Gimme shelter... Zuflucht (Refuge) (1928), with Günter A. Buchwald, Bonn Silent Film Festival

So many vanished back then, never to be seen again…

 

This restoration was one of the highlights of the recent Bonn Festival and whilst it’s a relatively simple tale told very well it’s a reflection of its time in terms of polished late silent technique and the central premise of class loyalties disrupted during the Weimar years ten years after the uproar of war and revolution.

 

Whereas so many German films of this period we shot in studio, Refuge features a host of location shots of Berlin as director Carl Froelich exhibits the realist, "New Objectivity" style, a reaction against the expressionism practiced on the silent stage. It also features perhaps the most popular film star of this period, Henny Porten – star of The Ancient Law, Merchant of Venice (1923), and Lubitsch’s Anna Boleyn (1920) - providing an opportunity to see just why she commanded the affections of so many. This was also a co-production of the actress with Froelich; she chose the role and it shows.

 

This was the World premier of the new digitization from Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum and it looked fantastic even on our screens hundreds of miles away from the festival with the experience being enlivened by accompaniment on piano and violin from the maestro Günter A. Buchwald!

Francis Lederer, he lived long and prospered

We start with passengers unloading from a train repatriating German combatants from the German Revolution of 1918-19 which saw many communist sympathisers flee into exile. These include Martin Falkhagen played by Francis Lederer who was later to feature in Pandora’s Box and live a long life in film and education, stopping work just before he died aged 100! Born in 1899 Lederer lived through until the 21^st Century and also saw action in the Great War for the Austrian-Hungarian Imperial Army. There’s a collection of photographs at his mother’s desk and one includes him in his uniform as she muses over all those lost in the war; a time when the losses were still so keenly felt across Europe.

 

Refuge is all about the War, it’s about loss and injustice and poor people trying to make ends meet in a society with huge inequality. It doesn’t beat the drum in the manner of say Kuhle Wampe but it is presenting a shared experience to an audience fully ware of the circumstances… Martin wants to make ends meet with people he loves and, as we learn, he turns his back on easier options, a man of principle in a country that, sadly, couldn’t always afford them.

 

People didn’t go to the cinema for politics, they went to see actors like Lederer and, especially, Henny Porten, living life as they did and here the film is as political as it needs to be. Germany was broken, what was to be done? Henny and Martin just want to get on with their lives and their love.

Henny Porten's character goes to work

Now, that’s jumping the gun… but yes, Henny meets an exhausted Martin after he has tramped his way to Berlin form the eastern border and slept rough at the allotment. She invites him back to the apartment she shares in a run-down tenement with the Schurich family, father (Max Maximilian), mother (Margarete Kupfer) and flighty daughter Guste (Alice Hechy). Their living space is cluttered and humble, with a bunk also being rented out to a loud-mouthed butcher, Kölling (Carl de Vogt).

 

Later that evening Kölling arrives back drunk gathering himself just enough to insult Martin and Hanne before the younger man falls deeply asleep. He’s still asleep the next day as Mrs Schurich and Hanne go to work in a vegetable stall at the market, the latter having to contend with the butcher’s “banter”… he doesn’t mince his words. Meanwhile Guste is fascinating by this sleeping prince… and flirts with him once he does awaken only for Hanne to rebuff her.

 

Hanne and Martin, well Hanne mostly, fall out with three out of four of the household – only her workmate supports her – and she goes off to another block to stay with her best friend Marie Jankowsky (Lotte Stein) who’s husband is away. Here they enjoy some freedom and begin to fall in love.

 

Mathilde Sussin

Meanwhile, across town, Martin’s background is revealed as his elder brother Otto Falkhagen (Bodo Bronsky) puts an advert in the paper calling for information about his missing brother. If nothing is forthcoming Otto will have him declared dead and therefore no longer able to benefit from the family’s fortune. Naturally mother Else (Mathilde Sussin) holds on to hope but Otto, having fallen out with Martin over the revolution, misses him rather less.

