The Boy in Blue (1919 film)

The Boy in Blue ( Alternative title: The Death Emerald ) is (probably ) the first film by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. The film from 1919 was possibly never shown publicly, and is considered lost.

Action

Thomas Weerth, the last descendant of an old, impoverished noble family, lives with an old servant in a romantic ruined castle, which is surrounded by deep trenches.

In the castle a portrait of an ancestor, showing a boy in blue depends. Thomas, whose features are similar to those of the ancestors shown, believes to be the reincarnation of the boy in blue. Again and again he is looking in front of the screen on which also a famous emerald is to see the Ahn wears on his chest. Finally, he looks everywhere in the castle for the stone, who, because he always brought his carrier mischief, has been hidden by another ancestor somewhere.

One evening, sleeps Thomas a before picture and dreams of how the boy gets out of the picture and leads him to the hideout. When he wakes up and looks up in the designated hiding place, he finds really the emerald. The old servant asks him in vain, the stone is supposed to bring bad luck to throw away, but Thomas ignored the warnings and reserves the gem with him.

One day, a troupe of traveling actors around the castle. Thomas falls in love with a beautiful gypsy, but these and the captain of the troop get him into their power and deprive him of everything he still owns; eventually burns down even the whole castle. In this case, the image is also destroyed, and the emerald of the boys is stolen.

After long illness, Thomas finally found by the selfless love of a beautiful actress back to recovery and happiness.

Style

This early work of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau already provides a foretaste of the dark and eerie scene that finally in Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror will be staged perfectly. Murnau was here inspired by the famous painting The Blue Boy by the English painter Thomas Gainsborough, which at that time was still in a private collection in England. This image was later taken up in other movies as a theme.

In contrast, for example, Fritz Lang, who aware of the evolving city as subject took up with his films like Metropolis, Murnau preferred rural, peasant themes. Unlike the later home movies but Murnau shows the life of a gloomy, melancholy side; the influence of Edgar Allan Poe, ETA Hoffmann and Oscar Wilde is striking. The rural, but fateful life as a theme is taken up later by Murnau, among others in the films The burning fields and Expulsion again.

A similar film Murnau turned two years later with lock Vogelod.

Background

It was filmed in the studios of Saturn Film AG in the Great Frankfurter Strasse 106 in Berlin, as well as in Wasserburg Vischering at Luedinghausen. The buildings were designed by Willi Herrmann.

The film had a length of files on 1,580 meters, about 77 minutes. The Reich Film Censorship gave the film only a youth ban on April 7, 1921 ( No. 1793).

Why the film was probably not be distributed, it is not known.

Reception

There is no surviving public review on the film; the above story is from the book " Murnau " by Lotte Eisner. Murnau himself stated that he was not aware whether the film has been listed in a public cinema.

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