyed look at community gardening plots and captured some charming encounters. A nice, unsentimental love story and an elderly widower’s unpalatable excursion into a second marriage to a cabaret singer hold together the slightly divergent series of scenes.
The audience caught on well to the charming slapstick, and their amusement was enhanced by the actors’ clear enthusiasm. Fritz Kampers once again plays a tough, stalwart country boy; Camilla Spira, who is seen in film far too infrequently, a sweet, likable girl. Hermann Picha and Erika Glässner, the mismatched married couple, and Julius Falkenstein and Hans Hermann Schaufuss add an element of humor, sometimes of their own creation when the scene didn’t provide any.
B. Z., October 25, 1930
Susanne macht Ordnung (Susie Cleans Up, 1930)
AT THE ATRIUM
A farce, with a little singing, a little dancing, and a good bit of humor: contented faces, robust applause, a success that feels particularly fulfilling because there were two “first-timers” shown to fine advantage with this premiere. The writer-director, Eugen Thiele, and his co-author, Wolfgang Wilhelm, did not come up with a terribly original plot, but they enliven it with a refreshing, incisive situational comedy.
Thiele moves along at the rapid clip with which such inconsequential things, intended solely for entertainment, have to be filmed, and the cast follows him eagerly and enthusiastically. At the head is Szöke Szakall, attorney for extremely difficult cases, who has had an excellent day. In the same vein there is a set of unwitting fathers—Truus Van Aalten is on a very spirited quest—the humorous Kurt Lilien and Martin Kettner, while the real father, Albert Paulig, stays discreetly in the background, and Max Ehrlich’s unflappable composure works nicely as he pulls the strings in a little game of intrigue. The role of lover is well served by Franz Lederer.
B. Z., November 21, 1930
Translator’s Note
When Noah Isenberg approached me with a plan to bring together the early journalism of Billy Wilder, I couldn’t say yes fast enough. Who doesn’t love Billy Wilder? Surely we all like it hot, Wilder-style. Osgood Fielding III may have declared that “nobody’s perfect,” but Billy Wilder’s filmmaking comes awfully close to perfection.
I’d never read Wilder’s early journalism, but once Noah supplied me with the two books on which this compilation draws, all composed in the 1920s, I was entranced all over again by Wilder’s powers of observation that shed light and laughter on the human condition. Wilder’s “outsize gift of gab,” as Noah aptly describes it, is in full evidence here. Wilder’s humor is sly, subtle, and oblique, giving rise less to belly laughs than to ongoing chuckles.
Noah had already pored over the collections of Wilder’s journalism, then I joined in the fun. What a cornucopia awaited us! We sought out a selection that would introduce readers to Wilder’s reflections on current films, the latest cultural and fashion trends, fickle weather patterns, his own plans to shoot a film, and his encounters with celebrities—Ernst Lubitsch, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Asta Nielsen, Paul Whiteman, the Tiller Girls—as well as a host of quirky “ordinary people,” such as the lucky (real or imagined) individual who earned his living by smiling uninterruptedly. Wilder’s range is vast: we learn how the smell of matches has evolved, how efforts to modernize cafés wind up erasing our collective memories, how a business tycoon can’t manage to see a dentist, how the Prince of Wales suffers from an absurdly privileged ennui, how the art of telling lies ought to figure in the school curriculum.… And we learn, in two pieces about Wilder’s work as a dancer for hire, how that humble job opened the door to his pursuit of journalism.
His essays engage and quicken our senses, as Wilder’s “eager nostrils” chase down scents or as he brings musical life to inanimate objects, such as in this passage from “Renovation, an Ode to the Coffeehouse,” which infuses the atmosphere of a café with the tones of what Wilder calls the “molecular miracle” of “metaphysical ensoulment”:
Coffeehouses have something in common with well-played violins. They resonate, reverberate, and impart distinct timbres. The many years of the regular guests’ clamor have stored their filaments and atoms in a singular way, and the woodwork, paneling, and even pieces of furniture pulse marvelously to the tunes of the visitors’ life rhythms. Malice and venomous thoughts of a decade on the blackened walls have settled in as a sweetly radiant finish, as the finest patina. Every sound, emanating from the faintest quiver, the most unremarkable brains, comes through and runs endlessly, in mysterious waves, across all the molecules of the magnificently played sound body, day after day …
Wilder’s prose is, well … wilder than I usually get to render in my translations. Where else do I get to write about “witless wastrels,” about an Englishman “blessed with hearing like a congested walrus,” about a performer with “gasometer lungs,” or a smoker who can “make his pipe saunter from one corner of his mouth to the other”?
Wilder’s words have verve and paint vivid pictures; they dance the Black Bottom, like the characters who populate his pieces. Noah Isenberg and I hope that the readers of this volume find it a wonderful glimpse into how the Billie Wilder of Vienna and Berlin evolved into the Billy Wilder of Hollywood.
Index
Note: Page numbers in italics refer to figures and photos.
Ace in the Hole (1951), 12
Achaz-Duisberg, Carl Ludwig, 185
Ackermann (Holländer), 143
Acosta, Uriel, 145
Adler, Alfred, 7
age and lifespans, 140–141
airplanes, 185–186
air travel, 21, 76–78
Aldini, Carlo, 188
Alexanderplatz, Berlin, 74, 75
Alexanderplatz (Döblin), 89
Alfieri, Emanuel, 170, 188
American morality and conventions, 168
Americanophilia, 9, 10
&nb
sp; Ander, Charlotte, 181
Andersen, Hans Christian, 183
Anet, Claude, 95, 139–140
animation films, 182–183
“Anything but Objectivity” (Wilder), 54–56
Anzengruber, Ludwig, 144
The Apartment (1960), 4
Ariane (Anet), 140
Arno, Siegfried, 188
Arrant, d’Abbadie d’, 159
“Asta Nielsen’s Theatrical Mission” (Wilder), 97–100
Atrium theater, 190
“At the Home of the Oldest Woman in Berlin” (Wilder), 140–141
Aurich, Rolf, 12, 18
Austria. See Vienna
author’s films (autorenfilms), 179
Axel. See Ole and Axel
Bahr, Hermann, 159
Bajda, Ernst, 159
Bandal, M., 187
Baschik, Kratky, 154–155
Bass, Saul, 14
The Battle for Rome (Dahn), 88
Bavaria Lichtspiele Theater, 183
beer consumption, 78–80
The Beggar from Cologne Cathedral (Der Bettler vom Kölner Dom, 1927), 170–171
Békessy, Bianca, 5
Békessy, Emmerich (Imré), 3, 5, 6
Bell, Karina, 178
Benthoi, Franziska, 185
Berenfeld, Siegfried, 174
Berlin: beer drinking in, 78–80; book market in, 21, 87–90; commercial air travel in, 21, 76–78; cultural essays on, 21, 56–58, 74–75, 141–143; documentary films on, 83–86; film scandals in, 150; “German-Jewish Spirit” in, 11; in mid-1920s, 8–12, 21; oldest woman in, 140–141; in People on Sunday, 15; radio and broadcast studios in, 172; Romanisches Café in, 9, 11, 27; theater critics in, 143–145; Vanderbilt on, 120; Whiteman in, 95, 115–117; Wilder’s dancing career in, 10, 20, 23–41, 96, 161–164; Wilder’s favorite spots in, 12–13, 74–75; Wilder’s journalism career in, 7–10. See also People on Sunday
Billy Wilder on Assignment Page 17
