Cyanide (1930 film)

Cyanide is a moral drama based on a play by Friedrich Wolf discussing § 218, which advocates for abortion in social distress. Directed by Hans Tintner, starring Grete Mosheim took over. The premiere was held in Berlin on 23 May 1930.

Action

Berlin, in the late 1920s. The young Hete Fent works as a clerk in a factory. There is also her fiancé, the worker Paul, hired. One day notes Hete that she is pregnant by Paul. Your social distress - they have no common Apartment in view - it will make it very difficult as a parent to provide for their future child. Nevertheless, they opt for the baby.

When one day the workers are locked out of the factory, because they have asked for wage increases, the dream of a small family shattered permanently. Paul is now out of work and earns no money. Hete is now trying to find a doctor who is willing to perform an abortion on her. It fails with their search and then goes to an " abortionist ". As abortifacient her Cyankali is administered. However, the dose is portioned wrong, and so dies Hete agonizing from poisoning.

Her mother is promptly arrested because she is under the suspicion of having aided and abetted the illegal abortion. Even Paul and his friend Max, who have taken a break in a warehouse with food in order to escape their social misery, are arrested.

Production Notes

Hans Tintner remarked on his production Cyankali: "I have kept myself in this film almost slavishly to the play. From the main scenes of the play I have the manuscript in close collaboration with the author of the piece, Dr. Friedrich Wolf wrote. While the piece on the stage more portrays the private, family affairs of a family, I have had the opportunity in the film, far more to address the social causes. "

The film began as a silent film, two passages at the end already mark the transition to talkies.

Since the first submission of 13 March 1930, the highly controversial film went through a true test marathon in film censorship. Again and again new cutting conditions were arranged. Until the last censorship exam at December 12, 1930 Cyankali always received youth ban.

Helmut Schreiber debuted at Cyankali as production manager, the film was awarded by the German Fox - Film AG, whose head was director Tintner.

On the making of the film and the painter Otto Nagel was involved, which was a friend of Heinrich Zille and Käthe Kollwitz.

Reviews

The art critics of the film devoted great attention. Here are two examples:

Herbert Jhering wrote in the Berlin stock exchange Courier: Cyankali " does not achieve the sharpness and striking power of the drama. From the indictment is larmoyante milieu sketch and Mitleidsbettelei. Also missing here, even more clearly, the spiritual purpose " Jhering conclusion:". Pity. Here, too, you had the courage to make a bold theme and destroyed the effect of the lack of consistency. There is something going on in the German film. One notes that it does not continue with the old theme. One dares. But it does not make it right. "

Paul Marcus wrote in The 12th clock face: " This time and purpose film wants and is not to be bekrittelt something aesthetic. Facial premiered in Berlin barn area, far away from all spicy sensations and ambitions seemed Friedrich Wolf filmed material as upsetting as the ' group of young actors '. Nothing is coarsened, maybe a little wider and stretched; So the effect is less direct, less revolutionary, but the deeper, agonizing, sustainable, "and". The Director Hans Tintner sometimes blurred, sometimes remained stuck to the old ways. But what does this in the performance of Mosheim, which has taken nothing from the Stobrawa. She took the role quite differently. Burdensome even before the disaster, she grew up in sorrow far beyond the outbreak. It increased the pain to the utmost limit. As a human child was almost resigned to in painless nothingness. "

Cyanide in the postwar criticism:

In Kay Weniger ' It will do you more taken for granted in life ... ' was reminded of the circumstances surrounding the premiere of the Wolf film: " " cyanide " was hotly debated in public, was extremely controversial and came after many of the film censorship imposed interface specifications in the movie theaters. "

Horst Knietzsch was in film history in pictures from the socialist world view of the GDR following opinion on the movie: Although cyanide " was the literary work of Friedrich Wolf does not do justice, but he was an artistic opinion forbade the hotly debated paragraph 218, the abortion for social reasons. Tintner stopped on a bourgeois-democratic position. He did not demand the miserable social conditions corresponding possibility of social indication, but birth control by the state. "

1930 in film Screenplay Film score Herbert Selpin Claus Clausen (actor) Margarete Kupfer Paul Kemp (actor) Friedrich Wolf (writer) Digital Object Identifier
210643
de