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| Harry Piel: Erblich belastet? (DE 1913) starring Ludwig Trautmann as Ferry Hudson. Poster: La Cinémathèque française, Paris. |
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| Harry Piel: Die grosse Wette : Ein phantastisches Erlebnis aus dem Jahre 2000 [Der Elektromensch] DE 1916) starring Ludwig Trautmann as Fogg. Missing believed lost. Poster: Desmet Collection, Eye Filmuseum, Amsterdam |
Programme curated by Andreas Thein
Andreas Thein, Hemma Marlene Prainsack (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, 2023): " Harry Piel (1892-1963) is considered the first film director of Imperial Germany to put his name above the title. This was for Die große Wette (1916), which is believed to be the first time a robot was shown onscreen. He was the first to climb the Zugspitze with a film crew to shoot never-before-seen sensations on Germany’s highest mountain for Das rollende Hotel (1918). By the time Joe May hired Harry Piel in 1918-19 as director and co-writer for eight films in the “Joe Deebs” detective series, Piel was already a distinctive artist with significant name recognition: “Harry Piel directs the play. And that really says it all.” (Der Kinematograph, 16.10.1918) "
" From 1919 onwards, Piel starred in his own films, and, as a daredevil adventurer, became the most popular German actor of the Sensationsfilm (action-adventure film) genre of the 1920s and 1930s. Between Imperial Germany and National Socialism, he was a constant, reliable force in the German film market as director, screenwriter, actor, producer, and founder of five production companies, working with such notable figures as Henrik Galeen, Joe May, Oskar Messter, and Heinrich Nebenzahl. "
" In the silent era Piel directed about 90 films in the action and adventure genre, and after the introduction of talkies he made a further 20 as director-producer and almost always as the star, confirmed by an announcement in Variety (12.6.1934): “The most popular sensation actor in German films, Harry Piel, to make his 100th pic.” "
" Despite his considerable success and distinctive type of hero, Piel is one of the most consistently neglected film pioneers of Imperial Germany and least-discussed screen stars of the Weimar Republic. "
" Likewise, his role in the development of the Sensationsfilm is underexposed – as is the German Sensationsfilm genre in general, which Piel decisively shaped over three decades through films featuring crime stories or circuses, often combined with exotic and utopian elements. "
" Born Heinrich Piel in Düsseldorf in 1892, his career began during a stay in Paris, where, not yet 20, he met Léonce Perret, who took him on as a protégé trainee at Gaumont in 1911. Piel’s time there was short, but his passion for cinema changed the course of his life. Back in Germany, without much experience or industry contacts, he founded his first production company with the financial support of his friends and began making “sensationfilms” in 1912 as a director, screenwriter, and producer. From the very beginning he showed considerable marketing skills and was looking for new, never-before presented sensations for his film adventures. In addition to elaborately staged chases utilizing the most modern means of transportation and acrobatic feats, he also frequently included explosions and bridge blasts, as well as sequences featuring dangerous escaped animals. In the press, his works regularly resonated as “A real Piel film!” and delivered recognition value. "
" In 1916, Piel’s career as a director reached its first peak when Die große Wette. Ein phantastisches Erlebnis aus dem Jahre 2000 [Der Elektromensch] hit theatres. Unfortunately this film is considered lost, but the programme booklet and contemporary press materials testify to Piel’s forward-looking spectacle: the young filmmaker “surpassed himself in this one. One is amazed at how far technology has advanced in the cinema industry today, how it captures such startling images, aerial buses, air trolleys, an electric man, etc., as if it were all just natural.” (Der Kinematograph, 15.12.1915) "
" With this exceptional work, Piel made an international knockout, and achieved tremendous recognition, demonstrated by an article in Moving Picture World (1.4.1916): “An extraordinary film which is at present causing much comment is Harry Piel’s newest work, ‘Die Grosse Wette’ (The Great Bet)… Needless to say astonishing and intricate technical tricks, including an airline cabservice, an exceedingly cleverly constructed millionaire’s palace with all twenty-first century conveniences, a library whose books step out of place by merely pressing upon a button, were used as means toward showing life in the next century. An interesting plot revolving about an American millionaire who bets his fortune upon his ability to live three days with a tricky automatic figure forms the substance of the story throughout which many amazing things happen…Criticisms over the film are divided, but in general the work has been favorably received, inasmuch as it is a change from the ordinary love drama and also points the way toward a new school in films….” "
