The Flame (1923 film)
- Pola Negri: Yvette
- Hilde Wörner: Louise
- Alfred Abel: Musician Gaston
- Hermann Thimig: Composer Adolphe
- Jenny Marba: his mother
- Frida Richard: Madame Vasal
- Jakob Tiedtke: Borell
- Max Albert: Journalist
- Ferdinand von Alten: man of the world
The flame is a German silent film in five acts by Ernst Lubitsch from the year 1922. It was the last film that Lubitsch in Germany. The drama is now only preserved as a fragment.
Content
Paris in the 19th Century: The cocotte Yvette gets to know the young composer Adolphe. He manages the relationship with Yvette to finally break away from his strict mother; they turn dreams of a normal life at his side. Yvette and Adolphe married, but suspects, Adolphe not know what Yvette earned their money. Only the seedy Gaston, the Yvette has rejected earlier, tells him that his wife is a prostitute.
Adolphe is to Yvette, but Gaston and Adolphe's mother continued to intrigue against them. Adolphe finally manages not to overcome his inhibitions and actually embark on his new life at the side of Yvette. In the end he returns to his mother. Yvette commits suicide by jumping out the window.
Production
The flame came on a play by Hans Müller. The buildings and decorations are from Kurt Richter and Ernst Stern, the costumes created Ali Hubert.
The film had its world premiere in late January 1923 in Vienna. The German premiere took place on September 11, 1923 at the Ufa - Palast am Zoo in Berlin. At the time lived and worked Lubitsch already in Hollywood. In America The flame was shown in 1924 with a new, positive end that the movie took every dramatic value.
The original length of the film was 2555 meters. Today only exist fragments of the film at the Filmmuseum München.
Criticism
Lubitsch called The flame as a " small, intimate chamber play ". Pinthus The flame described as a composition of different genre scenes, " but in the milieu, in the mood, exposure so tenderly affectionate and tasteful, graceful art of movement met [ ... ] just moody moving image and become visible humanity."