Jump to content

The Love of Jeanne Ney

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Robert Kerber (talk | contribs) at 22:07, 15 December 2022. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The Love of Jeanne Ney
Directed byGeorg Wilhelm Pabst
Screenplay by
Based onLjubov' Žanny Nej
by Ilya Ehrenburg
Starring
Cinematography
Edited by
Music byHans May (premiere)
Production
company
Distributed byParufamet
Release date
  • 6 December 1927 (1927-12-06) (Germany)
[1]
Running time
  • 107 mins. (Germany)
  • 86 mins. (US)[a]
CountryGermany
Languages
  • Silent film
  • German intertitles

The Love of Jeanne Ney (Template:Lang-de), released as Lusts of the Flesh in the United Kingdom,[3] is a 1927 German silent drama film directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst based on a novel by Ilya Ehrenburg.[1]

Plot

Jeanne is the daughter of André Ney, a French diplomat and political observer in Russia during the revolution. To finance his drug-induced, decadent lifestyle, Khalibiev sells Ney a list with names of alleged Bolshevik agents. Jeanne's lover, Andreas Labov, and one of his Bolshevik comrades show up in her father's office, demanding to hand over the list. Ney shoots at the intruders and is shot dead in return. Soon after, the revolutionary army storms the city. Jeanne flees to Paris with the help of a Bolshevik officer, who secretly gives Andreas her address.

In Paris, Jeanne takes up a job as a secretary at her uncle Raymond's detective agency. Khalibiev, who followed her to Paris, sets about seducing Raymond's blind daughter Gabrielle, planning to murder her after their marriage and run away with her money. Margot, a young woman working at a bar whom Khalibiev told of his plan, warns Gabrielle and Raymond. Andreas, who has been sent to Paris as a political agitator, reunites with Jeanne and spends the night with her at a hotel.

Khalibiev sneaks into Raymond's office, murders him and steals a diamond which had been declared missing and found by one of Raymond's employees. He frames Andreas by leaving behind Andreas' coat and photo. Andreas is arrested by the police, appearing all the more suspicious due to the money he has been carrying for his agitational work.

When Jeanne learns of Andreas' arrest, she looks for Khalibiev to help clear Andreas of the charges brought against him, as they ran into one another on the night of the murder. She boards the train Khalibiev took to flee the city, trying to convince him to testify on Andreas' behalf. Khalibiev makes sexual advances to her and attempts to silence her with his handkerchief, exposing the stolen diamond. Jeanne cries for help, and Khalibiev is arrested.

Cast

Production

Ehrenburg, initially excited about the opportunity to work with Pabst, whose films he held in esteem, was soon disappointed to find that the director was more concerned with set details than the absurdity of the script.[4] Protesting in vain against Pabst's changes to his original work (including a happy ending not in the book), he tried to have his name removed from the titles, condemning the resulting film for its philistine morals, including a scene in which communist Andreas kneels in front of the holy virgin.[4]

Reception and legacy

Shortly after the film's premiere, Edmund Meisel, composer of the scores of Battleship Potemkin and other films of the era, wrote a letter to Sergei Eisenstein in which he called the film's changes to the novel, apart from moments of unintentional humour, "not funny but profoundly sad".[4]

In his 1947 book From Caligari to Hitler, film historian Siegfried Kracauer noted, "The Love of Jeanne Ney exceeds [Pabst's] Joyless Street not only in scope of vision, but in the determination with which it records reality".[5] Kracauer nonetheless commented negatively on the production company's deletion of all provoking political and moral content of the source material.[5]

For James Monaco (writing in 1991), The Love of Jeanne Ney "marked an important advance in Pabst's technique". His rapid cutting on movement "foreshadowed the dialogue cutting of sound film" and adds to the "surprisingly modern" appearance of his silent films.[6]

Reflecting on Pabst's filmography in his 2006 essay for the Criterion Collection, J. Hoberman rated The Love of Jeanne Ney as one of "the culminating works of silent cinema", being "an ambitious attempt to synthesize Soviet montage, Hollywood action-melodrama, and German mise-en-scène."[7]

Notes

  1. ^ Running times taken from the German and US versions on the Blu-ray releases by Kino (2020) and Eureka Masters of Cinema (2021).[2]

References

  1. ^ a b "Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney". Filmportal.de. Retrieved 7 December 2021.
  2. ^ "The Love of Jeanne Ney". DVDBeaver. Retrieved 15 December 2022.
  3. ^ Goble, Alan, ed. (1999). The Complete Index to Literary Sources in Film. Walter de Gruyter. p. 144. ISBN 9783598114922.
  4. ^ a b c Rutz, Gerd-Peter (2000). Darstellungen von Film in literarischen Fiktionen der zwanziger und dreißiger Jahre. Lit Verlag. pp. 95–96. ISBN 9783825843427.
  5. ^ a b Kracauer, Siegfried (2019). From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film. Princeton University Press. pp. 175+183. ISBN 9780691191348.
  6. ^ Monaco, James (1991). The Encyclopedia of Film. Perigee. p. 411. ISBN 9780399516047.
  7. ^ "Opening Pandora's Box". The Criterion Collection. 27 November 2006. Retrieved 14 December 2022.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Love_of_Jeanne_Ney&oldid=1127646158"