21 February 2019

Das Glück der Frau Beate (1918)

Little is known about the German silent film Das Glück der Frau Beate/The happiness of Mrs. Beate (Alwin Neuß, Otto Rippert, 1918) starring Ressel Orla. With her dark hair, her wide eyes, and her Madonna-like face, Orla conquered German audiences and became a star in the late 1910s. She got her own Ressel Orla film series for the company Decla of producer Erich Pommer. One of these films was Das Glück der Frau Beate/The happiness of Mrs. Beate (Alwin Neuß, Otto Rippert, 1918).

Ressel Orla in Das Glück der Frau Beate
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 548/1. Photo: Decla. Ressel Orla in Das Glück der Frau Beate/The happiness of Mrs. Beate (Alwin Neuß, Otto Rippert, 1918). The man could be Emil Birron.

Ressel Orla in Das Glück der Frau Beate
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 548/2. Photo: Decla. Ressel Orla in Das Glück der Frau Beate (1918). The man on the right with the white tie could be Emil Birron.

Ressel Orla in Das Glück der Frau Beate (1918)
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 548/3. Photo: Decla. Ressel Orla in Das Glück der Frau Beate (1918).

The Sherlock Holmes of the silent era


What do we know about Das Glück der Frau Beate/The happiness of Mrs. Beate (1918)? The film is considered lost and the plot is unclear. Das Glück der Frau Beate was produced by Decla Film (originally Deutsche Eclair), a German film production and distribution company of the silent era.

Decla was formed in 1911 as the German subsidiary of the French company Eclair, it was taken into German ownership in 1915 during the First World War. Under the leadership of Erich Pommer, Decla emerged as one of the leading German film companies of the early Weimar era.

The film was directed by a tandem, Alwin Neuß, and Otto Rippert, according to IMDb and Wikipedia. However, Filmportal.de claims that only Neuß was the director. Neuß was a well-known actor/director, noted for playing Sherlock Holmes in a series of silent films during the 1910s. Rippert was a noted film director during the silent era. In 1912 he started to work as a director for Continental-Kunstfilm of Berlin and made some ten films between 1912 and 1914. However, his reputation as one of the pioneers of German silent film rests on some of his later achievements,

Otto Rippert directed the classic silent film Homunculus (1916), produced by Deutsche Bioskop in 1916. Homunculus is a six-part serial science fiction film involving mad scientists, superhuman androids, and sinister technology. The film foreshadows various elements of Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), as well as serving as a model for later adaptations of Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein'.

Das Glück der Frau Beate/The luck of Mrs. Beate (1918) was the only film Otto Rippert and Alwin Neuss directed together. In 1924, Rippert stopped directing films and began to work as a film editor. The fame of Alwin Neuss began to fade in the 1920s, and he only appeared in few more films. The sound film ended his film career.

Ressel Orla
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 548/4. Photo: Decla. Ressel Orla in Das Glück der Frau Beate (1918). The man left may be Emil Birron, while the man in the back is Max Ruhbeck.

Ressel Orla in Das Glück der Frau Beate (1918)
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 548/5. Photo: Decla. Ressel Orla in Das Glück der Frau Beate (1918). 

A ravishing, elementary force


From her film debut in 1914 on, Ressel Orla mostly worked in comedies. Walter Turszinsky had discovered her and engaged her for Ernst Lubitsch's film Die Firma heiratet (1914), for which he wrote the script. After that, Orla played in two other films with Lubitsch as actor or director, Die Stolz der Firma (1914) and Blindekuh (1915). She became very successful.

In 1918, she was offered a dramatic role in the film Die Sünde/The Sin (Alwin Neuss, 1918) by producer Erich Pommer of the Decla Film Gesellschaft. The critics were positive. The Berlin trade journal Lichtbild-Bühne (Bd. 11, Nr. 28, 13.07.1918, S. 72) raved about her: "Ressel Orla appears as the well-bred woman who knows to curb her temper, which yet explodes at moments and dominated everything around her. (...) In these scenes full of fervour and passion Ressel Orla was a ravishing, elementary force."

Erich Pommer offered Ressel Orla her own film series for the Decla company. One of these Decla dramas was Das Glück der Frau Beate/The happiness of Mrs. Beate (Alwin Neuß, Otto Rippert, 1918), based on a screenplay by Max Jungk. Though Beate's husband has become rich because of her, he repudiates her when suspecting her of adultery. Ressel Orla starred as Beate. Her husband was played by Emil Birron and her admirer by Max Ruhbeck.

IMDb suggests that Das Glück der Frau Beate (1918) may have been withheld from release. However, Filmportal.de mentions that the film premiered on 2 August 1918 at the movie palace Marmorhaus in the centre of Berlin. Orla's most important film role followed a year after Das Glück der Frau Beate (1918), that of the villain Lio Sha opposite Carl de Vogt in Fritz Lang's two-part adventure film Die Spinnen/The Spiders (1919). She also played the title role in Lang's Halbblut/Half-blood (Fritz Lang, 1919), again opposite Carl de Vogt. The film is presumed to be lost.

German actor Emil Bir(r)on made 29 films between 1917 and 1935, including Die Weber/The Weavers (Friedrich Zelnik, 1927) in which he played King Frederick William IV. Max Ruhbeck was a German actor who appeared in more than ninety films from 1915 to 1923, including Homunculus (Otto Rippert, 1916).

Ressel Orla in Das Glück der Frau Beate (1918)
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 548/6. Photo: Decla. Ressel Orla in Das Glück der Frau Beate (1918).

Ressel Orla in Das Glück der Frau Beate (1918)
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 548/7. Photo: Decla. Ressel Orla in Das Glück der Frau Beate (1918).

Ressel Orla in Das Glück der Frau Beate (1918)
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 548/8. Photo: Decla. Ressel Orla in Das Glück der Frau Beate (1918).

Tomorrow EFSP has a post on another film by director Otto Rippert from the same year, the 'Sittenfilm' Der Weg, der zur Verdammnis führt, I. Das Schicksal der Änne Wolter/The Road to Damnation, 1. The Fate of Anne Wolter (Otto Rippert, 1918), with Charlotte Böcklin.

Sources: Early German Film Database, Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Filmportal, Wikipedia (English and German), and IMDb.

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