MARIZZA is the first of Murnau's peasant films. Marizza is tired of her smuggler employer's orders for her to play up to the gendarmes so that he and his men can ship contraband. She leaves and begins work at the farm of an impoverished aristocrat, Mme. Avricolos and her twin sons, Christo (dynamic) and Antonino (dreamy). Marizza is discovered in Christo's room by his mother and she banishes Marizza who runs away with Antonino. Mme. Avricolos sets the smugglers on their trail and they are found, poor and starving (shades of TABU). Marizza plays up to the gendarmes, especially Haslinger, in order to get money, but Antonino becomes jealous and attacks Haslinger. Marizza kills the latter to save Antonino, who accuses himself of the murder. There is a last minute rescue of both Marizza and her baby from a burning cabin.
Молод(🗑)ая г(😩)рафиня Вер(🌔)а Дубров(🌵)ск(🏜)а(💋)я мечтает п(🐇)ринести(🆗) по(🥁)л(🦖)ьзу челове(🔔)честву. Она(🏻) п(❇)осещае(😃)т бе(🌹)дных, «бывш(🎯)и(🌲)х людей(🎅)» и п(🐽)омогает им(😌) в(😓) меру си(🚳)л. Од(👋)нажды Вера(🔉) о(💏)казыва(📚)етс(🥍)я в каморке(💛) пьяницы(🦌) Ма(🦊)к(🍪)сима Петро(🛥)ва. На пом(🎷)ощ(🤜)ь(✴) графини он(😡) отвечает т(🔦)е(🖼)м, что об(🐔)есч(📕)ещивает ее(🌯), о(😧)ставив(🌘) нез(🧕)аживающую(🛁) р(🧦)ану в ее(🚑) душ(♓)е. Придя в се(🚉)б(🈸)я, Вера у(🕑)бив(🌮)ает негодя(🌬)я.
After 16 years' experience on stage, the actor and playwright Curt Goetz (1888-1960) made his debut as a film director and producer with the silent movie Friedrich Schiller - Eine Dichterjugend (1923). Writing razor sharp dialogue was his profession; acting comic parts in the theatre - without having to renounce speech - was his craft. And that is why the silent cinema presented such a special artistic challenge to Goetz, a task whose accomplishment was prompted by a difficult subject: the poet Friedrich Schiller's adolescence. An enthusiast of the spoken word makes a movie about the early life of a powerfully eloquent poet, but has to eschew the cadence of poetry. Under such circumstances, the artistic potential of a film director must prove itself.
This film comes from the Schloss Archive of His Highness, Herr Graf Ferdinand von Galitzien:
Fiction patriotique dans laquelle une jeune femme qui attend son fiancé parti sur le Front devient folle.
I saw this at the London Film Festival in 1995 or 1996. The print had been lovingly restored from sections scattered around the world, including some from archives in Moscow. Somebody near me said "I'm really looking forward to this", which was understandable, since the director, as Michael Curtiz, later made some jolly swashbucklers and Casablanca, and the LFF had previously come up with several almost unknown silent masterpieces, including Jacques Feyder's Visage d'enfants.