Dagfin (2024 restoration Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum)

 

Joe May: Dagfin (DE 1926) with Marcella Albani (Lydia Boysen). Photo: Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen.

Joe May: Dagfin (DE 1926) with Paul Wegener (General Sabi Bey). Photo: DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main.

Dagfin lo sciatore (Italian title in Switzerland) / Dagfin der Schneeschuhläufer (German title in Switzerland) / Souls Aflame (UK).

    DE 1926. Prod: Joe May, May-Film der Phoebus-Film AG, Berlin. 

    Dir: Joe May. Scen: Joe May, Adolf Lantz, Jane Bess, Hans Székely, from the novel by Werner Scheff, Dagfin der Schneeschuhläufer (1927). Photog: Karl Drews, Edgar Ziesemer. Spec. eff: Hjalmar [Helmar] Lerski, Karl Puth (Schüfftan process). Des: Erich Zander, Ernst Schütte. Mus: Willy Schmidt-Gentner (première, Berlin). 

    Cast: Paul Richter (Dagfin Holberg, a ski guide), Marcella Albani (Lydia Boysen), Paul Wegener (Sabi Bey, a Turkish general), Mary Johnson (Tilly von Gain), Alfred Gerasch (Axel Boysen, Lydia’s husband), Alexander Murski (Col. von Gain, Tilly’s father), Nien Sön Ling (Garron, secretary to Sabi Bey), Ernst Deutsch (Assairan, an Armenian), Hedwig Wangel (maidservant), Paul Biensfeldt. 

    Censor date: 3.12. 1926 (orig. l. 3407 m, cut to 3388.71 m). première: 20.12.1926 (Phoebus Palast, Berlin). 

    Not released in Finland.

    Copy: DCP, 141 min (from 35 mm, 20 fps; reconstruction l. 3134.5 m.); titles: GER. source: DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Rediscoveries.

    Grand piano: Günter Buchwald.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in English and Italian, 7 Oct 2024.

Anke Mebold (GCM 2024): "By 1926, Joe May, one of Weimar Germany’s most versatile and omnipotent producer-directors, was in dire straits: his output as director had dwindled, box office revenue from his latest film Der Farmer von Texas was unexpectedly low, re-structuring and financing of his corporate empire was time-consuming, and partnerships with changing companies made for difficult going. In addition, his wife Mia was no longer starring in his films and his daughter Eva, a successful actress in her own right, had tragically died in 1924. Dagfin stands as a rare gem at a bleak time, an oddly neglected and forgotten Joe May “Großfilm”, a large-scale production ripe for rediscovery."

"The film opens in an Alpine ski resort – location work was done in the Jungfrau area of the Alps as well as on the Riviera, while indoor shooting was at Joe May’s Berlin Weissensee studio. Sybaritic retired Turkish general Sabi Bey is friends with Axel Boysen, a cruel man devoid of empathy. His alienation of his wife Lydia’s affections has driven her into the arms of young ski instructor Dagfin Holberg. When Boysen is discovered murdered, Dagfin assumes blame with the encouragement of Sabi Bey, whose goal is to win Lydia for himself. To protect her lover, she agrees to go off with the Turk, who however is dogged by Assairan, a survivor of the Armenian genocide who’s out for revenge."

"Dagfin was scripted by four authors, one of whom, Jane Bess, was Weimar’s most prolific screenwriter, though her career remains understudied. The literary source was a novel by Werner Scheff whose title, Dagfin der Schneeschuhläufer (roughly, “Dagfin the snowshoe hiker”) is more suggestive of a “Kulturfilm” in snowy locales rather than a dramatic narrative with undertones of foreign policy critique and women’s emancipation. Consequently, in foreign distribution the film was retitled to focus on Ernst Deutsch’s role as Assairan and his game of cat-and-mouse with the fez-wearing Sabi Bey, played by Paul Wegener. The film’s original pacifist, antimilitarist message and daringly pro-Armenian stance is bold and provocative, quite out of line with Phoebus-Film’s close ties to illicit rearmament endeavors and strongly at odds with Germany’s foreign policy of friendly relations with Turkey and Atatürk."

"Multiple subtexts can be discerned throughout the entire narrative. Sabi Bey’s aura of death is underscored by bouts of unsettling memories and visions, ambiguously presented as either clairvoyance or the onset of madness. Paul Wegener’s Orientalized performance presents the character as a man of unmatched cultivation, wrapped in a sense of honor but undercut by ill-contained sensuousness, prey to violence and animalistic lust. Together with his neighbor Colonel von Gain, they are the traditional representatives of power losing control to the younger, less rigid generation represented by people such as Dagfin, the stoic Nordic countertype to the “othered” Sabi Bey. Of the women, Lydia is fighting for liberation and self-determination, while the Colonel’s daughter Tilly, doomed to stasis, faces the threat of failure in her quest to achieve full-fledged autonomy. Axel’s moral and economic failure can be read as a stand-in for traumatized soldiers returned home, the “Kriegsheimkehrer,” the German equivalent of the Lost Generation. Haunting them all is Assairan, representative of a near-annihilated minority, played by Ernst Deutsch as a vengeful survivor devoid of liveliness, traumatized beyond repair, with expressionless staring eyes like Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari."

