Two men who shake hands with each other before they fall dead on the ground with appropriate drama.
This is one of the many funny moments from 'Die Bergkatze' from 1921.
The commander of the Tossenstein fortress (Victor Janson) thinks it's time to find a husband for his daughter. Because no suitable candidates can be found within the settlement walls, he has Luitenant Alexis (Paul Heidemann) summoned. Dutiful Alexis says farewell to all the ladies he has loved and all his bastard children and leaves for the fort. On the way he is kidnapped by a gang of robbers. If that is not bad enough, the daughter of the robber chief (Pola Negri) falls in love with him.
From the first scene it becomes clear that this is going to be a very funny comedy. We see the daily activities that the military do. The timing of the actors in combination with the timing of the montage is the most brilliant I've seen so far. It is almost as if it has been rehearsed to the beat of the filmmusic.
When I think of silent film comedies I always think of grandmasters such as Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd and Laurel and Hardy who have perfected this genre in detail. But they all have in common that most of the films they have made revolve around one type of character. There is nothing wrong with that, but 'Die Bergkatze' is much more than that. All characters, including the supporting roles, are humorous. The situations in which they find themselves are funny and it also forms a fun complete story.
Wilhelm Diegelmann (middle), Hermann Thimig, Paul Graetz, Max Gronert, Erwin Kopp and Paul Biensfeldt
And then the whole film is also full of what is called 'frame masking'. A technique that was mainly used in silent films. The most popular form of frame masking is the circle. We all know the moment when Chaplin's 'The Tramp' in the final shot of the film is walking towards the horizon in a circular mask. But director Ernst Lubitsch takes it a bit further. He uses so many different shapes that I think in the first instance that a film restorer had promised himself a joke and applied some extra homecraft. But it turns out that Lubitsch deliberately makes fun of his colleagues in this humorous way.
It is unfortunate that the title cards have been lost in the course of time, but they were largely reasonably accurately rewritten thanks to the notes from the German film censorship committee. You can read this on the Wikipedia page of the film. Since I always thought that film censorship was mainly something of the Americans and was introduced much later, in the form of the Hays Code, I was surprised that film censorship was applied in Germany in 1921. But on closer examination, it appears that in 1913, in England, a fairly mild film censorship law already had been introduced. And in 1911 a form of self-censorship was already applied. Although that was more from a marketing point of view than from a moral point of view. It will be due to the fact that in 1934 the Americans got a bit over enthusiastic with coming up with censorship rules that this moment stuck with me as THE moment of the introduction of THE film censorship.
I have never been a proponent of censorship, but in this case I can not deny that it is nice that the film could be better restored in this way.
I thought this was the first Lubitsch film I was going to watch, but I see that he also directed Ninotchka. I've seen this a long time ago, but I've enjoyed it so much that this film is certainly imprinted in my memory as one of my favorite Garbo movies. Having said this, I feel the call 'more Lubitsch' coming into my mind.
Die Bergkatze IMDb
The Wild Cat Wikipedia
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