the case of lena smith
His sister has told him everything and he is determined to rescue Lena from her plight. [1] In 2003, Japanese film historian Komatsu Hiroshi unearthed a four-minute fragment of The Case of Lena Smith in Manchuria, China, reviving interest in the film.[2]. Use the HTML below. [30], The multiple titles, and their unwieldy length created a degree of confusion among reviewers and the public as what the film was about: “moral drama”, “American crime thriller” or “tragedy of a single mother.” [31] Lacking “simple themes” and “uncomplicated action”, the movie was not a box-office success and like most silent films distributed during the transition to sound, The Case of Lena Smith “fell by the wayside.” [32], Paramount Pictures screened The Case of Lena Smith (French title - La Calvaire de Lena X - The Calvary (mental suffering) of Lena X) at its flagship theatre in Paris on May 23, 1930. F Unverified The Strange Case … The farmer scurrilously insults the honor of the military man and an altercation ensues. When she threatens to go public with facts of the marriage, the court punishes her outburst with a six-month term in the workhouse. A lesser-known effort from director Josef Von Sternberg, The Case of Lena Smith has been unfairly chastised for all the wrong reasons. Vienna's Prater District on Film, or: Looking at the World Again. The earliest scripts of the film is marked “Brief Synopsis of a Ralston-Mother Story” indicating that Sternberg had the actress in mind from the start. Franz knows his is outmatched when he realizes that the farmer is Lena's true champion. The last remaining prints were destroyed by Paramount Pictures shortly after the end of the Second World War for tax purposes. Boston University Libraries. About the film. He summons Lena and fires her on the spot. [16], The framing components (prologue and epilogue) of the film were “the last thing[s] added in the script” by screenwriter Jules Furthman and director Sternberg, and comprised “the heart of the film, ending on a tone of utter bleakness and helplessness in the face of state authority.”[17] Indeed, the final script and contemporary reviews describe a scenario of such tragic proportions as to have "risked the commercial success" of the film. They all hope to find pleasant work in the big city and escape the dreary hardships of farm labor. [9], Sternberg presents the full range of social types who inhabited “the ethnic melting pot of the Viennese population” at the turn of the century. Fleeing his estate to join a band of gypsies, the mentally unstable painter falls in love with a pretty gypsy maiden, Silda. April 2009. Paramount Studios - 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA. The Case of Lena Smith is ranked by film critics as among the “lost masterpieces” of the silent era and the Holy Grail for archivists who sift through film repositories. The Deutsche Tageszeitung of January 31, 1930 criticized Sternberg for indulging “in his blind (possibly self-inflicted) hate of pre-war Austria.” The journal Der Montag (February 3, 1930) accused the director of “portraying the inhabitants of Vienna as “cold-hearted...which does not seem to us to be the most prominent Viennese characteristic.”[28], The Vienna censorship board briefly barred The Case of Lena Smith in May 1929 during the initial review due to its "unsuccessful portrayal of milieu" and "unsuitable intertitles in Viennese dialect. The young Lena has just spurned her suitor, Stephan, who has arranged their marriage with the consent of Lena's father. The young man is deploying to fight on the frontlines. Despite Stephan's declaration of devotion, she departs gaily on foot toward Vienna, accompanied by two other adventurous peasant girls. Lena brutally is dragged into the prison upon her arrival and whipped by the head matron in an attempt tame her. Joan and Peter marry. 8. In late 19th century Vienna, Lena Smith, a naive peasant girl from Hungary, has a child by a corrupt young cavalry officer, and goes to work his house as a servant, hiding the truth from his unsympathetic father, while the son returns to his profligate ways. Little is initially known about Lena, except that she worked with Joan on a mission in 1998, in which Destijds werd de film in Nederland uitgebracht onder de titel De zaak Lena Smith. He reacts harshly, insisting on adopting the child and denying any visitation rights to Lena. Lena demurs, but Stephan presents her with 700 crowns – his life savings – and insists that she demand 300 crowns from her husband, that “uniformed poodle” so as to free the child. When Officer Franz rejoins his fellow officers at the café, he discovers a surly peasant has taken his chair: Stephan. The focal character is Lena Smith (the name an Austrian bureaucrat bestowed on her to shorten her Hungarian given name).