FAUST and OPIUM from Edition Filmmuseum
Posted: Sat May 15, 2021 8:40 am
If you were quick last year you might have managed to catch these two films on Filmmuseum München's Vimeo channel. Now they are out on DVD from Edition Filmmuseum.
FAUST is the version with the Gerhart Hauptmann intertitles. It had been showcased at the Bonn festival in 2018, when I wrote this about it:
Both films are accompanied by the excellent Richard Siedhoff.
FAUST is the version with the Gerhart Hauptmann intertitles. It had been showcased at the Bonn festival in 2018, when I wrote this about it:
The English subtitles literally translate Hauptmann's words rather that try to imitate the rhyming couplets. The DVD also contains material from the screen tests for the film conducted at Mary Pickford's studios and dating from a time when Mary Pickford was supposed to take on the role of Gretchen. About these I wrote:the Munich Film Museum have put together a version of the film that had originally been planned but never actually released, by inserting the titles written for the film by famous German author Gerhart Hauptmann. These take the form of rhyming couplets in imitation of the Goethe play, but instead of being worthy and reverential they are mostly amusing doggerel. They were originally dropped as the UFA bigwigs feared that audiences would not be able to read and understand them quickly enough. Stefan Drössler had unearthed a letter by some UFA official to Hauptmann, urging him to tailor his titles to the mind of an eight-year-old child, as that was the level of understanding the ordinary cinemagoer could be expected to possess.
About OPIUM I wrote this in another thread:screentests for the role of Mephistopheles for the Lubitsch/Pickford project. These were highly comical, as one candidate seemed to be more inappropriate than the other. What did not help was the fact that the ‘diabolical’ costume selected for the screen tests seemed to consist mainly of a pair of stained and much-mended long underpants and a horse blanket round the shoulders. I guess hell could not provide anything more impressive at short notice.
This DVD also contains nine minutes of fragments of STERBENDE VÖLKER, a two-parter from 1921 starring Paul Wegener, Fritz Kortner and Otto Gebühr.Robert Reinert's OPIUM has been restored for a a presentation at this year's Berlinale film festival. The film was made in 1919 in the brief period when censorship had been abolished in post-war Germany. The restoration, however, is based on later censored versions and so we are missing a few meters of what are probably juicy bits. The image quality is excellent. The film museums in Munich and Düsseldorf and Alpha Omega Productions have done an excellent job as usual.
The story is silly and convoluted. A scientist studies the effects of opium, gets himself addicted and is pursued by a vengeful oriental. We travel around the world, but are very obviously never further than 20 miles from the Brandenburg Gate.
The acting is more expressive than impressive, with Werner Krauss' chinaman competing with Conrad Veidt's adulterous young doctor for first ham and both being outhammed by Friedrich Kühne, whose hand appears to be glued to his forehead in eternal emotional turmoil. Only Hanna Ralph does a good job.
The film is highly sexualized throughout, not just in the the protagonist's opium dreams of scantily clad maidens prancing around some Brandenburg lake. Unfortunately instead of being erotic the film indulges in some homespun voyeurism which only the novelty factor could have made appealing to contemporary audiences. Maenads, fauns and actual goats much in evidence.
It is obviously an expensive production with good camera work and editing and is entertaining enough, but I would recommend it mainly for its curiosity value. And obviously parental guidance is required as there are adult themes throughout.
Both films are accompanied by the excellent Richard Siedhoff.