 

Martin gets a job as a manual labourer on the build for the Berlin subway and for a time the two are happy and plan to get married. But we know the lose ends will need to be tied and that a reckoning will need to be had.

 

What I like about this film is the balance of the characters, most of whom have shades of grey even the boorish butcher who shows concern and provides help when needed. The verbal scuffles are exactly as you’d expect from people living in such cramped conditions and, whilst the politics is under played, the crowds of genuine urchins who stare at the rich visitors and their car when Martin’s mother visits one tenement block. These buildings are all too real in comparison to the stage designs of say Murnau’s Last Laugh and the unpaid extras speak for themselves.

 

Simple pleasures for Hanne and Martin

Direct Carl Froelich keeps things at a believable pace whilst his cinematographer, Gustave Preiss works wonders, especially in catching the flight of expression across Porten’s face. She’s no Garbo but she is a great technician and so watchable.

 

The film was a success with Hanns Horkheimer of the Berliner Tageblatt raving: Henny Porten… has grown from a propaganda star to a human actress of such shocking urgency that, as a comparative standard, I would have to name the most sublime names even in spoken theatre…

 

For her alone the film is worth watching but this “small story” is still powerful for the concentrated and commonplace drama it presents. Günter A. Buchwald of course delivers the poignant and perfectly balanced support it needs and it still amazes me how he can do so playing violin and piano both at once!

 

Bravo Günter and danke Bonn again!!

Murder outside the cathedral… Der Bettler vom Kölner Dom (1927), Edition Filmmuseum DVD

It wasn’t just St Pauls that somehow managed to resist the bombing of World War Two, Cologne Cathedral also remained standing despite of the damage wrought by fourteen direct hits from allied bombs and the largely destroyed city beneath its distinctive twin spires. It’s hard to watch this film without thinking of the devastation to come and the changes that would be painfully made across the city; it’s a travelogue of a world about to be destroyed in the most brutal of ways.

 

Rolf Randolf’s film makes much of the locations around the cathedral although most of the action takes place inside city hotels and bars no doubt recreated on sets. The ancient building is the crux of the plot though as befits a structure that took some 600 years to complete; begun in 1248, work was halted in 1560 and not restarted until the 1840s, finally completed to original Medieval plan in 1880 with all potential litigants for project management failures long since passed.

 

Based on Emanuel Alfieri’s play, this detective adventure has more of the feel of a French serial than a Weimar film with fantastical disguises, secret codes, cold-blooded killing and underground crime organisations all with a mix of comical and dramatic detection. More Fantômas than Dr. Mabuse, Der Bettler vom Kölner Dom (The Beggar from Cologne Cathedral) is a fun adventure with many an offbeat as well as the odd jarring moment throughout a slightly uneven story.

600 years behind schedule... but enduring.

It’s a battle of wits between a gang organised by an unnamed man played by Carl de Vogt who co-ordinates his operations standing on the cathedral steps disguised as the beggar, and the great detective, Tom Wilkens played by Henry Stuart. Wilkens is called in to help stop the gang and the game of cat and mouse begins. Disguising himself as the Beggar – following the death of another officer who had done the same – he is rewarded with a message from the gang, in code, which simply welcomes him! The game is afoot… and who is clever enough to survive?

 

Meanwhile, another member of the gang, styling himself as Marquis de Puissac (Robert Scholz), welcomes a young American woman, Mabel Strong (Elza Temary) who he has written to, persuading her that she is his niece: she is either wealthy or just young…  Then, another member of the gang, the vampish Madame Madeleine Tréville (Hanni Weisse) reads of an Indian prince coming to town from Bombay with certain materials of great worth in his suitcase… no one can accuse this gang of not working hard on many fronts. But they are being matched by Wilkens who is, of course, the moneyed Maharaja!