[6]. Nor is the prideful officer faithful to Lena: He sleeps with other men's wives. The film is considered lost, and only four minutes of footage are known to remain. ", Sternberg's The Blue Angel, with its innovative use of sound effects and dialogue would open in the city just 10 weeks later. In his 1929 Hollywood production The Case of Lena Smith, director Josef von Sternberg vividly brought to life his youthful memories of the turn of the 20th century through the story a young woman fighting the oppressive class system of Imperial Vienna. [1] Van de film is thans slechts een fragment van 4 minuten bewaard gebleven. The Case of Lena Smith", in : Motion Picture, Marz 1929, and built to scale . Vienna, with a weaker film culture than the vibrant cinephile associations in Berlin, virtually guaranteed the film "was hardly noticed or reviewed at all. This FAQ is empty. Elements of the film's narrative and creative character have been reconstructed from archival material from multiple sources, including the Paramount film files. 1929 American silent drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg, starring Esther Ralston and James Hall, and released by Paramount Pictures. The ethnically diverse newcomers found employment as industrial workers in factories and domestic servants for the bourgeoisie. Lena and her spouse Franz are estranged and refrain from associating with each other – on the young husband's insistence. A young bourgeois Dominique Prad spurns his family's lucrative silk business for the bohemian life of an artist. Sequences A-M summary: A flashback takes the viewer 20 years in the past to 1894. Magdalen leaves her fiancé, Peter, to run off to the big city. Tweet Among the many missing films from the 1920s, The Case of Lena Smith looms as one of the most regrettable. There she has an unpleasant encounter with the janitor who serves at the Hofrat apartments. Within a week all showings were discontinued and replaced with Wolf Song, a Gary Cooper and Lupe Vélez vehicle: “Suburban theatre operators wanted productions suitable to show off their new sound reproduction equipment.” Of Sternberg's The Case of Lena Smith, “the daily papers in France took hardly any notice.”[33], This is now considered a lost film. More information. Lena visits her 3-year-old son Franz at the house of Stephan's sister, who lives in Vienna – secretly, and only after nightfall. The Case of Lena Smith Release Date: January 29, 1929 . ENTER CITY, STATE OR ZIP CODE GO. Retrieved May 31, 2018. When Lena, distracted, appeals to administrators at the Bureau of Morals to discover the whereabouts of her little Franz, they disclose that she has been deemed an “unfit” mother. janitor lost film partially lost film. » Report missing translation: Partial Matches: litt. She made major contributions toward securing civil rights for minorities in the Twin Cities. Erich von Stroheim’s Merry-Go-Round (1923) and The Wedding March (1928) “probably contributed to the conception of Lena Smith” and contemporary film critics recognized von Stroheim's influence. Her master and mistress are Herr and Frau Hofrat, the parents of their only son, Franz. The work was the last of Sternberg's eight silent films and one of three in his career set in the city of his birth and childhood: Vienna. Title: Maliciously, the laborer reports the matter to the elder Hobrat, who instantly assumes that the child is illegitimate. [10] The character of Lieutenant Franz Holrat, Lena's first husband, is based on the novelist Arthur Schnitzler’s protagonist in Leutnant Gustl (1901).[11]. "[21] Motion Picture News reported that Sternberg's Lena Smith “missed the mark” as a form of “mass entertainment...the title misleading. The Case of Lena Smith is a 1929 American silent drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg, starring Esther Ralston and James Hall, and released by Paramount Pictures. Written by Her intuition tells her that the boy will not survive the war, and that all the suffering she has endured has been in vain. The Case of Lena Smith is een Amerikaanse dramafilm uit 1929 onder regie van Josef von Sternberg. Josef Von Sternberg: The Case of Lena Smith (Austrian Film Museum Books) [Horwath, Alexander, Omasta, Michael] on Amazon.com. Pol's estimate of Sternberg's talent included praise for “that razor-sharp line between art and non-art.”[27], Politically conservative critics expressed displeasure with the films depiction of the Viennese social order, particularly the scenes portraying Austrian petty-bourgeois under the Habsburg monarchy. The major factor affecting reception in Austria was related to the shift in public enthusiasm toward sound films that was underway when The Case of Lena Smith – a silent film – opened in Vienna on February 8, 1930. ], Unlike Berlin reviewers, Viennese commentators did not address any pro- anti-Austrian. Fortune at the World Again men 's wives the case of lena smith Partial Matches: litt,! Which is 9 ) Undatierte lnhaltsangabe, sechs 5eiten factories and domestic servants for big! Reconstruct Sternberg 's drama soldier, Lena – ostensibly an unmarried woman takes! Waterfront finds his life changed after he saves a woman attempting suicide and an epilogue both... 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