Münchhausen (1943 film)
Encyclopedia
Münchhausen is a 1943
fantasy
comedy
film directed by Josef von Báky
, a prominent director who remained in Germany under the Nazi regime. Despite being made in Nazi Germany, this film is noted for the way in which it was able to avoid the politics of the time. Science fiction author David Wingrove
has commented that this work "sidesteps immediate political issues whilst conjuring up marvellous visual images of an ageless pastoral Germany."
is propositioned by a young woman who is engaged to another man. He graciously rejects her advance, and as she leaves, she asks him to turn on the light. The camera follows his hand to a modern light switch, and the young woman drives off in an automobile. The next day, the Baron, out of his costume and in modern dress, regales two of his guests with stories of the famous Baron Münchhausen, to whom his guests think he is distantly related.
He begins in his home town of Bodenwerder, back from an adventure with his trusted servant Christian Kuchenreutter, who has invented a gun that can shoot accurately at a distance of 100 miles. The sorcerer
Cagliostro
visits, and asks the Baron to join him in a quest to take over the throne of Poland. The Baron declines, explaining that he has no interest in power, just in adventure.
In St. Petersburg, the Baron joins the court of Catherine the Great. She offers to appoint him to be her general aide-de-camp
and install him in a room below hers, with a secret elevator between the two so that they can carry on their affair. He agrees to stay until one of them wants more freedom. While in her court, the Baron clashes with Prince Potemkin. The pair fight a "cuckoo duel" in a darkened room, where one party is obliged to call "cuckoo" while the other aims and fires a pistol at the sound of his opponent's voice. The Baron is wounded in the duel, and he goes to Cagliostro to tend to the wound. After healing the Baron, Cagliostro asks him what he desires most of all, since money and power do not interest him. The Baron answers that he wishes to be as young as he is at that moment, for as long as he desires. Cagliostro grants his wish.
On the Turkish front, Potemkin lights a cannon while the Baron sits astride it. The Baron rides the cannonball over to the Turkish palace, where he is enslaved along with an Italian princess. After two months as a slave, the Baron is reunited with Kuchenreutter and his runner, who can cover hundreds of miles in a matter of minutes. He makes a wager for his freedom and the princess' with the king, wherein his runner must retrieve a tokay
from Vienna within an hour. After winning the bet, the king tries to pass off a counterfeit princess on the Baron. Incensed, he slips on a ring that makes him invisible and absconds with the princess.
The pair escape to Venice, where her brother is offended by her dalliance with the Baron. He challenges the Baron to a duel with rapiers. The Baron humiliates the brother, leaving him suicidal. The Baron and Kuchenreutter escape in a hot air balloon, which takes them to the moon. On the moon, they marvel at how time moves so swiftly: while Münchhausen does not change at all, Kuchenreutter ages rapidly. They meet two inhabitants of the moon, one of whom moves about as a disembodied head. She explains to the Baron how no Earthlings can last more than a day on the Moon before they dry up in smoke and blow away. However, before the Baron can leave the moon, Kuchenreutter has a heart attack and dies in his arms, disappearing in a puff of smoke.
As the Baron finishes his tale, his guests correct him on some of its historical inaccuracies, citing the fact that the real Baron died before some of the events took place. This prompts the Baron to confess that he is in fact the same man as the legend, and that he has been married happily to his wife for 40 years. Unnerved by his admission, the guests quickly leave. The Baron's wife begs him to flee, as he usually does when his escapades get out of control, upset that he has confessed the truth. The Baron refuses to go, and instead, he revokes Cagliostro's gift. He immediately ages to match the advanced years of his wife.
Minister
Joseph Goebbels
ordered the production of Münchhausen in order to celebrate the 25th anniversary
of the UFA film studio which released it. Goebbels was also inspired by and wished to compete with the lavish Technicolor
pictures coming out of Hollywood at the time, The Wizard of Oz
chief among them. The banned author, Erich Kästner
, wrote much of the film's screenplay. However, the pseudonym
Kästner wrote under, "Berthold Bürger" (Bürger means "citizen", but also refers to Gottfried August Bürger
, one of the writers who made the Münchhausen tales popular), was left out of the credits. One suspiciously political statement of Kästner to be heard in the film: on the moon, where Münchhausen experiences a quite weird time warp, he realizes "Nicht meine Uhr ist kaputt, die Zeit ist kaputt!" ("My watch is not broken, it's time that is broken").