 

Henry Stuart

Wilkens, and his sub-continental disguise, duly arrives just as the city is celebrating the eve of Lent and the streets are already full of merry making as he makes his way to the hotel across form the cathedral. Here he is greeted by two odd private detectives, Napoleon Bonaparte Schmitz (Carl Geppert) and Carolus Caesar Müller (Hermann Blaß) who we are sure, will find those names difficult to live up to.

 

All comes together in the big party in the hotel that evening as the maharaja is very taken with Mabel just as Madeleine tries to impress; they dine with the Marquis making Mabel the only person she says she is, so far as we know at this stage… Napoleon and Caesar are knocked out with drugged drink proffered by gang member and part-time chauffeur Steffens (Fritz Kampers) and, of course, the Indian riches are stolen only for Wilkens/Maharaja to reveal that there’s a trigger device which will explode if anyone tries to open the box. Panicked Madeleine makes her excuse and heads off to warn the gang… giving herself away to the eagle-eyed sleuth.

 

Elza Temary and Robert Scholz

As the gang tries to work out how to open the box and keep their heads, Madeleine and the Marquis’ evil plan for Mabel is revealed as their forged life insurance papers are to be used to reap rich reward when she is to be killed en route to Paris leaving an ‘andsome inheritance for her “uncle” … and the rest of the gang.

 

But there’s still time for plenty of twists and turns, betrayals, ill-advised notes, hopes and new alliances as the story meanders wistfully towards its rather odd ending and one of the most unusual chase scenes you’ll see as well as vehicular gadgetry that would leave Q scratching his head.

 

As Wilkens says to the baddies in a taunting and, surprisingly not anachronistic note: Ohne fleiss kein preis… (No pain, no gain…) and in truth there’s a lot of the latter and only a smidgen of the former in the pacing of the tale.

Hanni Weisse

Willy Hameister’s cinematography captures the city very well especially when he sets up on one of the cars, whilst the performers give it their best shot with Stuart excelling as the man who knows far too much and de Vogt brooding with a sadistic menace.

 

The digitally restored version on the Edition Filmmuseum two DVD set looks smashing and comes with two alternative soundtracks: a new orchestral score by Pierre Oser, produced and performed by the WDR-Rundfunkorchester, and a live improvisation by the great Günter A. Buchwald (piano and violin, played sometimes at the same time) recorded at the International Bonn Silent Film Festival 2010. There is a 16-page trilingual booklet as well as plentiful shorts, commercials, and newsreel reports about Cologne from the silent era with Stephen Horne mostly providing accompaniment.

 

You can order direct from the Filmmuseum and, whilst Brexit has made delivery slightly more expensive, it’s still well worth supporting the service and the remarkable films they make available.

The face that launched a thousand takes… Helen and the Fall of Troy (1924), Edition Filmmuseum DVD

“As a spectacle carrying the imprint of truth and realism it would make DW Griffith sit up and consider his laurels, while the acting has never been bettered from the … leads to the tiniest small part.” Variety, 1925

Turns out a poem paints some 219 minutes on celluloid. Director Manfred Noa’s epic was released a few months before Fritz Lang’s 288-minute Die Nibelungen and yet is little remembered a century on. This is no doubt due to its being largely absent from archives until the discovery of an almost complete copy in Lausanne, Switzerland enabled this 1999 restoration including materials from archives in Rome, Madrid and Moscow. The film was a box office hit but nearly bankrupted Noa’s studio, Bavaria Film based in Munich a financial world away from UFA which was founded two years before in 1917. The company still makes films – unlike UFA – but many of its earliest efforts are lost, including Hitchcock’s The Mountain Eagle – and this film, along with Noa’s equally epic, Nathan der Wiese (1922), are two of the few survivors.

There are many beautiful shots, a cast of thousands, stunning battles scenes and a dirty great big wooden horse and yet the film kept on reminding me of the Italian epic style from ten years earlier; lots of almost static tableaux, albeit on an epic scale and with some fine montages and in-camera trickery, yet without the fluidity of Lang or other contemporaries. That said, this is an engaging film and one that pays due diligence to Homer’s source poem as adapted by Hans Kyser. The acting is perfectly attuned too as Variety noted, and is stylised to a consistent degree with the contemporary view of this ancient myth with its prefiguring of Teutonic gothic – these are people driven by ancient laws and codes of honour… and look where that gets you?

