The great filmmaker Pabst, undoubtedly one of the filmmakers more punished by the oblivion of history, of the most overlooked and neglected when one recounts the most famous and important directors of history, began his filmography, his cinematographic career with this appreciable film. As with so many contemporary masters, Pabst debuted as a director, but he had already gained a certain reputation in other aspects of shooting. For this debut film of the forgotten master, it is based on the novel by Rudolph Hans Bartsch, adapting the literary work to the cinema, in a film that made it very clear that the Austro-Hungarian had already defined many of his audiovisual cornerstones, a well defined visual style we will be able to appreciate, a style that would end up taking shape and developing with the following decades. He will have among his assets the great Werner Krauss, the famous Caligari appears in the film, he exalts it, while tells us that Pabst soon worked with the best. It portrays the history of a land, today Slovenia, in which a great treasure from the time of the Turkish invasion seems to be buried under the farm of a bell ringer; the old man is obsessed with finding fortune, just like an old worker of his. A young assistant appears, falls in love with the bell-ringer's daughter, but the treasure complicates everything.
In Marburg, after expelling the Turks, years later we see Svetocar Badalic (Albert Steinrück), master ringer of the town, lives with his wife Anna (Ilka Grüning), and his daughter Beate (Lucie Mannheim). They work on their farm, in which there is a legend, a belief that in that land is buried an extraordinary treasure of the times of the invaders, a story that everyone believes a nonsense, except Svetelenz (Krauss), old and loyal worker of them. The young blacksmith Arno (Hans Brausewetter) arrives with the bell ringer to work, quickly gets along with Beate, but displeases Svetelenz, who soon finds new clues, hopeful hints to the location of the treasure, everyone join the search. Svetelenz, after finding a map, finds the treasure, he does it together with Arno, but the old worker, cunning, manages to persuade the bell ringer Badalic that the young man must disappear, and thus divide the treasure less. The ambition of all grows, the ringer, his wife and his worker divide the large booty, and Svetelenz renounces his share of the treasure in exchange for receiving permission to marry Beate, and both Badalic and his wife accept, while for her part she and Arno see their attraction and their corresponded love grow. The young couple go home, there is a strong fight, the treasure stash collapses, the lovers retire together.
Georg Wilhelm Pabst is a surname of recognition in the cinema, it is true, however always his figure is in the background with respect to other filmmakers, considered the greatest referents of the time in German lands; however, apart from the distance purely referred to talent or genius, there were other factors that gave that result. A bit of myth merges with reality with the Austro-Hungarian, the filmmaker to whom Goebbels repeatedly asked to be the official filmmaker of the Third Reich, a difficult situation that probably has more of legend than reality, but in any case is part of the extensive baggage that surrounded the figure of this author who does not have the recognition that his talent demands. The film that is commented in this opportunity was the first of the four dozen films that Pabst would produce, a filmmaker who was contemporary to the greatest geniuses recognized by history who worked in the cinema of his country, the genius Fritz Lang and the giant Friedrich Wilhelml Plumpe Murnau at the head, a director who knew how to wander with them during probably the greatest revolution of this art, the arrival of sound, is an author of a long filmography, a singular case of talent ignored and forgotten by history. Very surprising the debutante, who in his first work, gives solid samples already of having very well learned the office, a filmmaker called to be part of the most select of the European cinema, and he did it, although from a particularly discreet place in the history. From the first frames the feature is diagrammed, the initial images for the film are already unique, showing that peculiar architecture, severely eloquent that image, because throughout the filmography of Pabst that is what we will observe, an aesthetic very influenced by the expressionism, with warm halos of those unreal spaces, those oneiric structures. Those were moments in which in the whole world the audiovisual imprints were being defined, the evident expressionist influence flows with fervidity, and it is very interesting to see a master of Pabst's category, to assimilate that influence, that aesthetic, to insufflate at the same time his own feeling, his own artistic feeling, because it is not an conventionally expressionist the work of his, far from it.
