Show people… Die große Sehnsucht (1930), Bonn Silent Film Festival 26

Camilla Horn

Quiet! Sound recording in process!

 

I love films about film and the silent era had some excellent examples from Eleanor Boardman’s Souls for Sale, Maurice Tourneur’s A Girl’s Folly* (1917), the lost Merton of the Movies (covered here on this blog) to the British Shooting Stars, and the German Die Filmprimadonna (1926). They give us a tantalising glimpse behind the screen, showing films in production, sometimes actual ones with Erich von Stroheim on Greed and Chaplin on A Woman of Paris in Souls. By showing the process though they let the audience in on the secret and in doing so enhance the end product… yes, even the slapstick chaos of Show People!

 

This is the German version and it features mehr sterne als im Himmel, or something like that, to coin a phrase. Yet, whilst the guests keep on coming, the film retains a compelling central story that is something along the lines of the later What Price Hollywood? (1932) and no doubt many more before, in which a young star breaks through potentially leaving friends and lovers behind.

 

The couple in question are Eva von Loe, played by an more earthly Camilla Horn than I’m used to  and Paul Wessel, a hope-less Harry Frank who seems like a nice chap until events start to move. They are part of a reserve army of extras who as much a part of the filming as the audience. Most of the details pass them by but they are just happy to be in the frame.  

 

The set up

Shot “on location” at the EFA Studios in Berlin, the script was co-written by one Emeric Pressburger along with Hans H. Zerlett and the director István Székel – later Steve Sekely. It is based around the filming of a feature of the same name, Die große Sehnsucht (The Great Longing aka Camera! Action!) which has the double longings for love and career… everyone wants to be in pictures but at what cost? But, neither the question nor the film is that serious and to cap it all there is the most outrageous of endings signalled by letters attacked to the bloomers of the dancers in the final dance sequence.

 

We start with a call for silence as the sound department sets the levels and a lovely tracking in shot moves us from on high under the gantry and onto the sound stage – reminiscent of shots in Shooting Stars but also that rare “making of” footage shot of L’Hebier’s L’Argent by Jean Dréville. It’s a very silent shot for a talkie where microphones needed to be close to the action but opens up the visual world of the film in swooping fashion. The accompaniment also provides a lovely diegetic moment as Mykyta Sierov’s flute is foregrounded as the camera finally settles on a man in Regency costume playing the same instrument. But, there’s an additional touch from Sekely, as the camera shifts from the man seemingly playing the flute to the musician at the side of the stage actually playing it – extra delicious as we know it’s really Mykyta.

 

It’s break time and we switch to the canteen with extras in costume ask for boiled sausages with salad whilst, in the actors’ area, Luis Trenker is having lunch with Hans Schlettow who prods the fourth wall by saying that they’re due to feature in a scene in which they meet Elga Brink in the canteen. She duly arrives and Luis is introduced as having just come down from his “Holy Mountain” in case the audience was in any doubt.

Luis Trenker, Elga Brink and Hans Schlettow

Poor chap! He’s been in films for twenty years now… always as an extra.

 

Luis then hands over the baton by saying hello to Cornelius (Ferdinand Bonn) who is a perpetual “background actor” and who is sitting next to Paul as Eva comes rushing across the canteen with an urgent need to speak to him. Just one kiss though before rushing back to take her place at the tables in a staged night club in which Carla Marventa (Berthe Ostyn) is singing to this captive audience but seriously not impressing director Hall (Theodor Loos) who, after numerous takes, can’t take anymore of her vocals and fires her. He tells cast and crew to take the afternoon off but is distracted by the pretty blonde girl sat among the extra “audience” but is too enraged to take notes.

 

How do you do, I’m Conrad Veidt!

 

Conny duly arrives to find the set empty and greets long-suffering assistant director, Mopp (Paul Kemp) who tells him of the need for a new star. Meanwhile Eva has read too much into her director’s distraction and seeks him out in the hope that she can take over. Herr Veidt arrives just in time to jump to the wrong conclusion thinking she has been cast and when Hall corrects him remarks on her looks: “but can she act?” is the reply.

 

Camilla Horn, Conrad Veidt and Theodor Loos

… the Ondra Bar is now open!

 

Meanwhile, it’s Anny Ondra’s birthday and she celebrates with Charles Puffy (Károly Huszár) and a host of other faces I couldn’t quite place – she’s definitely A Party and when asked by Puffy how old she is, promptly pouts her thumb in her mouth. Anny gets more time than most for some leggy shots of exhuberance and the sign of a star at the peak of their powers. She had a productive 1930s, even though her accent excluded her from more British films with Herr Hitchcock 

 

What shall we do? Garbo’s in America. Bergner** isn’t available.

 

The pressure’s on an as Hall gets desperate enough to give the unknown blonde a go, he calls on Mopp to tell him who she was. Unfortunately the AD is drunk as a streifenskunk and has to be sobered up under a shower. Back in the land of the straight he remembers her name and full address and so we can proceed with the ending we’re all expecting. She gets handed the script and works all night on it with Paul but will she be able to den erwartungen entsprechen?

 

The answer is uncertain especially when Paul starts to feel excluded… and there’s still time to meet Fritz Rasp – being unexpectedly charming (Brooksie always said so…), not to mention Betty Amann, Lil Dagover, Jenny Jugo, Gustav Diessl (still not forgiven by me for Pandora’s Box…), Fritz Kortner (ditto), Harry Liedtke, Jack Trevor and many more…

Anny and Puffy

 

The balance between the drama and the star-spotting is well kept and everything comes together for that cheeky big finale. Fun for lost of reasons and including a lovely self-awareness and wiliness to make fun of the industry in ways that still surprise. Well done!

 

A very funny scene is at… (a) … party when a couple of stars do an imitation of Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings in The Blue Angel. It’s comic, and at least gets those two (about the only German stars missing) by names into the picture. 

Variety, 13 October 1931

 

This silent version that was screened was sent out to the many theatres that still didn’t have sound systems and works very well, it even adds to the meta feeling as we see throughout: the idea of a silent film about a talkie and a talkie about the birth of anew stars featuring a host of older stars not all of whom would make the transition to the extra dimension. Sadly, that wasn’t going to be entirely their choice.

 

For this stream, there was fine accompaniment from Richard Siedhoff on piano and Mykyta Sierov on oboe/flute which follows the dynamic shifts between the stage and behind the screen along with the romance. Personally I’m not so sure about the kazoo used to imitate the singing voices – the jokes already there in the mime – but otherwise they do a really pleasing job. I wonder what Camilla Horn’s singing voice was like, hopefully the sound version is still around for us to compare someday?

 

Camilla Horn and Harry Frank

 

*Screening at the Kennington Bioscope on 30^th September as part of a fund-raiser for The Cinema Museum – details here!

  

**Elisabeth Bergner, star of Fräulein Else (1929) and a hugely successful actress who moved to the UK in the mid-30s and provided the origin for the story used in All About Eve!

Camill and Fritz Kortner

"They're making a film based in Vienna for a change..." 

Paul Kemp Mopps up...