"The German Censors mandated cuts for public release, specifically objecting to the representation of Turkish military action against the Armenians so as not to strain German-Turkish relations. To conform to official demands, intertitles had to be rewritten diffusing responsibility and suggesting an accidental massacre rather than a wanton act of butchering Armenian civilians. These imposed cuts substantially weakened the pacifist, pro-Armenian impact of the film; similar cuts were implemented in the Swedish and Russian release versions. Only French distribution fully embraced the pacifist message, including “Ne tue pas” superimposed on a frame. Optical camera effects came courtesy of maverick cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan, whose newly minted process was utilized by special cameramen Hjalmar Lerski and Karl Puth. In Dagfin the technique was employed to craft montage sequences highlighting moments of mental and ethical confusion, vulnerability, and decline, setting a dreamlike atmosphere akin to nightmare, an iconic Weimar-era theme. These elegantly crafted superimpositions mainly mark Sabi Bey’s inner perspective: moments of lucidity akin to insanity, an uncomfortably close entanglement of self with the “other,” the simultaneity of past and present, and confusion about right and wrong, real and imagined."

Digital Restoration 

"The international restoration carried out in 2023-24 by the DFF is a joint laboratory effort of Haghefilm in the Netherlands and L’Immagine Ritrovata in Italy. The reconstruction draws on the German censor’s record and three essential film sources, each employed in near equal parts toward re-creating the lost German original version: a vintage nitrate print of the Swedish release conserved at DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, a rare 1920s vintage diacetate print of the French release conserved in the Cinémathèque de Toulouse, and an acetate duplicate negative of a Russian distribution version, from the Staatliches Filmarchiv (SFA) collection of the Bundesarchiv Filmarchiv Berlin, derived from a Gosfilmofond preservation sourced from a now-lost nitrate element. The original German titles were recreated according to the censorship record." – Anke Mebold

AA: Joe May was one of the most magnificent figures in Weimar cinema. He was not only a master producer-writer-director of Grossfilme, "big films", but he had genuine cinematic sense for instance in cinefantastique. He directed the first film adaptation of Das indische Grabmal, and Yoghi Ramigani's (Bernhard Goetzke) waking up from hibernation is not only the most startling scene in any of the three adaptations but one of the most unforgettable episodes in all fantastic cinema, comparable with Boris Karloff's awakening as The Mummy. 

As a director Joe May was at his best at the end of the silent era. He directed and wrote back to back two masterpieces, Heimkehr and Asphalt, both produced by Erich Pommer. They are sharp, deeply moving and brilliantly cinematic contemporary stories.

It was with great anticipation that I visited Dagfin, the film Joe May directed right before Heimkehr and Asphalt, his last film as a silent film producer for his own company. Dagfin is a Grossfilm with impressive production values, and it provides everything that an audience might want: a murder mystery, a complicated love story, magnificent views of the Riviera, female beauty (Marcella Albani) and male appeal: the title role is played by the hunky Paul Richter, best known as Siegfried in Die Nibelungen. In addition, Dagfin is also a breathtaking Bergfilm, a genre that had been launched by Arnold Fanck (Das Wunder des Schneeschuhs) and soon spoofed by Lubitsch (Romeo und Julia im Schnee).

So far, so good. The international restoration carried out by Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum is magnificent, and the difficult problems of the various sources have been painstakingly confronted and cracks and edges smoothed out. The restored Dagfin is good to look at.

The story is not at all times compelling, and while Marcella Albani and Paul Richter are gorgeous to look at, their performances are not as engaging as they could be.

The film's gravity thus shifts to the story of the Turkish general Sabi Bey (Paul Wegener) and his Armenian nemesis Assairan (Ernst Deutsch). Wegener is formidable, carrying his role with effortless authority. Sabi Bey interpreted by Wegener belongs to the rank of the great tyrants and monsters of Weimar cinema. Ernst Deutsch is also at his best as the avenger, and this is one of his most unforgettable performances, along with Der Golem (his earlier engagement with Wegener), Das alte Gesetz and The Third Man. Sensitive, unrelenting, unable to forget. Both are incarnations of "Shell Shock Cinema" to quote the title of Anton Kaes's classic study of Weimar cinema.

Memory montages of the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire (1915-1917) are the burning, bleeding heart of Dagfin. Assairan is the sole survivor of his large Armenian family. Sabi Bey was the general in charge of the massacre. Also he has never been able to forget, and the memories give him no rest even at night. The finale in which Assairan and Sabi Bey meet again at last is surprising and unforgettable.