We even have the stairs, a very expressionist element, which will never be absent in the footage and is part of that peculiar structure, that peculiar architecture, rustic and at the same time convoluted, labyrinthine, unreal, dreamlike, originating a very atypical realism, and characteristic, that the director exhibits from his first film. The film will thus be a seductive journey through an attractive variation of the traditional German film of the time, with rustic locations, reduced environments, quite distinctive structures, the Austro-Hungarian is a luxury, it is indeed a luxury to see a European author presenting such a personal and attractive variation of the great German expressionism, it is nurtured powerfully from the potent expressionist vein his art, an almost unique case of the talented filmmaker influenced by this current, who then would have a slow decline in his work with the passing of the decades. It is in interiors where that atmosphere is generated with greater forcefulness, with yellowed (with the permission of the black and white) dyes or lighting, like the lighting of those candles, an environment that hints at something sickly, the ambition that is about to be unleashed and make everyone lose their heads; a play of light and shadow is also generated, in which the shadows will move with threatening freedom at times. With all this a nightmarish atmosphere is achieved at times, dark and unreal rooms inside the home of the bell ringer, but also the dark secret galleries where they seek the treasure, all with a tendency, a general tonic to twisted conceptions, certainly a pretty definite aesthetic idea we can appreciate, something very remarkable considering, again, that it was the cinematographic debut of Pabst, his first feature as a director. The images in exteriors are also of remarkable attractiveness, the humans that are fused with the natural element, with the copious field, the contrast of twisted interiors and exteriors is created, the nature that overflows with humans, good images in exteriors, where the darkness, the shady at times also moves there, but the counterpoint is in the images of nature, from the outside, in strong opposition to the interiors, with those crooked lines, and that serves as a framework for the history of the youthful idyll. These exteriors are full of trees, an environment where the tender love of the young flourishes, the only ones hermetic in their love of the alienation of the treasure, they are framed by that nature, which was their environment, alien to the morbidity of interiors, positive those moments, differentiated from the other sequences in their bucolic treatment of that environment.
According to the time, in terms of handling the camera, or the deployment of other technical virtuosities, the development, the language of the camera, is still at embryonic level, the picture does not present overlays of shots or other contraptions, the conventional narrative doesn't breaks down, the flat development of the events never breaks down. The seriousness of the film, however, is glaring, the master was just beginning, but he had everything, he was ready to produce his best works. I consider that Pabst's is a case, with the distances from one to another, relatively similar to that of the other covered virtuoso of the time, Paul Leni, but with different reasons, as one being as prolific as Pabst, and the other cruelly snatched by the blood problems leaving short production, both were overshadowed by the older masters Lang, Murnau, maybe even Wiene; but his talent is evident forever, always referenced by the connoisseur of classic cinema. In the Austro-Hungarian's film the ambition stands above all else, the three old men, the old ringer, his wife and his worker are overwhelmed by the ambition that fortune arouses, their volition will disappear, parents are able to renounce their daughter for getting a top part of the booty. And those individuals will be transformed into almost infernal characters, who give free rein to their Machiavellianism in their jamboree, their crapulence flows, their ambition has dehumanized them, they will forget the flesh of their flesh for the money, and their gestures at those peak moments are hellish indeed. The dementia is taking over the characters, so that it goes beyond the context of the feature, because we are introduced, although briefly, to that context, is the land of Marburg, today Slovenia, once invaded by the Turks, later expelled, now harboring the events we witness. But that context could vary, could be other circumstances, another land, other characters, but probably the tessitura, the terrible situation would approximate all the factors to the same aberrant concomitants, because they are very basic emotions that move humans, ambition to the head; it could be anywhere, at any time, but those situations could trigger very similar outcomes. A strong change we observe in the same individuals whose house we were introduced with that photograph built with familiar approach, with the image of the dog with its litter of puppies, the poultry, the images of the field. As for the actors, the great Werner Krauss is undoubtedly another of the attractions of the film, even with the inertia of
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) a bit fresh, the famous German actor was already an icon, featured in repeated central films of the German expressionism, and as it was said, his only presence exalts the picture, an always positive incentive for the connoisseur of the figures of the classic silent cinema. It is a simple but concise story, a film that works in its economy, with few characters, few scenarios, but which takes advantage of and draws all the revenue from those limited resources, in which we will find a happy ending, not so expressionist outcome, another differentiation of the traditional expressionist works, those are opposed endings, the death in many of those cases, with the sublimated happiness of the film now commented. Pabst began his cinematographic career, an outstanding but at the same time forgotten figure, an inescapable author of the silent stage of the seventh art.
