Aberglaube / [Superstition] (2020 preservation by Eye Filmmuseum / The Sunrise Foundation)

Georg Jacoby: Aberglaube / [Superstition] (DE 1919) starring Ellen Richter as Militza.

  Georg Jacoby: Aberglaube / [Superstition] (DE 1919) starring Ellen Richter as Militza. and Victor Janson as Bajazzo. Photo: Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam

ABERGLAUBE (DE 1919)
(Bijgeloof; Superstizione) [Superstition]
regia/dir: Georg Jacoby.
scen: Georg Jacoby, Willi Wolff.
photog: Friedrich Weinmann.
cast: Ellen Richter (Militza [Melita], una zingara/a “gypsy”), Johannes Müller (un giovane sacerdote/a young priest), Frida Richard (la madre del sacerdote/the priest’s mother), Victor Janson (Bajazzo), Peggy Longard.
prod: Paul Davidson, Projektions-AG Union (PAGU), Berlin.
dist: Universum-Film AG (Ufa), Berlin.
v.c./censor date: 10.1919; 28.6.1920 (riesame/revision).
première: 10.10.1919, Berlin (U.T. Friedrichstrasse).
copia/copy: 35 mm, incompl., 973 m (orig. 1535 m [28.6.1920: 1497 m], 4 rl.), 50′ (17 fps), col. (imbibito/tinted); did./titles: NLD.
fonte/source: Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.
    Proiezione gentilmente autorizzata dalla/By permission of Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, Wiesbaden.
    Preservazione effettuata nel 2020 con il sostegno di/Preserved in 2020 with support from The Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts, La Jolla, California.
    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM) at Pordenone. Corona emergency security: half programming, half capacity, COVID certificate required, temperature measured, hand hygiene, face masks, distancing.
    Grand piano: John Sweeney.
    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian and English, 2 Oct 2021.

Philipp Stiasny (GCM 2021): "In her early film career Ellen Richter was often cast as women of foreign and sometimes non-European origin. With her jet-black hair, dark eyes, and relatively dark complexion, Richter’s appearance differed significantly from that of many other top female stars of German cinema in the 1910s and early 1920s like Henny Porten, Ossi Oswalda, and Mia May. The actress to whom Ellen Richter perhaps bears the closest resemblance is Pola Negri, who like Richter rose to fame towards the end of World War I. Both were considered “racy” and frequently cast as “exotic” (read “erotic”) types. In Richter’s case these included the daughter of an Arab cobbler, an Indian temple dancer, and a Japanese geisha. While the majority of these films today are non-existent or inaccessible, it seems reasonable to assume that they were filled with visual and narrative stereotypes. This applies equally to gender roles, as it does to the representation of “race” and “otherness”. Just as Pola Negri had done before her in Ernst Lubitsch’s Carmen (Gypsy Blood, 1918), and Asta Nielsen before that, Richter also played “gypsies” (heavily clichéd representations of Sinti and Roma women). While Carmen indulged in the image of the sexual, rebellious, unassimilable, and ultimately destructive power of the “gypsy” woman, Aberglaube is clearly aimed in a different direction. The film focuses on the prejudice against the Sinti minority, painting a picture of fear and hatred that leads directly to persecution and murder."

"The story begins in a circus. A visitor who has just fallen for the “gypsy” dancer Militza is stabbed by a jealous clown, Bajazzo (played by Victor Janson, the “Oyster King” in Lubitsch’s Die Austernprinzessin). Militza escapes to the country village of Marienhagen, finding shelter in the house of a local Catholic priest. (Judging by the landscape and architecture, the film appears to have been shot somewhere in the mostly Protestant regions of Northern Germany.) The priest also falls for Militza. When he is subsequently struck dead by a bolt of lightning one evening during Mass, his mother (Frida Richard, a regular supporting player in Richter’s films) blames Militza and has her cast out of the village. On her way to the city, Militza joins a theatrical troupe. The leader of the troupe is disappointed with the general lack of artistic talent and begs Militza to leave with him. However, since he has a wife and two small children living in poverty, Militza refuses, and instead flees on her own. Onboard a ship, she is surprised to encounter the leader of the troupe again. The ship sinks, taking the man who was so captivated by the “gypsy” with it. Militza, among the few survivors, is rescued by a nobleman who takes her to his country estate. Here she is able to recover from the traumatic events, finding peace and true love with the nobleman. As it turns out, however, her new home is located very close to Marienhagen. When the dead priest’s vengeful mother learns that Militza is now living on the estate, she kindles fear, anger, and superstition among the villagers. She even goes as far to accuse Militza of being a witch and a vampire who must be destroyed. In the end, the peasants, whipped up into an angry mob, start a riot, and Militza is stoned to death."