A gift from the Greeks

The film is split into to two parts Der Raub Der Helena (The Abduction/Rape of Helen) and Der Untergang Trojas (The Ruin of Troy) and scrupulously follows the twists and turns of Homer’s poem.

The holy dove of Aphrodite brings you the crown of myrtle… Oh Queen, you are the chosen one for the Festival of Adonis.

It starts off, as so many things do, on the island of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, as Adonis, god of spring, releases a dove to find the most beautiful woman in all of Greece. With all good intention, the clever bird flies to Sparta and the Island of Menelaus, the King of the Greeks, to gift the crown to Helen, his wife here played by the Italian actress, Edy Darclea, strong featured with roman nose and statuesque form. Helen is faithful to her husband and King (Friedrich Ulmer) but he’s too proud of her and wants the World to acclaim her beauty at the Festival of Aphrodite. The tale of Mr and Mrs Menelaus is the story’s beginning and end and I once saw a really visceral performance of Euripides’ play Helen at the Globe Theatre with Penny Downie as Helen and Liverpool’s Paul McGann as a battle-weary Menelaus trying to understand and reconcile with his wife after all that is still to come in Noa’s film… which, clearly, I should have watched first.

Edy Darclea and Friedrich Ulmer

Meanwhile, over on Troy, King Priam (Albert Steinrück) also seeks favours of the gods, nervously asking for guidance from the Oracle before allowing his city to celebrate the spring. High up in the hills sits a lonely goatherd  shepherd playing two flutes at the same time as he simultaneously invents prog-jazz and glam rock with a look best described as Marc Bolan meets Jethro Tull via Siouxsie Sioux’s hairdresser. It is Paris (Russian actor/exile, Vladimir Gajdarov later to feature in Michel Strogoff in 1926), who is no mere farm boy but the youngest son of Priam brought up in ignorance of his royal blood.

Things get seriously psychedelic as Paris is visited in a dream by the god Hermes who gives him a golden apple to award to the most beautiful of the three goddesses he is about to see in visions; Here “goddess of goddesses”, Athena “goddess of wisdom” and Aphrodite, “goddess of love” who offers him the love of the most beautiful woman on Earth… naturally, he gives the apple to contestant number three and our course is set: love over wisdom and glory. He resolves to journey to the festival in Troy where he will sacrifice his finest bull in tribute to Aphrodite, as, indeed, you would.

He'll toot his flute for you Helen... Vladimir Gajdarov

Meanwhile Other Gods deliver a spoiler/warning to King Menelaus, saying that if he loses the love of his Queen, all of Greece will spend years fighting to get her back. I can snark away but these tales were a way of people understanding why things happened and what caused misfortune and, whilst the gods may well have offered choices it is always Man’s folly of interpretation and judgement that leads to tragedy. In this respect, absolutely nothing has changed in terms of our need to ascribe the twists and turns of life to external forces… there almost certainly was a war involving Greece and a city like Troy – sometime between 1260 to 1180 BC, and by the time of Homer – himself a bit of a legend, either a single author or many hands - around the late eighth or early seventh century BC, these events had passed into myth and fable.