The great filmmaker Pabst, undoubtedly one of the filmmakers more punished by the oblivion of history, of the most overlooked and neglected when one recounts the most famous and important directors of history, began his filmography, his cinematographic career with this appreciable film. As with so many contemporary masters, Pabst debuted as a director, but he had already gained a certain reputation in other aspects of shooting. For this debut film of the forgotten master, it is based on the novel by Rudolph Hans Bartsch, adapting the literary work to the cinema, in a film that made it very clear that the Austro-Hungarian had already defined many of his audiovisual cornerstones, a well defined visual style we will be able to appreciate, a style that would end up taking shape and developing with the following decades. He will have among his assets the great Werner Krauss, the famous Caligari appears in the film, he exalts it, while tells us that Pabst soon worked with the best. It portrays the history of a land, today Slovenia, in which a great treasure from the time of the Turkish invasion seems to be buried under the farm of a bell ringer; the old man is obsessed with finding fortune, just like an old worker of his. A young assistant appears, falls in love with the bell-ringer's daughter, but the treasure complicates everything.
Georg Wilhelm Pabst is a surname of recognition in the cinema, it is true, however always his figure is in the background with respect to other filmmakers, considered the greatest referents of the time in German lands; however, apart from the distance purely referred to talent or genius, there were other factors that gave that result. A bit of myth merges with reality with the Austro-Hungarian, the filmmaker to whom Goebbels repeatedly asked to be the official filmmaker of the Third Reich, a difficult situation that probably has more of legend than reality, but in any case is part of the extensive baggage that surrounded the figure of this author who does not have the recognition that his talent demands. The film that is commented in this opportunity was the first of the four dozen films that Pabst would produce, a filmmaker who was contemporary to the greatest geniuses recognized by history who worked in the cinema of his country, the genius Fritz Lang and the giant Friedrich Wilhelml Plumpe Murnau at the head, a director who knew how to wander with them during probably the greatest revolution of this art, the arrival of sound, is an author of a long filmography, a singular case of talent ignored and forgotten by history. Very surprising the debutante, who in his first work, gives solid samples already of having very well learned the office, a filmmaker called to be part of the most select of the European cinema, and he did it, although from a particularly discreet place in the history. From the first frames the feature is diagrammed, the initial images for the film are already unique, showing that peculiar architecture, severely eloquent that image, because throughout the filmography of Pabst that is what we will observe, an aesthetic very influenced by the expressionism, with warm halos of those unreal spaces, those oneiric structures. Those were moments in which in the whole world the audiovisual imprints were being defined, the evident expressionist influence flows with fervidity, and it is very interesting to see a master of Pabst's category, to assimilate that influence, that aesthetic, to insufflate at the same time his own feeling, his own artistic feeling, because it is not an conventionally expressionist the work of his, far from it.
