Released in 1913, the comedy Wo ist Coletti? is one of the first features to incorporate Berlin into its plot and offers rare views of the city before the First World War; a place of energy and confusion, media and modernity. Here, wide-ranging bets with the public are announced in newspapers, the aristocracy go to the cinema instead of the opera, and newsreel cameras always find the next sensation. The current sensation (and the plot of the film) is a detective who is hiding in the city in order to win a public bet.
One of the first of the then popular German detective films, Coletti incorporates the characteristic chase scenes on modern means of transportation, as well as disguises and foreign sounding names, which were associated with detectives due to the Sherlock Holmes stories.
An innovative advertising campaign and the huge success of the film led critics to proclaim “Wo ist Coletti?” (Where is Coletti?) as Berlin’s personal catchphrase.
Max Mack, Coletti’s director, was a prolific German-Jewish film pioneer who was immensely active and popular in Germany from 1911-1932, both setting and reinforcing genre trends in the 130 films he directed during that time. The popular nature of his success made Mack uninteresting to the first film scholars who mainly focused on artistic films. This, and the fact that only a very few of Mack’s films have survived today, caused the once so prominent director to be largely forgotten by film history.
The Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung was able to use the original negative of the film, held by the German Federal Film Archive, as source material for its restoration. The 4K scan and image restoration took place at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in 2022.
110 years after its premiere, Coletti will once again be seen running across cinema screens.

Miranda Reason