Billy Wilder on Assignment by Noah Isenberg (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📕

It was preceded by an equally weak American adventure film, Menschen der Nacht (Men of the Night, 1926).

B. Z. am Mittag, June 3, 1927

Eichberg Shoots a Film

When Richard Eichberg shoots a film, fun is sure to follow, and so the large studio set in Neubabelsberg is now reverberating with merry music. Der Fürst von Pappenheim (The Masked Mannequin, 1927), adapted from the well-known opera, is designed to set just the right mood. Egon Fürst, who manages fashion models, and his alter ego, “Fürst Egon,” are played by Curt Bois, and Mona Maris, an actress newly discovered by Eichberg, has the role of Princess Antoinette. The cast also features Dina Gralla and Werner Fütterer. The cinematography is by Heinrich Gärtner.

G. W. Pabst, the director of Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney (The Love of Jeanne Ney, 1927), has spent hours standing outdoors in the searing sun, waiting for rain. And he succeeds in compelling the heavens to provide a downpour with lightning and thunder. The result is quite a soggy treat, and the scene is “true to life.” Now Pabst has gone to Paris with his lead actors and actresses, Brigitte Helm, Edith Jehanne, Uno Henning, and Fritz Rasp, and cameramen Fritz Arno Wagner and Walter Robert Lach, to film the outdoor scenes.

On a different part of the set, Dr. Fritz Wendhausen is working on the final shots for his film Der Kampf des Donald Westhofs (The Trial of Donald Westhof, 1927), adapted from the novel in the Berlin newspaper Illustrirte Zeitung. A scene in Spiess’s saloon, with a characteristic view onto the street, looks so natural that viewers think they are seeing the home turf of Elizza La Porta, Imre Ráday, Nicolai Malikoff, and Hermann Vallentin.

B. Z. am Mittag, June 7, 1927

Der Bettler vom Kölner Dom (The Beggar from Cologne Cathedral, 1927)

This rousing, fast-paced detective film provides good entertainment because it’s fun. Dr. Alfieri’s screenplay draws on a tried-and-true model, pitting a gang of thieves—who adopt many guises in their attempts to rob a young lady’s jewelry—against a famous detective, and he has a knack for tying together and tying up situations and imbuing the overall plot with a gentle, sometimes glitzy humor that nicely tones down the tension.

The shot sequences of the director, Rolf Randolf, move along rapidly and thus effectively. The acting is also very good. Harry Lamberz-Pausen, spiffed up as a “dashing fellow,” using his athletic strength to break into a strongbox, reels in hearty laughter. Henry Stuart plays the detective with genteel reserve, and Hanni Weisse, Fritz Kampers, Karl de Vogt, and Robert Scholz make for well-conceived characters as the band of thieves. The sets by G. A. Knauer and Willie Hameister’s camera work are quite lovely.

B. Z. am Mittag, August 30, 1927

Pat und Patachon am Nordseestrand (Ole and Axel at the North Sea Shore, 1927)

AT THE EMELKA PALACE

Seeing old friends after a long time is always a pleasure. And it was nice to see these two wacky, funny fellows, tall, skinny Ole and short, chubby Axel, who were coming from the North Sea shore, where they had experienced all kinds of things. The tales they told call to mind Münchhausen’s fanciful stories. They gave fishing a try but came to realize that they themselves could easily wind up being fished by a shark. They built a cabin, which the wind blew away one night, while they themselves wound up buried in the sand (inspired by a scene in Chaplin’s The Gold Rush). They were heroes, of course. Axel, undaunted even by ghosts, was the greater of the two. They won the hearts of the village beauties with their droll way of dancing the Charleston, freed a young man from the hands of his rival, and helped him find a way to marry the woman he loves.

These are amusing Don Quixote–style capers, harmless, goofy, executed with unflappable poise and hence amusing. Lau Lauritzen produced lovely outdoor shots and, in the scene where the castaways are rescued, created some suspense as well. It was a lovely evening.

B. Z. am Mittag, September 9, 1927

Funkzauber (Radio Magic, 1927)

AT THE PHOEBUS PALACE

For fans of radio—and there are quite a few of those!—this film has much to offer. It guides them through the broadcast studios in Berlin, acquaints them with the announcers on the major stations, especially with the much-admired Berlin announcer Alfred Braun, and gives them an instructive picture of the workings of broadcasting, affording them hours of the liveliest entertainment from a magical distance—not in dry images but in the framework of an appealing storyline by Jane Bess and Dr. Rino Ottavi, directed by Richard Oswald, overly sweeping in scope but still lively.

This film, with a humorous touch, is about a radio enthusiast who settles in for some serious listening without paying for the privilege wherever he goes, whether it be in the woods, as he happily munches on his sandwich, or at the police station, where he is brought in as a vagrant, or in his shack, to which his dream of inheriting a million has shrunk. Werner Krauss endows this character with an impeccable and easygoing humor. This radio devotee, his hat askew and a twinkle in his eye, is a peppy fellow. Krauss’s performance in this film is on a par with his magnificent portrayal of a petty official in A Royal Scandal.

Besides him, the actors are not very memorable: Xenia Desni, who once again has to play the role of a young girl, Fern Andra, is a welcome presence, and it would be nice to see her more often in roles that offer her more to work with; Leo Penkdert as a well-educated man who is a foe of radio and thus enraged; Anton Pointner as a slick scoundrel; Fritz Kampers as a policeman; and Gert Briese as a soulful lover. There was abundant applause from the audience.

B. Z. am Mittag, October 4, 1927

Frost in the