We even have the stairs, a very expressionist element, which will never be absent in the footage and is part of that peculiar structure, that peculiar architecture, rustic and at the same time convoluted, labyrinthine, unreal, dreamlike, originating a very atypical realism, and characteristic, that the director exhibits from his first film. The film will thus be a seductive journey through an attractive variation of the traditional German film of the time, with rustic locations, reduced environments, quite distinctive structures, the Austro-Hungarian is a luxury, it is indeed a luxury to see a European author presenting such a personal and attractive variation of the great German expressionism, it is nurtured powerfully from the potent expressionist vein his art, an almost unique case of the talented filmmaker influenced by this current, who then would have a slow decline in his work with the passing of the decades. It is in interiors where that atmosphere is generated with greater forcefulness, with yellowed (with the permission of the black and white) dyes or lighting, like the lighting of those candles, an environment that hints at something sickly, the ambition that is about to be unleashed and make everyone lose their heads; a play of light and shadow is also generated, in which the shadows will move with threatening freedom at times. With all this a nightmarish atmosphere is achieved at times, dark and unreal rooms inside the home of the bell ringer, but also the dark secret galleries where they seek the treasure, all with a tendency, a general tonic to twisted conceptions, certainly a pretty definite aesthetic idea we can appreciate, something very remarkable considering, again, that it was the cinematographic debut of Pabst, his first feature as a director. The images in exteriors are also of remarkable attractiveness, the humans that are fused with the natural element, with the copious field, the contrast of twisted interiors and exteriors is created, the nature that overflows with humans, good images in exteriors, where the darkness, the shady at times also moves there, but the counterpoint is in the images of nature, from the outside, in strong opposition to the interiors, with those crooked lines, and that serves as a framework for the history of the youthful idyll. These exteriors are full of trees, an environment where the tender love of the young flourishes, the only ones hermetic in their love of the alienation of the treasure, they are framed by that nature, which was their environment, alien to the morbidity of interiors, positive those moments, differentiated from the other sequences in their bucolic treatment of that environment.
According to the time, in terms of handling the camera, or the deployment of other technical virtuosities, the development, the language of the camera, is still at embryonic level, the picture does not present overlays of shots or other contraptions, the conventional narrative doesn't breaks down, the flat development of the events never breaks down. The seriousness of the film, however, is glaring, the master was just beginning, but he had everything, he was ready to produce his best works. I consider that Pabst's is a case, with the distances from one to another, relatively similar to that of the other covered virtuoso of the time, Paul Leni, but with different reasons, as one being as prolific as Pabst, and the other cruelly snatched by the blood problems leaving short production, both were overshadowed by the older masters Lang, Murnau, maybe even Wiene; but his talent is evident forever, always referenced by the connoisseur of classic cinema. In the Austro-Hungarian's film the ambition stands above all else, the three old men, the old ringer, his wife and his worker are overwhelmed by the ambition that fortune arouses, their volition will disappear, parents are able to renounce their daughter for getting a top part of the booty. And those individuals will be transformed into almost infernal characters, who give free rein to their Machiavellianism in their jamboree, their crapulence flows, their ambition has dehumanized them, they will forget the flesh of their flesh for the money, and their gestures at those peak moments are hellish indeed. The dementia is taking over the characters, so that it goes beyond the context of the feature, because we are introduced, although briefly, to that context, is the land of Marburg, today Slovenia, once invaded by the Turks, later expelled, now harboring the events we witness. But that context could vary, could be other circumstances, another land, other characters, but probably the tessitura, the terrible situation would approximate all the factors to the same aberrant concomitants, because they are very basic emotions that move humans, ambition to the head; it could be anywhere, at any time, but those situations could trigger very similar outcomes. A strong change we observe in the same individuals whose house we were introduced with that photograph built with familiar approach, with the image of the dog with its litter of puppies, the poultry, the images of the field. As for the actors, the great Werner Krauss is undoubtedly another of the attractions of the film, even with the inertia of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) a bit fresh, the famous German actor was already an icon, featured in repeated central films of the German expressionism, and as it was said, his only presence exalts the picture, an always positive incentive for the connoisseur of the figures of the classic silent cinema. It is a simple but concise story, a film that works in its economy, with few characters, few scenarios, but which takes advantage of and draws all the revenue from those limited resources, in which we will find a happy ending, not so expressionist outcome, another differentiation of the traditional expressionist works, those are opposed endings, the death in many of those cases, with the sublimated happiness of the film now commented. Pabst began his cinematographic career, an outstanding but at the same time forgotten figure, an inescapable author of the silent stage of the seventh art.
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