The Restoration

The film was known until now in a B&W version with German intertitles reconstructed from the original Murnau’s scenario. This version includes the original tintings and tonings of the Italian version, the smooth photographic quality created by Karl Freund and the original intertitles, taken from the censorship cards.

The film

“If Die Finanzen des Grossherzogs is a film which Murnau himself despised, and only made to order on a commercial basis, leaving many creative elements in the hands of his collaborators, it would seem that it would not be worthwhile to dedicate much time to this film. Nevertheless, seeing as he had renounced the narrative recourses based on pictorial emotions, Murnau was forced to make use of other means, which make the film into an interesting exercise in which there are some of the best sequences of the whole of Murnau’s work.

His comical expedients, which are apparently simple and very direct, are in fact the product of the reflections of an intellectual on theatrical and film space. Surprise motivates the comic effect. It can be defined as a shortcut to reach the solution of a seemingly irresolvable problem. Or like the sudden organisation of tremendous disorder. Or the logical but unexpected breaking of a chain, of apparently unending events. In other words, the rapid shaking off of tension. […]

Murnau uses spatial distribution as a comical expedient, previously present with dramatic effects. All his reflections on the entrances on scene, the limits of fitting into the shot as limits of reality etc. are all applied to the comedy. The spatial surprise, as a comic expedient was not invented by Murnau, […] but the effects of Die Finanzen des Grossherzogs are based on a new sense of the cinematographical space, and on a reflection on the limits of the shot. Both the dramatic and the comic scenes are resolved using the same expedient: sudden entrances onto the set and spatial distribution. Finally, thanks to the complete dominion of the cinematographic space, […] camouflaging a part of the real space by means of a shot, discovering therefore the relationship between apparently unconnected spaces in a general plan which includes the different partial spaces”. (Luciano Berriatua)