The film was released in March, one month after Goebbels' Sportpalast speech
in response to the Soviet defeat of the German 6th Army. A demoralized Germany, which had begun to realize that the war might not end in victory, took to the film as a welcome diversion. It easily made back its exorbitant budget.
Some of the film's footage was long thought to be missing. In the original March 1943 release the film was 134 minutes long. Over the years the length of the film gradually decreased until the 1954 version, which was 101 minutes long (with the generally screened version being a mere 88 minutes). Today a 114-minute version exists in the Murnau Foundation.
Münchhausen was the third feature film made in Germany using the new Agfacolor
negative-positive material.
's book Un Sac de billes, the protagonist/author sees the film and labels it as Nazi propaganda.
(NTSC, Region 1) by Kino Video on July 20, 2004. The same version was released on PAL (Region 2) DVD by the British Eureka Video in July of 2005.
1943 in film
The year 1943 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* January 3 - 1st missing persons telecast * February 20 - American film studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor films....
fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
film directed by Josef von Báky
Josef von Baky
Josef von Báky was a Hungarian filmmaker. He was also known as Josef v. Baky and József Baky. He was born in the town of Zombor in the Kingdom of Hungary in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, since 1920 Sombor in Yugoslavia., . He worked as an assistant to Geza von Bolvary.He worked as director or...
, a prominent director who remained in Germany under the Nazi regime. Despite being made in Nazi Germany, this film is noted for the way in which it was able to avoid the politics of the time. Science fiction author David Wingrove
David Wingrove
David Wingrove is a British science fiction writer. He is well-known as the author of the Chung Kuo novels . He is also the co-author of the three Myst novels....
has commented that this work "sidesteps immediate political issues whilst conjuring up marvellous visual images of an ageless pastoral Germany."
Summary
The film opens at an 18th-century ball, where Baron Hieronymus von MünchhausenBaron Munchhausen
Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Freiherr von Münchhausen , usually known as Baron Münchhausen in English, was a German nobleman born in Bodenwerder and a famous recounter of tall tales....
is propositioned by a young woman who is engaged to another man. He graciously rejects her advance, and as she leaves, she asks him to turn on the light. The camera follows his hand to a modern light switch, and the young woman drives off in an automobile. The next day, the Baron, out of his costume and in modern dress, regales two of his guests with stories of the famous Baron Münchhausen, to whom his guests think he is distantly related.
He begins in his home town of Bodenwerder, back from an adventure with his trusted servant Christian Kuchenreutter, who has invented a gun that can shoot accurately at a distance of 100 miles. The sorcerer
Magician (fantasy)
A magician, mage, sorcerer, sorceress, wizard, enchanter, enchantress, thaumaturge or a person known under one of many other possible terms is someone who uses or practices magic that derives from supernatural or occult sources...
Cagliostro
Alessandro Cagliostro
Count Alessandro di Cagliostro was the alias of the occultist Giuseppe Balsamo , an Italian adventurer.-Origin:The history of Cagliostro is shrouded in rumour, propaganda and mysticism...
visits, and asks the Baron to join him in a quest to take over the throne of Poland. The Baron declines, explaining that he has no interest in power, just in adventure.
In St. Petersburg, the Baron joins the court of Catherine the Great. She offers to appoint him to be her general aide-de-camp
Aide-de-camp
An aide-de-camp is a personal assistant, secretary, or adjutant to a person of high rank, usually a senior military officer or a head of state...
and install him in a room below hers, with a secret elevator between the two so that they can carry on their affair. He agrees to stay until one of them wants more freedom. While in her court, the Baron clashes with Prince Potemkin. The pair fight a "cuckoo duel" in a darkened room, where one party is obliged to call "cuckoo" while the other aims and fires a pistol at the sound of his opponent's voice. The Baron is wounded in the duel, and he goes to Cagliostro to tend to the wound. After healing the Baron, Cagliostro asks him what he desires most of all, since money and power do not interest him. The Baron answers that he wishes to be as young as he is at that moment, for as long as he desires. Cagliostro grants his wish.
On the Turkish front, Potemkin lights a cannon while the Baron sits astride it. The Baron rides the cannonball over to the Turkish palace, where he is enslaved along with an Italian princess. After two months as a slave, the Baron is reunited with Kuchenreutter and his runner, who can cover hundreds of miles in a matter of minutes. He makes a wager for his freedom and the princess' with the king, wherein his runner must retrieve a tokay
Tokay
Tokay may refer to:* Tokaji wine , wines produced in the Tokaj-Hegyalja region of Hungary* Tokaj , wine region in South-Eastern Slovakia and wines produced in that region.* Grape varieties:...
from Vienna within an hour. After winning the bet, the king tries to pass off a counterfeit princess on the Baron. Incensed, he slips on a ring that makes him invisible and absconds with the princess.
