Thu
22/07
Jolly Cinema > 16:30
1921: Avantgarde, Newsreels and DIE HINTERTREPPE
Drums accompaniment by Frank Bockius (cortometraggi)
Piano accompaniment by Stephen Horne (Die Hintertreppe)
Avantgarde, animation and more short films
1921 is the first year in our series A Hundred Years Ago in which films of the classical avant-garde comprise part of our selection. The term avant-garde was probably first applied in film circles in the 1920s in France, Germany and other countries in Western Europe to describe films and filmmakers in opposition to commercial cinema. When we speak of the avant-garde in film today, we refer to the 1920s as the classical period. The strand of avant-gardist movies from 1921 already features some of the most famous protagonists of this movement, such as Ruttmann and Richter. Both artists will be ‘fore-guards’ in avant-garde and experimental filmmaking for years to come. Another groundbreaking work from 1921 is the short documentary film Manhatta by Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand, considered to be the first American avant-garde film by many scholars. It can also be seen as a precursor of the famous feature-length city portraits (eg Man with a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov) by avant-garde filmmakers, which will pop up at the end of the 1920s.
Alongside films from this new genre we show ‘usual suspects’ in this section such as a travelogue from North Africa and a colonial film from Congo. Both films demonstrate the inability of most filmmakers to meet a foreign culture in an appropriate manner, while offering gorgeous cinematographic shots from African landscapes, an important raison d’être of the genre. A Movie Trip Through Filmland and Les Coulisses du cinéma focus on the world of cinema: the first on the production of film material at the Kodak factory in Rochester and the second on the life of film stars in Hollywood.
Karl Wratschko
Newsreels
Cinematography is celebrated for its unmatched capacity to capture reality. However, the events of history are not simply contained in visual documents. Newsreel items don’t tell a story, history, they are rather like clues, keywords, hinting at what has happened. Instead of repeating here the film titles printed below, we rather record the name of Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930), who in 1921 was active as High Commissioner for the Repatriation of Prisoners of War, High Commissioner for Refugees and High Commissioner for Relief in Russia. Nansen designed and implemented the international response to the terrible human sufferings of those years and laid the foundation for humanitarian aid.
Mariann Lewinsky and Karl Wratschko
A seguire
DIE HINTERTREPPE (Germania/1921)
ProjectionInfo
Subtitle
Original version with subtitles
Admittance
DIE HINTERTREPPE
Film Notes
When Henny Porten, popular star of the German cinema, became her own producer in 1921, she launched an ambitious project and engaged three key collaborators: Leopold Jessner, the noted director of expressionist theatre in Berlin plus scriptwriter Carl Mayer and set designer Paul Leni. Her acting partners were Fritz Kortner, star of Jessner’s Berlin State Theatre, and the handsome Wilhelm Dieterle from Max Reinhardt’s ensemble.
The result, Die Hintertreppe, was a success on the artistic level but flopped at the box office. An anonymous reviewer in “Das Tage-Buch” wrote: “Jessner has done more for Henny Porten than any director before … All routine is wiped away, every movement is experienced and therefore alive.” And Alfred Kerr, the dreaded theatre critic who hardly ever wrote about films, praised the film as “wonderfully subdued”; Herbert Ihering called it “masterful”, and Kurt Pinthus “the most human film ever seen in the cinema”.
How could the combination of artists with such different profiles work out so well? Contemporary critics were divided as to whether this was a naturalistic drama or an expressionistic one. So were film historians later on. Paul Leni’s sets of the postman’s basement dwelling, the back staircase that leads as a servant’s entrance to the kitchen of the bourgeois flat, and the courtyard in between, is naturalistic in approach. But the lighting, accentuating and dissolving the geometry of the building, awakens an expressionistic uncanniness.
The same applies to Kortner’s embodiment of the shy, hunchbacked postman, who in his infatuation and desperation, facing the competition of the burly fiancé, resorts to wicked tricks. There is always a very real core in his characterisation, but it is exaggerated by the slowed-down acting and stylised expressive gestures. The camera makes us perceive this world as it must appear to its inhabitants as hopeless. However, the stylistic intensification creates a distance that calls this perspective into question.
Martin Girod
Cast and Credits
Scen.: Carl Mayer. F.: Karl Hasselmann, Willy Hameister. Scgf.: Karl Görge, Paul Leni, Alfred Junge. Int.: Henny Porten (la domestica), Fritz Kortner (il postino), Wilhelm Dieterle (l’amante). Prod.: Henny Porten-Film GmbH. 35mm. L.: 1109 m. 18 f/s. Bn.
In short
English intertitles
OPUS II
DREAM OF A RAREBIT FIEND. THE PET
English intertitles
LICHTSPIEL OPUS 1
L’ESPAGNE AU MAROC LE MONT GURUGU VU DE LA MARICHICA
RETRAITE DE L’ARTILLERIE TURQUE APRÈS LA VICTOIRE GRÈCQUE À KÜTAHYA
CONTRE LA FAMINE (TAI YUAN, SHANXI)
FAMINE EN RUSSIE (SAMARA)
MESSTER-WOCHE 1921
German intertitles
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