The Way to Strength and Beauty (1925)

[spadeneal]

This is on allmovie:

The titles, which seem at times to be mocking the entire endeavor, snootily disdain the necessity of "confining" clothes while celebrating the therapeutic values of au naturel outdoor activities. In supposed Greco-Roman tradition, the healthy on-screen males and females, young and old alike, strike various "classical" poses, naked as jaybirds. No one was really fooled by the "instructional' pretensions of The Way to Strength and Beauty; most of the patrons showed up to catch a peek at what Walter Winchell used to call "feelthy peectures."

This was written by a colleague who is also on this list. I am not seeking to sow bad feelings here, but I note that David Robinson's summary of the film for its 2007 Pordenone screening makes no mention of snarky English subtitles. Neither does Gwnplaine McIntyre, who wrote it up for imdb claiming to have seen the film at Pordenone, though he adds:

'The Way to Strength and Health: a film of modern body culture' is very much an artefact of the Naturist fad that swept Germany at this time. It was part of the same trend which helped the Nazis come to power, with their obsession for racial and physical purity and the beauty of the German countryside. This isn't a Nazi movie, but it comes directly out of the same school of thought which facilitated the rise of Nazism.[...]I couldn't help wondering how much of this movie's original success was down to sexual prurience and voyeurism rather than a sincere interest in health and fitness.

Both of these descriptions seem to me very subjective; what I would have liked was something that addressed itself more to the overall structure and organization of this long documentary which I cannot see, listed at 100m. Can anyone at least confirm that the titles "seem at times to be mocking the entire endeavor"? I understand that the only surviving complete print was an English version made for American distribution.

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[Penfold]

I certainly don't recall the intertitles being overtly mocking; it may have just seemed like that to that reviewer, as some intertitles can seem amusing through their driness, seen at the distance of 80 years, giving a film an unintentionally humourous air.
I don't recall much about the structure, either; dimly I think it was episodic, theme by theme, item by item. I'm fairly sure I didn't stay the course; it wasn't thrilling either as a document of the era, as a piece of cinema, or indeed, titillation. And as anyone who has met me will verify, I'm not an adherent to bodyfascism, so.....sorry I can't be more helpful.

Lokke, were you there in 2007 ??

[spadeneal]

On German Wikipedia I did find a description of the film's structure as divided into five parts:

* First part: The ancient Greeks and the recent time
* Second part: Body training around the health sake. Hygenic gymnastic
* Third part
* Fourth part: The dance
* Fifth part: Sport

However, the filmportal.de describes it as being in six "acts," though I take that to mean the number of reels. Six reels, though, sounds a little short for a film that runs 100 minutes; Allmovie describes it as 7 reels. The Pordenone site sets projection speed at 22 fps.

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[urbanora]

I don't have any particular memory of the film for Pordenone, except that is was an efficient propaganda piece about healthy living - my brief review at the time recalls that the film had "the festival-goers squirming in their seats as its theme of the need for us to get up off our backsides and start walking seemed all too relevant." The review also notes that the film was a bit long and repetitive, but that it was "made with mocking wit and some style". That's not the same as mocking their entire endeavour. The film was quite sincere about what it wanted to do - but you can be sincere and show a little dry wit at the same time.

[Einar the Lonely]

Can anyone at least confirm that the titles "seem at times to be mocking the entire endeavor"? I understand that the only surviving complete print was an English version made for American distribution.

No there are no mocking titles, just some that seem a bit overblown and unintentionally funny today. Nudity disguised as "high culture" or what the producers thought it was. But the film was not really made for exploitation even though it might appear so today. I find it quite entertaining and pleasant to watch though, not only from a historical p.o.v.

Naturism/Nudism was quite in fashion in Germany the 1920s, always in connection with the several rivaling "Lebensreform" movements, some of which dated back until the 1890s. "Reforms" involved nutrition, clothing, education, sexual morals, "back to the roots" lifestyle outside the city, growing your own food and such... even the first hippies appeared with long hair (watch out, Herr Graf Ferdinand von Galitzien ), spacious clothes, and weird paganistic and "völkisch" ideologies. It was a very interesting period, imo rivaled only by the Sixties counterculture in the US.

Sometimes I stumbled upon little booklets on flea markets with naked people in athletic or sun-worshipping or yoga-style poses printed in the 1920s, some male-female mixed, some all-male, some even with only naked children, always with comments that over-emphasize that this has NOTHING to do with the lewd, decadent eroticism of the cities... in fact that it has of course NOTHING to do with eroticism at all! These kind were printed long after 1933, I have an entire booklet with gorgeous naked women shot at the beach of Sylt in Riefenstahl-style as late as 1938.

[Einar the Lonely]

Here is an interesting article about "Lebensreform" as a predecessor of the Hippy-Movement. It is within this context the ideological background of WAYS TO STRENGTH AND BEAUTY can be best understood...

http://www.hippy.com/php/article-243.html

[Lokke Heiss]

Here is an interesting article about "Lebensreform" as a predecessor of the Hippy-Movement. It is within this context the ideological background of WAYS TO STRENGTH AND BEAUTY can be best understood...

http://www.hippy.com/php/article-243.html

I can't help on this one...either I slept late and missed the film, or I was busy with my two-hourly daily exercise routine.

My friends told me more or less what had been said, with the additional comment of its need to be exhaustive in detailing the body.

[spadeneal]

Thank you Einar for this link; I am quite familiar with eden ahbez, and with Dr. Arnold Ehret. I had a friend, a free jazz saxophonist, who was a lifelong devotee of Dr. Ehret's Healing System; he lived by it and, sad to say, died by it. No one should go that route.

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