Wir halten fest und treu zusammen / [We Stick Together through Thick and Thin]

[Restiamo saldamente e fedelmente insieme] (DE 1929) regia/dir: Herbert Nossen. scen: Hans Kahan. photog: Willy Hameister.
    cast: Siegfried Arno (“Beef”), Kurt Gerron (“Steak”), Ernst Karchow (Theodor Klabautermann), Vera Schmiterlöw (Kitty, sua figlia/his daughter), Evi Eva (cuoca/cook), Antonie Jaeckel (Freifrau von Gotha, sensale di matrimoni/marriage agent), Lotte Roman (parlor maid), Edith Meller (Carola Triller), Claire Cläry (domestica/maid), Karl Geppert (primo assessore/first assessor).
    prod: Ama-Film, Berlin. copia/copy: 35 mm, 263 m, 13' (18 fps); did./titles: GER. fonte/source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin.

    Grand piano: Meg Morley.

    Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Slapstick: Prog. 4 Odd Couples, 12 Oct 2023

Ulrich Rüdel, Sreya Chatterjee (GCM 2023): " “Beef” and “Steak” are two harmless crooks, who have already done time in prison. But sheer hunger forces them back into the criminal lifestyle. Financed by a gangster syndicate, they unsuccessfully try to be con artists and marriage swindlers. Since nothing works out for them, they voluntarily return to their idyllic and carefree life in prison. (Programme note, Cinefest, Hamburg, 2005) "

" The mid-1920 were the golden age of silent comedy duos. In the US Raymond Hatton and Wallace Beery or Karl Dane and George K. Arthur paved the way for Laurel and Hardy in 1927, who instantly would be carbon-copied by Snub Pollard and Marvin Loback. At the same time, Pat and Patachon had remained a European box-office sensation for several years, considered on a par with the great Hollywood comedians Chaplin, Lloyd, and Keaton. In 1927, when Laurel and Hardy films first began to hit the German market, Jewish Weimar comedians Kurt Gerron and Sig Arno decided it was time to create a German slapstick team equivalent. In spite of its anglicized, mouthwatering moniker “Beef & Steak”, the team was generally perceived as an attempt to compete with the unrivalled Danish duo. DFI scholar Jannie Dahl Astrup has reconstructed how the creation of “a German Pat and Patachon” (Allgemeine Zeitung, 8.5 1929) was even discussed in the Scandinavians’ home country, yet failed to compete artistically, as aptly analyzed by German critic Walter Kaul, who reminded readers that in Pat and Patachon it is the chemistry and characterization rather than comic perfection that mattered: "

" “Gerron and Arno, for all their incomparably stronger, more expressive, and sharper talent in particular, cannot even compete in detail with the two Danish comedians Pat and Patachon, while similarly representing the physical contrast of long and thin and short and fat. But with Pat and Patachon, not only the physiques differ, but so do their corresponding different temperaments: the short fat one is mobile and takes initiative, the long skinny one is slow and reluctant.” (Walter Kaul, Berliner Börsen-Courier, 7.7 1929) "

" Sig Arno (born Siegfried Aron) “embodied, sometimes cheekily, sometimes clumsily, the Jewish petit bourgeois, without emphasizing Jewish stubbornness, and thus became a star of Weimar cinema.” (Ronnie Loew, 2006 article, “IST EIN JÜDISCHER KOMIKER JÜDISCH-KOMISCH oder, wie ein exzellenter jüdischer Geiger, schier ein exzellenter Komiker?” [IS A JEWISH COMEDIAN COMICALLY JEWISH, or, like an excellent Jewish violinist, simply an excellent comedian?]). A German-Jewish film actor, he was also a talented dancer, choreographer, and painter. After service in World War I he returned to the Hamburg stages, and from 1922 onwards performed in renowned Berlin theatres, quickly earning accolades as a popular eccentric comedian, with his tall, lanky gait and pronounced nose. From the mid-1920s, Arno started working in film, mainly comedies. Arno’s performance in Richard Oswald’s Die Frau von vierzig Jahren [The Wife of Forty Years] (1925) won him favorable reviews: “the discovery as an actor is Siegfried Arno, the German Chaplin no less, who just has to rid himself of certain traits to become a completely unique slapstick comedian of enormous stature.” (M-s, Film-Kurier, 1925) Beyond his slapstick roles, Arno appeared in over 90 films in Germany during the silent and sound era, including Pabst’s Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney (The Love of Jeanne Ney, 1926), and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora’s Box, 1929). Arno left Germany in 1933 to work in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Belgium. In 1939 he moved to Hollywood, where he appeared in around 50 productions, usually in short but memorable roles, perhaps most notably the inventor who jumps out of a window in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) and as a rebuffed, unnerving gigolo in Preston Sturges’ The Palm Beach Story (1942). "

" Versatile German-Jewish actor and director Kurt Gerron (born Kurt Gerson), with his musical talent, was a rising star in film, theatre, and cabaret in the Weimar Republic. After military service in World War I at the age of 17, Gerron was eventually declared unfit. By 1920 he had turned to acting and achieved considerable success. Due to his war injuries, Gerron suffered from increasing obesity. His massive physical appearance often led to stereotypical casting or supporting roles. In 1928, he sang “Die Moritat von Mackie Messer” [“Mack the Knife”] in Brecht’s Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera). His 60 film roles include appearances alongside Dietrich and Jannings in Der blaue Engel (1930), with Heinz Rühmann in Die Drei von der Tankstelle (1930), and a cameo in Pabst’s Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (1929). But as the National Socialists came to power, Gerron, whose chances to move to Hollywood unfortunately did not work out in time despite the efforts of Peter Lorre and Marlene Dietrich, eventually perished in the Holocaust. "

" Only two “Beef & Steak” films were made. This fragment from the second one is brief, yet it is the longer of the two surviving, artistically apparently flawed, features. Despite this, it stands as a tribute not only to the impact of the great American slapstick comedians and their two Danish peers, but – more importantly – as a stark reminder of the role of Jewish humor in German film, so violently extinguished a decade later. " – Ulrich Rüdel, Sreya Chatterjee

AA: Sig Arno and Kurt Gerron, two multi-talented actors, are disastrously abused as a comic duo in the hands of a well-meaning amateur, medical doctor Herbert Nossen dabbling in film direction. The narrative has Laurel & Hardy affinities: like in The Second Hundred Years and Liberty, the duo is coming from jail. Plain hunger drives them back to a gang of criminals. They fail in their assignments - grand larceny in a restaurant, marriage fraud - so utterly that they decide it's best to return to prison. This type of ending was later used by Roberto Rossellini in Dov'è la libertà... ? starring Totò.