High quality visions from Manfred Noa

Back in 1924, Noa injects huge spectacle into his narrative with thousands of extras taking part of the Festival of Spring on a huge set, lavish enough to rival those of Griffith and DeMille. Paris arrives pulling his sacrificial bull only for Hera to send a cyclone to Troy outraged at having been passed over for Aphrodite… Troy’s protector, Athena, demands that Priam sends his son Hector (Carl de Vogt) to sail beyond the sea to Hera’s sanctuary yet they decide on Paris instead, angering Athena and forcing the put-upon Oracle, Aisakos (Albert Bassermann) to forecast the very worst for the King and his dynasty. More spoilers…

Meanwhile Helen, after having been afforded a glimpse of Paris from her own Oracle, heads to the Feast of Adonis on the island of Cythera where there’s even greater spectacle with a chariot race of similar scale to the following year’s Ben Hur. Here we find Achilles in the muscular form of Carlo Aldini, eventually contesting for the chance to be awarded the winners wreath by the beauteous Helen. It’s a superb set piece with camera’s mounted on chariots in a purpose-built arena around which stunt men and many horses pull round the tightest of bends. Achilles wins but the men fight over Helen but eventually agree to stand together to defend her and the honour of Greece.

Achilles pushing Menelaus hard on the outside lane...

Now that promise is going to be important as Helen, after a gratuitous bath scene, is escorted from a distraught Menelaus by Achille’s and sets off to the Island of Adonis, where she will meet the god of desire and gym clubs, who’s statue looks exactly the same as Helen’s dream man. Following shortly afterwards is Paris, who, under Aphrodite’s protection, has survived the worst that Poseidon can throw at his ship, arriving at the island just in time to meet his promised love. The two share a night of highly consensual shame, but what else can they do with the gods conspiring along with two Kings whose pride is coming well before a fall.

The island of Adonis

Anyway, Paris smuggles Helen back to Troy and he finally learns the truth of his royal heritage as he meets his brother Hector. The two witness Helen calming two lions – take that Gloria “One Lion” Swanson - clearly the Aphrodite is keen on this gal.

Kneel and kiss her robes, this woman has been granted wondrous powers!

Troy rejoices at the new arrival and King Priam believes that she has released him from the curse of the gods… and he throws Aisakos into the deepest dungeon when he begs to differ, the oracle suggesting that she will bring only death and destruction. Helen decides to stay with her new love and people after King Menelaus arrives with Agamemnon, King of the Greeks, and their troops. This leads to battle and finally Paris leads Troy to victory, the former shepherd showing a perhaps surprising level of strategic prowess and combat technique. He has won a battle but the war is only just beginning…

Paris inspired!

Part Two tells the story of the ensuing long siege of Troy as the Greeks throw everything they have at Helen’s new protectors. Within the walls, Prince Hector finds himself drawn to Helen who in her turn, reciprocates as things turn slightly sour with an increasingly disaffected and unheroic Paris. Without, Achilles and his extraordinary temper, prevent him from getting involved until his dear friend Patroclus is killed by Hector which drives him into a super heroic fury. It’s interesting how the film portrays the two men’s relationship – a very deep friendship which can easily be interpreted as a sexual one.

But even Achilles cannot swing the war on his own and some cunning is going to be required to break the deadlock. Cue the Horse!

Achilles and Menelaus allied

The film is one to relax into and retains many of the over-elaborations of the source mythology p- those gods just move in mysterious and contradictory ways. The characters are also full of conflicting emotion and this is interesting in itself, Paris doesn’t really have the heroic story arc we expect and Helen does not find him to be her one true love, returning at the end to Menelaus. The King of Sparta learns humility perhaps for letting his Queen enter the beauty pageant on Cythera whilst King Priam learns that you can’t beat fate; naturally the eventual defeat of Troy had to have a ret-conned celestial explanation.

The hyper emotionalised tale of various loves and passions would have been a natural fit for a Germany in need of understanding its own fall and also in need of vicarious shows of sexuality, love and glory. Helen’s a winner in any age in that respect.

Paris and Helen share a moment not of love but of shame?

Manfred Noa’s direction is highly competent if not original and his sense of scale is still amazing aided by his two cameramen, Ewald Daub and Gustave Preiss. It looks grand and at the end you almost feel like you’ve lived that long war with these eternal characters and you really hope that Helen and her Menelaus will head into a quieter life… for that seek out Euripides’ play.

I watched the Edition Filmmuseum double DVD set which is available direct from their site.

 Bonus eye candy!