Madness (1919 film)
- Conrad Veidt: Lorenzen, a banker
- Reinhold Schünzel: Jörges, authorized
- Gussy Holl: girl from the thrift store
- Grit Hegesa: Marion Cavello, dancer
- Heinrich peer:
Madness is a German silent film drama that Conrad Veidt in 1919 realized from a screenplay by Marguerite Lindau -Schulz and Hermann Fellner at the Zoo Berlin studio for his own production company Veidt film Berlin. Presentation was a narrative of the author Kurt Munzer, which is attributed to the magic realism literary history
Background
Veidt himself played the banker Lorenzen, also worked Reinhold Schünzel, Gussy Holl and the Showgirl Grit Hegesa with. Carl Hoffmann photographed the sinister plot. Maybe it was also Karl Freund. The Filmbauten created Willi A. Herrmann.
The film was announced with considerable artistic and advertising expense was premiered in Berlin on October 15, 1919 at the representative light Spielpalast marble house on Kurfürstendamm.
Madness was twice the censorship: Police in Berlin issued in 1919 under the number 43 414 the 5 reels and 1662 meter long strip youth ban. The Empire Film Censorship held in 1921 under the number 4281 with respect to the rental company Uckerfilm Berlin the youth ban despite the reduction to 1482 meters upright.
The film, which came out before The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (premiered on February 27, 1920), is now considered lost.
Action
The banker Lorenzo learns that his mistress Marion and his colleague Jörges cheat him. He suffers a nervous breakdown, and his doctor advised him to go on trips, so that he may come to other thoughts. A gypsy woman he meets on the road, foretells that he would find a chest that will bring him the greatest happiness, but also death. As in the delusion he is looking for the chest. In his vision it appears to him, along with a beautiful young girl. In a junk shop he actually finds the chest, but can not be opened. From a young merchant who bears the features of the girl from the visions, he acquires a mysterious key, with which it him when he is back home, manage to open the chest. Marion, who was forced into prostitution by Jörges, comes back to Lorenzen, but she no longer recognizes in his madness. Jörges is behind Marion and locks Lorenzen to turn him in the chest. The lock snaps shut and is no longer open, so that Lorenzen suffocated. The prophecy of the gypsy has been fulfilled.
Criticism
A redacted in the style of Expressionism description published the First International Film Zeitung ( Berlin) on 11 October 1919, Vol 13, No. 40, on page 50-51.
The film was also in the morning edition of the Berliner Tageblatt, Volume 48, Number 494 dated 19 October 1919 ( author anonymous), in Film-Kurier (Berlin) Volume 1, number 116 of 19 October 1919 Page 1 of J. Brandt, and in the film (Berlin) Volume 4, number 42, also discussed by October 19, 1919 on pages 46 and 54 of Fritz Podehl.