" The year 1919 marked a significant turning point in Piel’s career. Together with screenwriter Max Bauer, he wrote the “Harry Peel” adventure series and stepped in front of the camera for the first time in Der große Unbekannte – Abenteuer eines Vielgesuchten and Der rätselhafte Klub. On screen, the “Peel” figure was so successful that he became the title character of two dime-novel series, Harry Piel – Der Abenteuerkönig und Verächter des Todes and Harry Piel – Der tollkühne Detektiv. Over 150 volumes in these series were published in Germany between 1920 and 1926, and some of the popular retellings of his silent films were even translated into Hungarian and Latvian. "
" Piel had an extremely productive period in the early 1920s. As actor, director, screenwriter, and producer of Metro-Film GmbH, which he founded with Heinrich Nebenzahl in 1919, he made four to five movies a year. Piel tailor-made his heroes, who overcome all obstacles, no matter how dangerous, and presented himself as an actor who risked his own life for daredevil thrills. The “Piel brand” guaranteed spectacular sensations, such as those in a scene in Über den Wolken (prod. 1919, rel. 1920) described by Edward Reinach in the American magazine Camera! (1.5.1920): “Harry Piel, Berlin serial star, descends from a balloon by means of a parachute, sitting on horseback. The photograph clearly shows horse and rider suspended under the huge umbrella-shaped apparatus, floating in midair high above the houses.” "
" Piel became known far beyond Europe’s borders, as the “German Daredevil” and even the “German Douglas Fairbanks”. His popularity in Soviet Russia is particularly remarkable. However, the enthusiasm for Гарри Пиля (“Garri Pil”) and “гаррипилевщина” (“Harry Pielism”) caused a backlash among ideologically aligned critics such as Aleksandr Abramov, who accused Piel of embodying an anarchist worldview, thus representing a “harmful poison”, especially for youth. In 1928, hostility toward the filmmaker reached such a height that a show trial in Moscow resulted in a ban on the importation of his films. "
" With the arrival of sound, Piel, unlike many of his genre peers, managed an effortless transition and was able to “multiply the community of his followers”. (Mein Film, 1.4.1938) With his production company Ariel-Film, founded in 1928, he produced some remarkable films with technical-futuristic subjects, most notably the now-lost Der Geheimagent (1932), in which he once again assumed an Anglo-American role as Harry Parker, an emissary of the “World Federation for the Fight against Poison Gas”. Legendary film critic Lotte Eisner used the film to promote her own pacifist message in Film-Kurier, but this proved fatal: given Piel’s enormous popularity, Eisner was convinced that Der Geheimagent would draw even those “who would never go to an anti-war movie and who can be shown, for once, the atrocity of war behind the front”. Her criticism brought serious consequences, and she was accused in the Völkischer Beobachter of “misusing the Sensationsfilm for pacifist propaganda! Harry Piel as a secret agent for anti-gas advertising!” (Lotte Eisner, Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland, 1984, p. 150) "
" Piel joined the NSDAP in May 1933, just a few months after Hitler became Chancellor, and his formerly internationally focused work increasingly took on a nationalistic tone. In September 1940 he began work on Panik, the largest project of his career, but due to the war shooting couldn’t be completed until 1943. The film, about a bombing raid on the zoo of a major German city and its escaping animals, proved to be too real, and the Nazis banned it in 1944. Towards the end of the war, Piel’s personal collection of his silent film material was completely destroyed in an air raid, and a large part of his cinematic work was lost forever. After the war, Piel was banned from working for several years. Once the ban was lifted he founded yet another production company, and tried to resume his earlier success. In 1953, he brought Gesprengte Gitter (Elephant Fury), a heavily shortened version of Panik, to the big screen, but it proved to be his last effort; the aged sensation-star and his style of filmmaking found little favor with post-war audiences. Harry Piel died penniless in Munich in 1963, and he and his films were largely forgotten. "
" Only in recent years has there been increased interest in Piel, due not least to the intensive efforts of Filmmuseum Düsseldorf. Thanks to the generous support of the State of North RhineWestphalia and the German Film Heritage Funding Program (FFE), it has been possible to painstakingly restore Piel’s surviving films and make them accessible. Many of the restorations being shown at the Giornate will be world premieres. It is our sincere wish and heartfelt pleasure to encourage you to (re)discover Harry Piel and his pioneering achievements. "
Andreas Thein, Hemma Marlene Prainsack
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