We asked female film and art critics to look at the Goethe-Institut Toronto's exhibition Early UFA Film Posters: Projecting Women with eight visuals from famous as well as rarely seen or lost Berlin UFA films from the 1920s and 30s that portray women as heroines or seductresses, debutantes or harlots. Here, German art history student Sara Schurmann tackles the mystery of the lost Lubitsch and his dancers:
The five nimble-footed dancers leap from one finger to the next. Sally, the assistant detective, seems to enjoy watching the tempestuous spectacle on his hand as he smiles at the smartly dressed ladies. This surreal scene is on the poster designed by Josef Fenneker for the film THE ROSENTOPF CASE, on view at the Goethe Media Space Toronto until 14 October 2017. But not only the Expressionist design and the portrayal of women on the film poster raise numerous questions. The comedy released in Berlin in 1918 is among the lost silents by Ernst Lubitsch and we know very little about the film.
One thing we do know, however, is that the poster depicts Lubitsch himself with his striking eyebrows as the director of and also the lead actor in THE ROSENTOPF CASE.
In the police farce, in his role as Sally, the clever assistant of Detective Ceeps, he succeeds in solving the case. The comedy is one of a series of movies from the years 1916 to 1918 in which Lubitsch, in the role of Sally, climbs the social ladder. In 1918, Lubitsch finally produced a detective film thanks to the detective series STUART WEBBS, which was successful at home and abroad. Modelled on Sherlock Holmes, director, producer and actor Ernst Reicher, as the highly intelligent and amiable detective Stuart Webbs, solved about 50 complex criminal cases from 1914 to 1929. The extraordinary series is thus the archetype of the early German detective film and found numerous imitators who attempted to join in on the success.
Known for his frolicsome comedies starring witty female leads, Lubitsch parodied the popular detective series with THE ROSENTOPF CASE. Although we can no longer witness the typical “Lubitsch touch” in the film itself –with strong female actresses like Trude Hesterberg as dancer Bella Spaketti– painter and graphic artist Josef Fenneker captured the racy humour in his film poster. As one of the most important poster designers of the Weimar Republic, Fenneker’s works were seen regularly on the boulevards of Berlin from 1918 onwards. His posters exhibit contemporary styles such as Expressionism and
Jugendstil, which, through the depiction of distorted figures, extreme lighting and unnatural colours, impressively illustrate the characters of the respective films as well as fast and gaudy life in the Weimar Republic.
With its orange background and cheerful tone, the poster for THE ROSENTOPF CASE visibly stands out from Fenneker’s often dramatically gloomy oeuvre. The figure of Sally is drawn powerfully in charcoal and blends into the background from the shoulder downwards. But the focus is on the five dancers at the centre of the picture who seem to turn the head of the assistant detective. Although Sally is disproportionately large compared to them, he does seems neither all-powerful nor particularly bright. The women are in power here. And so the sight of the poster alone reveals the possibility of stories about strong women, distracted men and saucy relationships. The plot of the lost movie cannot be grasped completely, however, just like the extraordinary women who could not be restrained during the upbeat Weimar Era.
Sara Schurmann studies art history at Westfälische Wilhelms University in Münster, Germany, and currently interns in the Goethe-Institut Toronto program department.
Image: Josef Fenneker's poster art for THE ROSENTOPF CASE, courtesy Austrian National Library