"Despite the fact that the surviving print is missing well over a third of the original length, the story is easy enough to follow. What makes Aberglaube so intriguing in the context of Richter’s œuvre is its social dimension. In the role of the “gypsy”, Richter appears as a woman who is marked as “different” (mainly by wearing large earrings), and by this virtue alone seems to drive all the men around her wild. Through no fault of her own, Militza becomes a scapegoat for all manner of problems and mishaps."

"One can draw parallels between the hatred, expulsion, and extermination of the “gypsy” depicted in the film with the enormous rise of anti-Semitic aggression against the Jewish community in Germany in the immediate aftermath of World War I. Indeed, the violent mob that swarms in the village street leading to the film’s climactic ending is staging its own pogrom of sorts, with lethal consequences. Perhaps, then, it is no coincidence that at the time Aberglaube was produced, a number of Jewish filmmakers – among them Ellen Richter and Willi Wolff, who contributed to the script – used fiction films to raise awareness of the historical and contemporary plight of Eastern European Jews who had been persecuted and massacred in pogroms. Aberglaube may lack the artistic refinement of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Die Gezeichneten (1922), a love story set against the backdrop of the pogroms in Czarist Russia. Nevertheless, the similarities between the two films are striking." – Philipp Stiasny

The Preservation

GCM (2021): "Aberglaube was believed to be among the many Ellen Richter films that are lost until only recently, when an incomplete vintage Dutch release print was identified in the nitrate collection of the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam in January 2020. A black & white preservation negative and a Desmetcolor print were subsequently produced via photochemical duplication techniques at Haghefilm Digitaal, with funding generously provided by the Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts. In addition, the duplicate negative was scanned at Eye’s Collection Centre, allowing the archive to produce a high-resolution digital version to facilitate access to the film beyond those venues capable of projecting 35 mm prints." (GCM 2021)

AA: The contrast was striking in Pordenone's Ellen Richter double bill featuring Leben um Leben and Aberglaube.

After the decidedly mediocre Leben um Leben we are treated to the new preservation of Aberglaube, which, although highly incomplete, still makes vivid sense, the flow and the excitement on display in every scene.

Aberglaube is a film full of life, and Militza, Ellen Richter's character, is so full of life than I'm reminded of the tagline of Russ Meyer's Lorna: "too much for one man".

The pagliaccio – the businessman – the priest – the artist – the aristocrat: nobody can handle Militza in the long run. She is not the conventional and stereotyped vamp. She is an incarnation of the life force too powerful for any man. She could sing like Marlene Dietrich as Lola Lola: "Männer umschwirren mich wie Motten um das Licht, und wenn sie verbrennen, ja dafür kann ich nichts".

Like Leben um Leben, also Aberglaube contains a frightening sequence of mob rule, in the latter film literally a witch hunt and vampire hunt, ending in tragedy.

The masterful cinematography has been conducted by Friedrich Weinmann, who had had his start in films for Max Reinhardt and Ernst Lubitsch and who would later sign Scherben, Die Gezeichneten, Die Weber and other masterpieces.

During his long career as a director, Georg Jacoby never rose to the A list, but his talent in dynamic composition and mise-en-scène is unmistakable. The pantomime is stylized in an enchanting way.

This valuable preservation has been conducted from highly variable elements with such conviction that it is always exciting to watch, and the many ellipses somehow never interrupt the flow of the pantomime.