Knives Out… Sensation im Wintergarten (1929), Bonn Silent Film Festival 2025 streaming, with Günter Buchwald and Frank Bockius

We have only the crème de la crème…(at the Wintergarden)

 

As a child during our regular family trips up the Lancashire coast I would be terrified as we watched the daring young men and women on the flying trapeze in the Blackpool Tower Circus as they swung high above our heads with no safety net, only flesh, bone and sinew away from a fall to their death. I knew they probably wouldn’t fall but my heart was always in my mouth as I watched them take their chances and it was always a relief once they had finished.

 

Now none of these acrobats enlivened the jeopardy by fixing long swords to the floor and then to a hoop through which they would fly at the end of their routine but in Their Son aka Sensation im Wintergarten, this is exactly what the great “Frattani” does and it is not just his sweetheart who hopes he will keep on swinging rather than being sliced and diced in his shiny silk costume… it’s also exactly the kind of device an ill-wisher might use to finish the man off. It’s the most gruesome variant of Chekhov's gun principle, if you see it in Act IV it will, probably, “go off” by Act VII… Chekhov's water torture more like.

 

Looks easy doesn't it?

After the trapeze artists my relief was always short-lived for then we had the always sinister clowns, led by the legendary but scary Charlie Cairoli. Laugh? I could have cried. It’s safe to say that there was no danger of my running off to join the circus but this is exactly what young Count Paul Mensdorf does in this picture, escaping from his disciplinarian stepfather Baron von Mallock (Gaston Jacquet looking just as shifty as he would with Louise Brooks in Prix de beauté (1930), weasel eyes and untrusting moustache…). Mallock has somehow worked his way into the affections of Paul’s mother Gräfin (Erna Morena) and, having secured his meal-ticket treats her son with cruel disdain.

 

Paul (Alphons Schünemann at this point), runs away and comes across a circus and, watching through a break in the tarpaulin is captivated by what he sees. He’s spotted by a friendly clown Barry (a very good Vladimir Sokoloff, a Russian emigree who would soon depart for Hollywood) and pulled into the new family of acrobats and jugglers. He meets one of the young stars, the horse-rider Madeleine (Alexandra Nalder) and the two form an instant friendship.

 

Vladimir Sokoloff and Claire Rommer "enjoy" the show...

The film actually starts with Paul (Paul Richter) now a world-famous trapeze artist under the name of Frattani as he travels across to Europe on an ocean liner from New York. He’s spotted by a group of young women as he trains and we see a newspaper revealing that this “King of the Air” is coming to perform in Europe for the first time. There’s some good business with cinematographer Mutz Greenbaum’s camera following Paul as he swings back and forth finally puling the curtains on his admirers before focusing on the muscular form (had Herr Richter not fought dragons in Die Nibelungen?) and a thoughtful fade back to his childhood and the split from his mother who now believes him long dead.

 

In Berlin there are wonderful street scenes as the camera follows traffic through the Brandenburg Gates and along Friedrichstraße to the Wintergarden wherein are promised “Internationales Varieté”. The stage sequences were filmed in the Wintergarden and its huge auditorium allows director Gennaro Righelli to pull the camera too and from the performance area and across the audience adding so much atmosphere to the proceedings especially when using a multitude of local talent, dancers, high-wire artists, acrobats and chorus girls. The venue was destroyed during the war but rose again in Potsdamer Straße*.

I wish I knew who the Dodge Twins were?

Back in 1929, Paul is reunited with Madeleine (now grown up as Claire Rommer) who is queuing with dozens of other hopefuls at an audition for a chorus girl. She has fallen on hard times and yet not even Paul's status is enough to persuade the hard-nosed Varietédirektor (Adolphe Engers) to give her a chance. But the King of the Air is nothing if not determined and he manages to wangle her a shot as “Mademoiselle Madeleine, the famous dancer from the Folies Bergère” and, after instructing the orchestra to play the Eccentric Charleston knowing she can and does ace it, whetting the whistle not only of the salacious director but also of Baron von Mallock who has already made his entrance and sexually harassed half the usherettes before even making it to his seat.

 

The Baron has only gotten worse over the intervening years and is fleecing Paul’s mother as he spends his time gambling and cavorting with other women and he immediately sets his sights on Madeleine and her long legs. The sequence is so well handled with the camera pulling away over the audience as Madeleine dances across the stage giving a real impression of the space and also the atmosphere as the sub-plots line up with cuts to the Baron, the manager, Paul and Barry cheering on the jazz.

