This film was recently found in a garage housing the old contents of a dead relative’s loft. The opening credits had disappeared. The only useful clue for identification purposes was a title on the boxes: Inge. It is very probably a German, Austrian or Scandinavian film dating from the second decade of the century. The only reliable evidence we found was in Deutsche Spielfilme von den Anfängen bis 1933 (Berlin, 1988), according to which there was an Inge amongst the twelve films credited to Otto Rippert in 1918. Gerhard Lamprecht does not review it in his Deutsche Stummfilme, but this would not be the only such case. Nevertheless, the film was undoubtedly relatively expensive, although perhaps less so than it might appear at first glance. It is certainly the work of an expert, demanding and ambitious director. The script, somewhat surprisingly for the time, adheres to logic. The actors are directed in a way that elegantly marries different registers and avoids grandiloquence. The photography is remarkable. In many of the interior scenes, that appear to have been shot in real locations, daylight is cleverly used to accentuate the magnificence of the shots while minimising costs. It all looks terribly like Kalbus and Wollenberg’s unfortunately vague descriptions of Rippert’s films of the period. At the time of writing these notes, the research is still in progress. I should only add that all other hypotheses formulated up to now during the course of the research have not stood up to scrutiny.

Jean-Marie Buchet – Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique