8. Trauma, Aesthetic Treatment, and Intermediality Das Haus der Lüge (Lupu Pick, Rex-Film, 1926) Thor Holt
The main influence of Henrik Ibsen on film history may lie beyond traditional and announced adaptations of his plays in ways that remain to be explored. One intriguing example can be found in the celebrated German Kammerspielfilm – a genre that merged the chamber play aesthetics of theatre director Max Reinhardt with groundbreaking cinematographic devices in the early 1920s. This resulted in a small number of films with sparse use of intertitles: anti-spectacles of everyday life that, in the words of Siegfried Kracauer, anticipated “truly cinematic narration” in their obsession with objects and rejection of the written word (2004, 104). The canon includes Lupu Pick’s Scherben (Shattered 1921) and Sylvester (New Year’s Eve 1923), Leopold Jessner’s Hintertreppe (Backstairs 1921) and Erdgeist (Earth Spirit 1923), Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Michael (1924), and F. W. Murnau’s Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh 1924). Screenwriter Carl Mayer masterminded the genre by providing scripts and key input on cinematography.1 The brash introduction of Ibsen as integral to the Kammerspielfilm is admittedly in need of justification: the Norwegian dramatist is barely
1
nly two of these Kammerspielfilme are adaptations of literary works: Michael (1924) is O based on the novel Mikaël (1904) by Herman Bang and is the only film listed here not penned by Carl Mayer, whereas Erdgeist is based on Frank Wedekind’s Lulu play from 1895.
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