Gaston Jacquet and Erna Morena

Then we get the build up to Paul’s turn as Clown Barry sets up the deadly basis for his act, only a clown could show how sharp the swords are and only a laughable figure could reinforce the morbid possibilities of this shiny steel… the slightest slip and the acrobat is guaranteed a bloody end. Richter appears to be doing some of the work himself including balancing on his head on his trapeze but the trickier work must have been a stunt man? It’s edited well though and you can almost feel the audience as uneasy as I was as a child in Blackpool.

 

Paul is on top of his game but having found his love with Madeleine he starts to worry about his ability to perform, he now has something to live for and danger loses it’s thrill. Meanwhile the Baron won’t play fair with anyone and once he realises who Frattani is, there can only be one or two outcomes, especially when Paul’s mother also finds out. I can guarantee a stressful denouement.

 

Talking of magnificent men performing the seemingly impossible, I give you Günter Buchwald and Frank Bockius whose accompaniment was recorded live at the Bonn screening and reproduced for this streaming. The two are so familiar with each other they always play in sympathy with the action on film and the circus atmosphere would not be the same without Herr Bockius triplets and paradiddles whilst I still do not know how Herr Buchwald manages to seemingly play both violin and piano at the same time. Epic work gentlemen and next year, I promise, I will be in Bonn to see how this all works in person!

 

This was the premier of a new digital restoration from 2024-25 which built on earlier filmic materials combining a vintage positive print from the Swedish Film Institute with the DFF’s nitrate materials to create a version missing only a few sections which are covered by new title cards. It’s pretty complete, minus the third act, and whilst not exceptional is a very entertaining snapshot of German theatrical culture as well as film culture at this time.

 

This is as close as we’ll ever get to a night out at the Wintergardens!

Man on a wire... the documentary element gives the film more grounding

* The Wintergardens were – probably – the first theatre to screen films using the Bioscop projector in 1895 when its inventors the Skladanowsky brothers put on a show. This was, of course, a year after the Blackpool Tower Circus began its uninterrupted 130 years run. It all connects!

 

There is more about the venue and it’s destruction by Allied bombs in the Second World War here: https://www.berlinluftterror.com/blog/wintergarten-kabarett

 

Last word to Lotte Eisner writing at the time and quoted on the Bonn website…

 

Claire Rommer is allowed to show two sides of her talent, to be a charmingly quiet creature and suddenly transform into a spirited, eccentric dancer. This truly gives her the element of surprise that the film's narrative envisions. Her beautiful body wrapped in a glittering leotard, she dances a baker's dance, lithe and full of verve.

Lotte H. Eisner, Film-Kurier, No. 212, September 6, 1929

 

 

 

Game of thrones… Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924), with Costas Fotopoulos, Kennington Bioscope

 

First Bioscope of the year and it’s an epic evening for one of the cornerstones of Weimar Cinema, one in fact that I’ve been saving up for just such an occasion and, judging from a non-too scientific sampling of the audience, I’m not the only one with the DVD/Blu-ray at home on the shelf, waiting to be watched after a proper screening and the Bioscope made sure that this was indeed a special screening.

 

A 16mm print was shown tonight, slightly shorter the restoration on which our home media is  based but still very impressive, astonishing even given the scale and verve of the film making. Regular KB, MC, Michelle Facey gave her usual high-content introduction, providing the background on director and cinematic visionary Fritz Land and his script-writing partner Thea von Harbou, as well as explaining the film’s link to early 13^th Century Saxon epic poetry, Der Nibelungenlied, written in High Middle German and by unknown hands in Passau in what is now southern Bavaria.  This tale was itself based on oral traditions dating back centuries and mentioning historic events and individuals of the 5th and 6th centuries.

 

There are similar stories across German speaking Europe and up to Scandinavia and, there are some similarities with later Middle English stories such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or Le Mort d’Arthur, they are all epics in which it is how the characters live as much as if they die: chivalric romances with logic and outcomes based on magical and religious certainties. The link as a noted medievalist pointed out, may well be the French writer Chrétien de Troyes, who, writing in the late 12^th  Century, told tales of Arthurian legend; setting up a style and subject matter that led to the Extended Chivalric Universe, spreading across borders and language.

