Sunday 22 February 2009

The Love of Jeanne Ney 1927

The Love of Jeanne Ney (Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney) (1927)

Director: G.W. Pabst

Actors: Édith Jéhanne, Uno Henning, Fritz Rasp, Brigitte Helm, Adolf E. Licho, Eugen Jensen, Hans Jaray, Sig Arno (as Siegfried Arno), Hertha von Walther, Vladimir Sokoloff, Jack Trevor, Mammey Terja-Basa, Josefine Dora, Heinrich Gotho, Margarete Kupfer (as Küpfer), Robert Scholz and Milly Mathis

Writers: Ilja Ehrenburg (novel), Rudolf Leonhardt and Ladislaus Vajda

Release date: 6th December 1927 (Germany)

The Love of Jeanne Ney (Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney) chronicles the times of a woman who is looking for love and happiness around the terrible times of Europe following the First World War. The young woman from France witnesses her own father being murdered by Jeanne's lover, who is a Bolshevik.

Her lover, Andreas, then instructs Jeanne to move to Paris where her family live. He later hopes to be with her. In the meantime, another man Khalibiev, who eventually finds her and murders Jeanne’s uncle and asks for her cousin’s hand in marriage, chases Jeanne to France.

In a tangled web, when Andreas finally reunites with Jeanne in Paris, he is accused of her uncle’s murder. His fate is with the guillotine.

All Jeanne can do is convince Khalibiev to go to the police and give the vital information that Andreas is not the murderer. Khalibiev saw the couple the night of the murder miles from the scene.

Jeanne now discovers the truth and that Khalibiev did in fact murder her uncle.

Pabst directed the film in an American style for the majority of time. This was to calm the producers of the film studio UFA, who now had a big American stake in their company. This was to continue from the late 1920's onwards and German cinema suffered as a result I feel.

However, Pabst still delivers a great film and further cements his place as one of the most revered German directors of his era.

Here is a clip from The Love of Jeanne Ney (Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney) (1927).

German Silent Films

After World War 1, the German silent film industry flourished, which was aided by rampant inflation throughout the 1920’s.

After the horrors of the war, the German silent film industry tended to be aimed at horror and crime films. This culminated in the German silent horror film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, which was made in 1919. This film is credited as the beginning of expressionism within German film. There was no location shooting, but relied on sets that were painted to represent the mental state of a madman.

Other landmark films from this period in German silent film are Nosferatu 1922 and The Golem 1920.

Films from this period concentrated on imagery and symbolism to tell the narrative. The expressionist movement within German silent cinema ended during the mid 1920’s.