A Trick of Light

  • Udo Kier: Max Skladanowsky
  • Otto Kuhnle: Emil Skladanowsky
  • Nadine Büttner: Gertrud Skladanowsky / narrator Act 1
  • Christoph Merg: Eugen Skladanowsky
  • Rüdiger Vogler: Top cyclists
  • Wim Wenders: milkman
  • Lucie Hürtgen - Skladanowsky: ( herself)
  • Rolf Zacher: Act 2 Narrator (as Max Skladanowsky )
  • Thomas Rosié, Bodo Lang, Hans Moser, Alfred Szczot

A Trick of Light is a German feature film from the year 1995. Wim Wenders turned in its anniversary year of cinema with students at the Munich Film pays homage to the Trick of Light, the conservatory in Berlin showed their short films in 1895, together with the presentation of the Brothers Lumière in Paris marked the birth of cinema.

The film is divided into three acts, playing of which the first two in 1895, the third in the presence of 1995. In addition, the viewer a narrator is placed to the side in the first two acts, the comments on the event from the off. The first act is from the perspective of the little Gertrude, daughter of Max Skladanowsky says, the second from the point of view of Max Skladanowsky, in which case is heard the voice of Rolf Zacher.

Action

Act I: How did dad invented the Classic Film

The small Gertrude lives with her father, Max Skladanowsky and his brothers Emil and Eugene in Pankow in Berlin. Her daily life is marked by the inventive spirit of the three men, especially to her uncle Eugene, who works as a clown and magician, she has an intimate relationship. For a long time fiddling her father at the invention of a device, can be played with the moving pictures, while he has the problem of camera already solved. In his view, the invention of the Kintopps as it is in the air. So far, he deserves along with Emil his living primarily with the presentation of photographs of fog or the magic lantern carnivals. Gertrude finds this form of entertainment boring and fake and is of the opinion to have to drive the development.

As to Gertrude's disappointment one day Eugene has to go away for a long time, because he has a commitment to a circus, they take him previously on the roof of the house on so Gertrud can keep him living large in spite of his absence. The little girl wants but does not believe and look in the box of her father. They accidentally exposed the film strip, but there is still a second. Finally, Max has solved the problem of film transport and it can satisfy Gertrud present the life-size projected Eugene. Other Interested secretly for Skladanowsky invention, but the family can beat the spy repeated in flight.

Act II: The first demonstration

Max Sladanowsky sitting at December 28, 1895 with his brother Emil in the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris and has witnessed the demonstration of the Lumière brothers. He realizes that his own apparatus of the invention of the French is hopelessly inferior. He remembers the preparations for his own performance:

In Berlin, the news of the groundbreaking invention has already spread and so many artists find to can banish from the Skladanowsky on the premises of a beer garden on the filmstrip. The operators of the renowned vaudeville plant conservatory in the Friedrichstrasse got wind of it and endeavor to Pankow to offer the brothers a commitment. The spy who watched the whole thing from a distance, then attempts to find out as much as possible. It offers the variety owners to be competitive product, which Emil aware of it. He follows the man and is happy and relieved witness how the idea thief experienced in his basement in front of the conservatory directors a disgrace, considered to be of a bicycle -powered apparatus explodes.

When Billboard advertising displays for the winter garden demonstration discover the Skladanowsky that a famous vaudeville artist will present her even more famous Serpentintanz in the city. They manage to persuade the lady to a performance in front of her camera, what to give her performance the last Pepp. But on a night tryst between Emil and adored by him beer garden waitress Josephine it happens: Emil holds a candle burning too close to the hung on a clothesline filmstrip and one of them caught fire. Now just the images are destroyed by the famous Serpentintänzerin. Without Max's knowledge Emil and Gertrude rotate the scenes with Josephine by as Double.

When finally comes the idea of ​​the stage, remarkable neither Max nor the viewer the error. Only the artist was also present, becomes suspicious, she soon forgets, however, as she received is the applause of the audience. Thus, the presentation will be a complete success.

Act III: 1895-1995

In the presence of Lucie Hürtgen - Skladanowsky are told, born in 1904 as the younger daughter of Max Skladanowsky, from their memories of her father, her uncle, her sister and the pioneering days of cinema. Suddenly Eugene and Gertrude appear again and look around the room. The submerged in Color Scene discolored again and becomes black and white. When Eugene and his little niece see the famous spy in the window, they scare him.

A modern taxi is waiting for the two, but Eugen conjures up a more "contemporary " coach brought, with them going. Eventually they disappear at the construction site of the Potsdamer Platz.

Background

The brothers Max and Emil Skladanowsky showed on 1 November 1895 the Berlin conservatory vaudeville their films. They were so tuned eight weeks earlier than the Lumière brothers, who presented their work in Paris on 28 December 1895. In contrast, the strips of Skladanowsky passed from recorded before light or dark curtains vaudeville numbers as a boxing kangaroo or a Serpentintanz. The Bioscope apparatus called from Berlin was finally the invention inferior to the Lumières, because this could take with her Cinématographe both play and were able to produce longer movies.

In 1995 Wim Wenders turned the occasion of the 100th anniversary of cinema together with students from the Munich Film School this film about the birth of the medium. They decided it against the production of a documentary film and a tongue in cheek, the history rather freely interpretive narrative, because they wanted to honor the naive and unorthodox manner in which the brothers Skladanowsky their approaches to the invention. Also they wanted to work out their status as more destitute hobbyists without fine mechanical training and without the industry sponsor.

So the film was conceived as a silent film and provided with off- tellers. Were filmed here in 1895 playing parts on a historic hand crank camera from Askania that the present display contrast on current cameras ARRI.

While he was already gone in parts at various short film festivals, the TV station arte showed the film on December 28, 1995, the centenary of the demonstration of the Lumière brothers, for the first time completely. Here, the film notes by Wim Wenders and the complete broadcast of the historic vaudeville films that were then shown in the conservatory were prefixed. These were as follows:

  • Italian peasant dance: Children group Ploetz Larella
  • Comical stretching: Brothers Milton
  • Boxendes kangaroo: Mister Delaware
  • Juggler: Paul Petras
  • Acrobatisches Potpourri: Family Grunato
  • Kamarinskaja. (Russian National Dance ): Brothers Tscherpanoff
  • Serpentintanz: Mademoiselle Ancion
  • Wrestler: Greiner and Sandow
  • Apotheosis: Trick of Light

In this movie, word comes Lucie Hürtgen - Skladanowsky ( born July 6, 1904 in Berlin, † 15 May 2001, Berlin ), the last time honor a family who wrote film history.

Awards

Wim Wenders and the students won with her film the Friedrich- Wilhelm -Murnau- Award of the Murnau Foundation for the first 15 minutes of the film.

Reviews

  • Filmdienst: " An endearingly charming tribute to the brothers Skladanowsky. [ ... ] The special attraction of the tribute is the attempt to replicate the one hand, the style means of early motion pictures [ ... ], on the other hand to develop new narrative forms. "
  • Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: " Wenders pays tribute to the cheerful spirit of the inventor Skladanowsky by itself has turned large parts of its subtle, entertaining, playful etude with an old crank camera. "

Pictures of A Trick of Light

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