Paul Richter provides some scale

Der Nibelungenlied is altogether fuller of dungeons and dragons than usually found in Arthur, it is peculiarly Germanic and this appealed especially to Lang and von Harbou who were looking to take their countrymen out of themselves by presenting a folk-fantasy many would recognise on a grand scale, something even the Americans would struggle to better. There’s no getting over the links between the story and German identity though with elements not only quoted after German reunification in the 1870s, but forming the basis for Wagner’s Ring Cycle, a celebration of the loyalties rather than the more courtly aspects. After the First World War – and Lang’s film – it’s even possible to see Siegfried as literally representing the betrayal of German interests, “the stab in the back”, seen by many at home after surrender in 1918. Politics and culture pick and choose each other in odd ways, for more on this see von Harbou’s output in Germany after 1933…

 

No doubt the primary purpose in 1924 was to deliver rousing entertainment every bit as stirring as Arthurian legends, swords and sorcery. This is something of a superhero epic with a hero who, having bathed in dragon blood, is almost invulnerable. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine two young friends, sons of recently migrated European Jews, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, both ten on this film’s release, perhaps seeing it in the USA and getting a few ideas. The Italians had their own strong man, Maciste, the German Übermensch went back a bit further.

 

The film is huge in scale and features many tropes that are now staples of the explosion in fantasy films, although Lang’s vision is decades before Tolkien or CS Lewis set their templates, let alone Game of Thrones, House of Dragons and all the rest. Like modern blockbusters, Lang’s film was also in two parts and tonight’s screening was only of the first part, still some two hours even on 16mm and well over half an hour longer on the reconstruction found on the Eureka Blu-ray.

 

Siegfried holds aloft his sword

It tells the tale of Siegfried (Paul Richter), son of King Siegmund of Xanten, who becomes an expert swordsmith, fashioning the perfect blade which the artful blacksmith, Mime (Georg John) tests by dropping a feather onto the edge and slicing it in two. Siegfried is a genetically lucky blonde, yes, an Aryan, who attains success through bravery, guile and killing the right dragon. After the sword is struck he leaves on his white charger (possibly called Tonto or Comet the Superhorse) after hearing about the kings of Burgundy who reign at a mighty castle at Worms on the Rhine, where the beauteous Princess Kriemhild (Margarete Schön) awaits just such a knight as he.

 

I shall set out for that place so that I may win Kriemhild!

 

Mime tells our hero how to find Worm but he sends him to almost certain doom as there is a dragon blocking his way. Siegfried is of course fearless and wily and outthinks the, actual fire-breathing creature, who looks a little sad as he’s blinded and then fatally stabbed by the knight’s blade. This blood has magical qualities and a little bird, literally, tells him that if he bathes in it, he will become impervious harm which leads to some  long-distance nudity as Siegfried takes the bath of invulnerability. One last twitch of the dragon’s tail though and a leaf lands on his shoulder meaning that he has one area of weak human flesh… every superhero needs their kryptonite or Achille’s Heel.

 

He also gains additional super powers and wealth after being attacked by Alberich, King of the Dwarves (Georg John, again) who wears a net of invisibility but is soon overwhelmed and forced to promise Siegfried his fortune, the treasure of the Nibelungs, if he will spare him. Naturally Alberich double-crosses but fails and as he dies curses all in his subterranean kingdom to be turned to stone. Siegfried heads off and goes from strength to strength soon conquering 12 kingdoms and presenting a suitably heroic prospect to the Burgundians. 

Margarete Schön

In her introduction, Michelle referred us to Lotte H Eisner’s Haunted Screen¹ for an analysis of the film’s incredible design and mix of the usual expressionist/UFA studio work with stunning location shots; all perfectly controlled by Lang and his team led by art director Otto Hunte. Eisner quotes early film critic Béla Balázs in saying that “the soul of a landscape or milieu did not always present itself in the same way” and so it was up to the director to “seek the eyes of the landscape…” Nature had to be “stylised” for film to become a work of art (Rudolph Kurtz²) and plain nature was not enough in itself to “make man’s destiny understood” and Stimmungsbilder, “mood pictures” had to be used.

 

Lang certainly took control of his landscape and it is very much a major character in this film, reflecting and setting the moods of the characters and the narrative. The studio constructs are huge dynamic depictions of nature; rocky outcrops, dense pine woods and treacherous pathways whilst the building of Worm are massive in scale both for the interiors and exteriors, with huge stairways dwarfing the players, who move across them, black or white, like pieces on a chess board.

 

Talking of which, Lang also micromanages the way his human resource was aligned and where exactly they where in the frame. There are so many examples of this that I was tempted just to leave 150 screen shots in place of all these words. The opening sequence is almost balletic, as Siegfried hammers out his sward and Mint recoils in horror as he sees how powerful he has become and then, when we first see the imposing King’s Castle, the guard are spaced out symmetrically as the nobles walk past, as if the audience, commoners all, are held at a distance. We quickly switch to the interiors and the almost sterile atmosphere.