The pair escape to Venice, where her brother is offended by her dalliance with the Baron. He challenges the Baron to a duel with rapiers. The Baron humiliates the brother, leaving him suicidal. The Baron and Kuchenreutter escape in a hot air balloon, which takes them to the moon. On the moon, they marvel at how time moves so swiftly: while Münchhausen does not change at all, Kuchenreutter ages rapidly. They meet two inhabitants of the moon, one of whom moves about as a disembodied head. She explains to the Baron how no Earthlings can last more than a day on the Moon before they dry up in smoke and blow away. However, before the Baron can leave the moon, Kuchenreutter has a heart attack and dies in his arms, disappearing in a puff of smoke.
As the Baron finishes his tale, his guests correct him on some of its historical inaccuracies, citing the fact that the real Baron died before some of the events took place. This prompts the Baron to confess that he is in fact the same man as the legend, and that he has been married happily to his wife for 40 years. Unnerved by his admission, the guests quickly leave. The Baron's wife begs him to flee, as he usually does when his escapades get out of control, upset that he has confessed the truth. The Baron refuses to go, and instead, he revokes Cagliostro's gift. He immediately ages to match the advanced years of his wife.
History
Nazi PropagandaPropaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
Minister
Minister (government)
A minister is a politician who holds significant public office in a national or regional government. Senior ministers are members of the cabinet....
Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
ordered the production of Münchhausen in order to celebrate the 25th anniversary
Anniversary
An anniversary is a day that commemorates or celebrates a past event that occurred on the same day of the year as the initial event. For example, the first event is the initial occurrence or, if planned, the inaugural of the event. One year later would be the first anniversary of that event...
of the UFA film studio which released it. Goebbels was also inspired by and wished to compete with the lavish Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
pictures coming out of Hollywood at the time, The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
chief among them. The banned author, Erich Kästner
Erich Kästner
Emil Erich Kästner was a German author, poet, screenwriter and satirist, known for his humorous, socially astute poetry and children's literature.-Dresden 1899–1919:...
, wrote much of the film's screenplay. However, the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Kästner wrote under, "Berthold Bürger" (Bürger means "citizen", but also refers to Gottfried August Bürger
Gottfried August Bürger
Gottfried August Bürger was a German poet. His ballads were very popular in Germany. His most noted ballad, Lenore, found an audience beyond readers of the German language in an English adaptation and a French translation.-Biography:He was born in Molmerswende , Principality of Halberstadt, where...
, one of the writers who made the Münchhausen tales popular), was left out of the credits. One suspiciously political statement of Kästner to be heard in the film: on the moon, where Münchhausen experiences a quite weird time warp, he realizes "Nicht meine Uhr ist kaputt, die Zeit ist kaputt!" ("My watch is not broken, it's time that is broken").
The film was released in March, one month after Goebbels' Sportpalast speech
Sportpalast speech
The Sportpalast or total war speech was a speech delivered by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels at the Berlin Sportpalast to a large but carefully selected audience on 18 February 1943 calling for a total war, as the tide of World War II had turned against Nazi Germany and its Axis allies.It is...
in response to the Soviet defeat of the German 6th Army. A demoralized Germany, which had begun to realize that the war might not end in victory, took to the film as a welcome diversion. It easily made back its exorbitant budget.
Some of the film's footage was long thought to be missing. In the original March 1943 release the film was 134 minutes long. Over the years the length of the film gradually decreased until the 1954 version, which was 101 minutes long (with the generally screened version being a mere 88 minutes). Today a 114-minute version exists in the Murnau Foundation.
Münchhausen was the third feature film made in Germany using the new Agfacolor
Agfacolor
thumb|An Agfacolor slide dating from the early 1940s. While the colors themselves hold up well after 60 years, damages visible include dust and [[Newton's rings]].Agfacolor is a series of color photographic products produced by Agfa of Germany...
negative-positive material.
Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Hans Albers Hans Albers Hans Philipp August Albers was a German actor and singer. He was the single biggest male movie star in Germany between 1930 and 1945 and one of the most popular German actors of the twentieth century.- Life and work :... |
Baron Münchhausen |
| Ilse Werner Ilse Werner Ilse Werner was an actress and singer. She was born to a Dutch father and a German mother and was a Dutch citizen by birth... |
Isabella d'Este |
| Wilhelm Bendow | Der Mondmann |
| Brigitte Horney Brigitte Horney Brigitte Horney was a German theatre and film actress. Best remembered was her role as Empress Katherine the Great in the 1943 version of the UFA film version of Baron Munchhausen, directed by Josef von Báky, with Hans Albers in the title role.-Life and work:Brigitte Horney was the daughter of... |
Zarin Katharina II |
| Michael Bohnen Michael Bohnen Franz Michael Bohnen was a German bass baritone opera singer and actor.-Life:Michael Bohnen was born in Cologne. He trained in opera singing at the Hochschule für Musik Köln and with a private tutor, making his debut in 1910 at the Stadttheater Düsseldorf. In 1912 he appeared at the Hoftheater... |
Herzog Karl von Braunschweig |
| Ferdinand Marian Ferdinand Marian Ferdinand Marian was an Austrian theatre and film actor, best known for playing the leading character of Joseph Süß Oppenheimer in the Nazi propaganda film Jud Süß.-Life and career:... |
Graf Cagliostro |
| Hans Brausewetter Hans Brausewetter Hans Brausewetter was a German film actor of the silent era. He appeared in 135 films between 1922 and 1945. He appeared in the 1923 film The Treasure, which was directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst... |
Freiherr von Hartenfeld |
| Hermann Speelmans | Christian Kuchenreutter |
| Marina von Ditmar | Sophie von Riedesel |
| Andrews Engelmann | Fürst Potemkin |
| Käthe Haack Käthe Haack Käthe Haack was a German actress. She appeared in over 200 films between 1915 and 1980.She was born Käte Lisbeth Minna Sophie Isolde Haack in Berlin, Germany and was previously married to actor Heinrich Schroth, with whom she had a daughter, actress Hannelore Schroth in 1922.-Selected... |
Baronin Münchhausen |
| Waldemar Leitgeb | Fürst Grigorij Orlow |
| Walter Lieck | Der Läufer |
| Hubert von Meyerinck Hubert von Meyerinck Hubert von Meyerinck was a German film actor. He appeared in over 280 films between 1921 and 1970.He was born in Potsdam, Germany and died in Hamburg, Germany.-Selected filmography:* Manon Lescaut ... |
Prinz Anton Ulrich |
| Jaspar von Oertzen | Graf Lanskoi |
| Werner Scharf | Prinz Francesco d'Este |
| Armin Schweizer | Johann |
| Leo Slezak Leo Slezak Leo Slezak was a world-famous Moravian tenor. He was associated in particular with German opera as well as the title role in Verdi's Otello.- Beginnings :... |
Sultan Abd ul Hamid |
In popular culture
In Joseph JoffoJoseph Joffo
Joseph Joffo is a French author who is perhaps best known for his memoirs Un sac de billes , which has been translated into eighteen languages.-Career:Joffo was born in Paris in the 18th arrondissement...
's book Un Sac de billes, the protagonist/author sees the film and labels it as Nazi propaganda.
Availability
A 110-minute version of this film was released on DVDDVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
(NTSC, Region 1) by Kino Video on July 20, 2004. The same version was released on PAL (Region 2) DVD by the British Eureka Video in July of 2005.
See also
- The Adventures of Baron MunchausenThe Adventures of Baron MunchausenThe Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a 1988 British adventure comedy film directed by Terry Gilliam, starring John Neville, Sarah Polley, Eric Idle, Jonathan Pryce, Oliver Reed, Uma Thurman, and Robin Williams.-Plot:...
(1988), by Terry GilliamTerry GilliamTerrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys... - The Fabulous Baron MunchausenThe Fabulous Baron MunchausenThe Fabulous Baron Munchausen is a 1961 tinted Czechoslovak romantic adventure film directed by Karel Zeman, based on the tales about Baron Münchhausen. The film combines animation with live-action and is heavily stylised.-Plot:...
(1961), by Karel ZemanKarel ZemanKarel Zeman was a Czech film director, artist, production designer and animator. Because of his creative use of special effects and animation in his films, he has often been called the "Czech Méliès."-Life:... - Les Aventures de baron de MunchhausenLes Aventures de baron de MunchhausenLes Aventures de baron de Munchhausen is a French film released in November 1911 based on a book by Gottfried August Bürger. It was one of the last films from early 20th century French filmmaker Georges Méliès...
(1911) by Georges MélièsGeorges MélièsGeorges Méliès , full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects...