German postcard. Photo: Nordische Film / Nordisk. Olaf Fönss as Dr. Friedrich von Kammacher and probably Alma Hinding as his maddened wife in Atlantis (August Blom, 1913).
Spanish collector card by Reclam Films, no. 1 of 6. Photo: Nordisk. Olaf Fønss and Ida Orloff as Ingigerd Hahlstrøm in Atlantis (August Blom, 1913).
Spanish collector card by Reclam Films, no. 2 of 6. Photo: Nordisk. Ida Orloff in Atlantis (August Blom, 1913).
Only one year after the sinking of the RMS Titanic
Atlantis (1913) is a Danish silent drama directed by August Blom, the head of production at the Nordisk Film Company. As Atlantis had many locations at home and abroad (including the streets of Berlin, but also Dragør, Amager, Klampenborg (Denmark), Finse (Norway) and New York City) and numerous scenes were to be shot simultaneously, Nordisk-Film engaged the Danish director Robert Dinesen and the young Hungarian filmmaker Mihály Kertész - the later Michael Curtiz - as assistant directors. Kertész also made a brief appearance in front of the camera with Kammacher's student friend Hans Füllenberg.
Doctor Friedrich von Kammacher (Olaf Fönss) is a well-known bacteriologist. When his wife Angèle becomes mentally ill, he has Angèle admitted to a specialist clinic and follows his parents' advice to travel to Berlin. There he wants to get some distance from the events of the past and recharge his batteries both mentally and physically. In the German capital, Kammacher meets the dancer Ingigerd Hahlstrøm (Ida Orloff) at a matinee. Her seductive dance ‘The Sacrifice of the Spider’ does not fail to have an effect on the doctor. When he reads in a newspaper that Ingigerd will travel to New York on the passenger steamer SS Roland, Von Kammacher also buys a ticket.
The crossing turns out to be a disaster. Kammacher learns that Ingigerd, who is travelling decadently with her pet monkey and a white cockatoo, already has a steady companion on board, although that does not stop her from flirting with him either. Halfway through the journey, there is a serious collision with a shipwreck in the middle of a fog bank. The Roland is badly damaged, the water pours in and the ship begins to sink. Panic ensues among the people.
Ingigerd can no longer get her cabin door open and suffers a fainting fit as a result. Kammacher enters the cabin from outside and carries her into a lifeboat. During the catastrophic wreck of the ship, many drown, including Ingigerd's wealthy father. Once landed, Ingigerd gives up her profession as a dancer, which has always been her vocation, and retakes her frivolous life and rejects Friedrich. He meets a female sculptor, Eva (Ebba Thomsen), and they become good friends. A good friend lends Friedrich his lodge in the mountains, so he can recover. Kammacher receives a telegram that his wife Angèle has died. As a result, the widower falls seriously ill. Eva tends to him and they fall in love. With her, he returns to Europe.
The production of Atlantis (August Blom, 1913) was already considered so lavish and enormous during the filming period that even serious newspapers wrote about it at a time when cinematography, which had previously been considered disreputable, was barely reported on. Released only one year after the sinking of the RMS Titanic, Atlantis (1913) drew considerable attention as well as criticism due to similarities to the actual tragedy. However, Hauptmann's novel was published in serialised form in the Berliner Tageblatt a month before the Titanic disaster.
Spanish collector card by Reclam Films, no. 3 of 6. Photo: Nordisk. Olaf Fønss and Ida Orloff in Atlantis (August Blom, 1913).
Spanish collector card by Reclam Films, no. 4 of 6. Photo: Nordisk. Scene from Atlantis (August Blom, 1913). The shipwreck of the ocean liner Roland.
An attempt to raise the quality of cinematography
Atlantis (August Blom, 1913) was based on the 1912 novel by Gerhart Hauptmann. It starred an international cast headlined by Danish matinée idol Olaf Fønss and Austrian-Russian opera diva Ida Orloff, Hauptmann's friend. Because his original story was partly autobiographical, Hauptmann's contract with Nordisk Film required two roles to be acted by the actual people who were their inspiration. The parts of Ingigerd and the armless virtuoso Arthur Stoss were played by the same persons, who were Hauptmann's models when he wrote his novel.
These two, Ida Orloff and Carl Herman Unthan were his traveling companions on Hauptmann's trip across the Atlantic. Orloff had had a romantic relationship with Hauptmann beginning several years earlier when she was a 16-year-old cabaret dancer. Reviewers of Atlantis criticised the choice of Orloff because, by the time of filming, she was no longer a svelte athletic dancer who could embody the eroticism of the part. The other required actor was Carl Herman Unthan (credited as Charles Unthan), a Prussian violinist who had been born without arms and learned to use his feet as hands. Although his abilities were impressive, critics of Atlantis felt his appearance in the film was simply extraneous and non-integral to the story. Nevertheless, Nordisk Films had been forced to cast them.
Around 80 leading actors and around 100 supporting actors were engaged in the ship scenes. In addition, an ocean liner (the C. F. Tietgen of the Danish shipping company DFDS), three overseas cargo ships, two tugboats, numerous motorboats and a wreck rebuilt at considerable expense were used. The sinking scene used a large-scale model and about 500 extras as swimmers and was filmed in the bay of Køge, Denmark. With production costs of around half a million kroner - 80,000 kroner for the sinking of the ship - Atlantis was considered the most expensive film of its time and also the first monumental production in Scandinavia. The film's running time of almost two hours was also unusually long for the time.
This film adaptation of Gerhart Hauptmann's literary novel stands for an attempt to raise the quality of cinematography, which until then had been regarded as little more than simple fairground entertainment, with the auteur film and thus to meet a gradually emancipating public taste. In 1913, ambitious literary film adaptations were made in various Central European countries. In Denmark, in addition to Atlantis, an adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's 'Liebelei' was produced, Elskovsleg (August Blom, Holger-Madsen, 1913). In Germany, the literary films Der Andere/The Other (Max Mack, 1913) with Albert Bassermann and based on a play by Paul Lindau, and the Edgar Alan Poe adaptation Der Student von Prag/The Student of Prague (Hanns Heinz Ewers, Stellan Rye, 1913) starring Paul Wegener, were made. In Austria-Hungary, the theatre star Alexander Girardi played a selection of his greatest theatre successes in his country's first major film production, Der Millionenonkel/The Millionaire's Uncle (Hubert Marischka, 1913).
Atlantis (August Blom, 1913) was not a huge box office hit at the time. The film was worldwide distributed, with an unhappy ending for the Russians. In Germany, the country of Gerhart Hauptmann, the film did exceptionally well, in other countries rather poorly. In Norway, the film was banned because authorities felt it was in poor taste to turn a tragedy into entertainment. Decades later, film historian Erik Ulrichsen hailed the film as a masterpiece of Danish early cinema and one of the first modern films. Atlantis was restored and released on LaserDisc in 1993 and in DVD format in 2005. The restoration was created through a high-definition scan of a restored negative and the tinting was recreated using an abbreviated version from The National Film Center in Japan.
Spanish collector card by Reclam Films, no. 5 of 6. Photo: Nordisk. Olaf Fønss and Ida Orloff in Atlantis (August Blom, 1913).
Spanish collector card by Reclam Films, no. 6 of 6. Photo: Nordisk. Olaf Fønss and Ebba Thomsen as Eva in Atlantis (August Blom, 1913).
Sources: Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
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