 

Order in the castle

All this will change when Siegfried strikes a deal with King Gunther of Burgund (Theodor Loos) to help him gain the hand of the fearsome Queen Brunhild of Isenland (Hanna Ralph who is great value!) in exchange for allowing his new friend to give him his sister Kriemhild’s hand in marriage. They head off to Brunhild’s realm and Siegfried uses his net of invisibility to make sure that the puny King Gunther wins the three trials of strength he needs against the woman he wants to marry. Brunhild is down but not quite out and, whilst she has to accede, she suspects something is wrong.

 

All is now set for some court intrigue in Burgundy and, as with other characters who break the code of chivalry, there is always a price to pay and an uneasy peace will not last for long at the King’s castle.

 

It’s hard to think of many films with this kind of scale in 1924, and the direction as well as cinematography are first rate with cameraman Carl Hoffmann, Günther Rittau, and Walter Ruttmann as good if not better than almost anyone in Hollywood. Paul Gerd Guderian’s costumes also match the set designs and there’s a striking mix of strong modern design with traditional folk stylings. Everything is larger than life from the hairy hobbits working in the smithery to the dwarfs and the brown back coiffeurs of Siegfried and Brunhild. There’s also a moody turn from the King of Burgundy’s general, Hagen of Tronje (Hans Adalbert Schlettow), eye patch over one eye and huge black wings attached to his armoured helmet.

Hanna Ralph is not to be messed with

It's operatic, and fantastic with an emotional sweep designed to sweep the audience away. To this end, Costas Fotopoulos’ tirelessly inventive accompaniment also played its part, never flagging during the epic mood and melded to Lang’s vision as everything else. It contributed mightily to the unfolding ultra-drama with lines and themes as intriguingly structured as the architecture and design on screen.

 

Die Nibelungen was premiered in the at the Royal Albert Hall in London, where it played for 40 performances between 29 April and 20 June 1924. A hit and an influence on film for all eternity. It was certainly a hit tonight and here’s to the second part when it can be arranged… no spoilers but it’s called: Die Nibelungen: Kriemhilds Rache (Kriemhild's Revenge).

1.       The Haunted Screen, Lotte H Eisner, first published in 1952 and updated with translation and new material for Thames and Hudson in 1969.

2.       Rudolf Kurtz’s Expressionismus und Film, published in 1926, was one of the first, if not the first, art historical treatises to examine film as an equal of the other arts.

 

Fever dreams… The Indian Tomb (1921), Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-ray

I want this tomb to be built by a man from whose hands the stones receive a soul.

 

Fritz Lang later described Thea von Harbou’s novel on which this two-part epic was based as a fever dream and those were exactly my thoughts after spending the last few days emersed in Joe May’s visuals and the hypnotic new score from Irena and Vojtěch Havel. It’s 243 minutes of high-quality atmospherics, drenched in bass desire and the magic ethereality of the imagined sub-continent, all recreated on a grand scale in Woltersdorf, a lake land and forested area not far from Berlin.

On the centenary of its opening Eureka are releasing a 2k digital transfer on Blu-ray as part of the Masters of Cinema series and it fully warrants the treatment. Lang co-scripted with von Harbou and expected to direct only for May to tell him, truthfully or not, that he couldn’t get the financial backing for a directorial novice. Lang would later return to the story for two films in the late fifties showing this was an itch he had to scratch near the end of his career. Budget-busting exotica may have been in vogue, when funding was available, but it’s very interesting to hear comments from film preservation student Sreya Chatterjee who, whilst noting that the film draws from a variety of Indian cultures, Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist, sees it as an objective and non-judgemental creation with “respect and fascination” for its subject.

Mr Veidt

Indeed, the depth of characterisation of the “Indians”, including Conrad Veidt’s tour de force portrayal of the conflicted Ayan III, the Maharajah of Bengal, offsets charges of “orientalism”, especially as the whole story is based on love, loss and betrayal not one-dimensional autocracy. It’s also a commentary on British colonialism, certainly a feature of von Harbou’s writing in general, and here the cause of the broken hearts that drive the narrative. It’s even suggested in the excellent video essay from David Cairns and Fiona Watson, that part of the reasons the British kept the writer interned for three months after the second world war, was because of her critique of the Empire. That’s a Nazi party member calling the kettle pot black but these things are complicated… just ask Mr Lang.

Back in 1920, Germany had just lost a ruinous conflict with the British and the film was more escapism for a cash-strapped population who wanted to travel virtually away from their troubles. May’s India was a mix of huge sets of which DeMille would have been proud and the mountains of southern Germany which may or may not have seen the first cinematic use of the wooden rope bridges so beloved of adventure serials from Indiana Jones to Jumanji.

There are still a few properties in Woltersdorf adorned with the remnants off these giant sets

May’s direction is big on grandeur if less on camera mobility but he makes the most of his luminous stars with my hard drive now heavy with screen grabs of close-up Connie emoting. Having seen so much recently of Asta Nielsen’s perfection of the art of screen acting intensity, here we have the next stage of that evolution with a quite incredible range of explosive expression, blood pumping through engorged veins as his heart bursts with anger and utter despair, he’s a stressful watch. Conrad runs the range from unknowingly imperious to devastated wreck always hinting at that vulnerability even when at his most commanding.

The first part is the Mission of the Yogi and here we learn of the maharajah’s plan to recruit a leading German architect, Herbert Rowland (Olaf Fønss) using the mysterious powers of Ramigani 'Rami', the Yogi (Bernhard Goetzke) a fanciful mix of Indian spirituality and a “genie” straight out of the pages of the Arabian Nights. Rami can astrally project, control peoples’ minds and cure the seemingly incurable. Goetzke’s is another remarkable performance with his impassive granite-featured majesty somehow making you convinced of his mystical capabilities.

If you want to obey the command of my lord… you must do so within the hour. But no one must know of your departure, including your bride.

Olaf Fønss and Bernhard Goetzke

The Maharajah wants Rowland to build a huge temple to house his beloved, Princess Savitri (Erna Morena) in a manner echoing the Taj Mahal, built in 1632 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Rowland is shown earlier in the film marvelling at a drawing of the Taj, telling his fiancé, Irene ((Joe May’s wife, Mia, a theatre actor and singer, turned film star under his guidance), how he would love to build something so beautiful. Initially reluctant, the architect agrees to travel out to India with the Yogi under a cloak of secrecy.

 

Irene, however, is a woman to be reckoned with – as are all the female leads – and, despite the Yogi having telekinetically removed Rowland’s illicit note to her, she decides that something is amiss in Rowland’s departure and follows the trial to the coast and from there way out east.

 

Up here, nearer to heaven than earth, I shall raise up the mighty building.

 

Conrad Veidt and Mia May

Arrived in Bengal, Rowland finally meets his new employer who shows him round hid opulent palace, introducing him to his pet tigers and then taking him to the Valley of Sorrow, high up in eth mountains. It is here that he reveals that the person whom the tomb will commemorate, is very much alive… collapsing in grief to the rocks the Maharajah tells Rowland that, you shall not build a tomb for the dead or the living… but for the great love I have squandered, like a god or a fool.

 

It is very much as if destiny has already set these tragic events in stone… a frequent concern of Lang’s work. He even made a film about it with Bernhard Goetzke again uncanny.

 

The players are revealed as the story of Princess Savitri’s love affair with British officer, Mac Allan (Paul Richter) is revealed to Rowland by her faithful maid servant Mirrjha (Lya De Putti) who appeals to him and Irene separately, to save the Englishman from a trap set by the Maharajah. It’s hard not to see the disruption caused by Mac Allan as a reflection of colonial ambition and it’s a classic betrayal that drives the all-powerful Maharajah to punish those who have betrayed him. He’s not going to gain any satisfaction and as the Yogi, the epitome of Indian spirituality, warns, his plans are unconscionable.

 

Paul Richter and Erna Morena

Meanwhile, as Irene walks through the palace’s beautiful gardens and Rowland learns the full story, Mac Allan is ambushed on a tiger hunt by the Maharajah’s henchmen. The officer is an all-action superhero, fighting off dozens with gun and fists before escaping on his horse… all the ingenuity and ferocity that built our Empire and forced the German surrender in 1918. Is he a good guy in the film? He’s as nuanced as the Maharajah in that respect, not everyone in Europe would be rooting for the Brit…

 

Part two, The Tiger of Eschnapur, deals with the coming together of all the players as the action hots up and the full extent of von Harbou and Lang’s vision becomes clear. You don’t want any more of my summary, you need to buy this disc and relax into this moral adventure on a stormy weekend afternoon with a full pot of Darjeeling followed by liberal amounts of schnaps… the later to aid recovery after the tumultuous final segments.

Lya De Outtie and Erna Morena

The release comes with a fulsome collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Philip Kemp along with that superb video essay by David Cairns and Fiona Watson. It is presented in 1080p HD, from 2K restorations undertaken by the Murnau foundation and does this major film due services.

It’s released on Monday 21^st February and you can order direct from Eureka who very kindly send me review copies. No silent home should be without it!

 

Connie improvises with a curious elephant. Master!