‘The Devil himself has sent us this woman.’
16th Century Florence is ruled by the iron hand of the church and the city’s Elders. When a free-spirited young woman arrives from Venice, her very presence threatens their absolute rule…
Silent German historical drama with a touch of the supernatural from the pen of a young Fritz Lang. Otto Rippert directs a cast that includes Marga von Kierska, Theodor Becker and Otto Mannstädt.
When wealthy courtesan Julia (von Kierska) arrives in Florence, she finds a city ruled with an iron hand by the City Elders. When her entourage accidentally disrupts a ritual procession, chief City Elders Cesare (Mannstädt) and his Cardinal (Franz Knaak) decide that her libertine ways are a threat to their power. However, Mannstädt’s son, Lorenzo (Anders Wikmann), falls in love with her and rouses the population against the Elders when they attempt to curtail her activities.
When their power is broken, the Elders leave the city, and Wikmann and von Kierska assume notional leadership. However, any semblance of order is sacrificed to the pleasures of the flesh. Holy man Medardus (Becker) quits his mountain retreat to enter the city and turn the people back to God. Instead, he falls madly in love with von Kierska and repudiates his faith to be with her. Then news arrives that the Black Plague is running rampant across the countryside. The city’s gates are locked shut on von Kierska’s orders, and the party continues.
There’s a lot to chew on here in a tale that combines elements from the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Victor Hugo, and Dante and also leans heavily on the biblical tale of Sodom and Gomorrah. As the story opens, Florence is a city run in a rigorous, almost totalitarian manner. The watchwords are duty and sobriety, combined with blind obedience to the word of the church and the Council of Elders. When von Kierska arrives in the city and shakes up the social scene, she brings notions of free will and independence to the people, although her motivation is not to attack or subvert the authority of the Council. She just wants to have a good time.
Initially, the audience sides with her, particularly after she is brought before the Council to answer for her actions. Mannstädt’s Cesare is immediately smitten with her, and it’s clear that he’s not the only one. Several of the other old men on the Council obviously have only one thing on their minds, highlighting their rank hypocrisy. Later on, an obsessed Mannstädt even goes to von Kierska’s villa in disguise, spies on her taking a bath and attempts to assault her. When the mob led by young Wikmann storms the Elder’s palace and frees her (she was on the torture rack at the time), it’s clear where our sympathies are supposed to lie.
However, things aren’t so clear-cut once the Elders are out of the picture. Wikmann and von Kierska’s Florence becomes a hotbed of vice and corruption, effectively leaderless. When holy man Becker joins the party, it appears the film will side with a purer representation of faith than the City Elders provided. However, this isn’t so, as Becker immediately falls under von Kierska’s spell and, after briefly fighting against his feelings, tears down the cross outside his cave and joins her, strangling love rival Wikmann on the way! She reciprocates Becker’s feelings, and they become the City’s new power couple. Everything carries on as before until the news of the plague arrives, and von Kierska orders the city sealed and the staging of a masked ball to celebrate!
The film is primarily concerned with spectacle and entertainment, though, and it’s evident that little expense was spared. There are some impressive sets, both exteriors and interiors, and the crowd scenes help convey a high level of scale. However, it is still the story that provides the talking points. Presenting the organised church and its officials in such an unfavourable light is highly unusual for this era, and although the Elders do appear briefly again after leaving the city, the film never attempts to excuse their previous behaviour by contrasting it with the subsequent hedonistic regime. On the other hand, it’s strongly inferred that the Black Plague is an act of God visited on the land precisely because of the sinful conduct of the people of Florence, conduct that’s a direct result of the arrival of von Kierska’s Julia. Crucially, she’s never portrayed as actively malevolent or as a conscious agent of chaos. Are we supposed to conclude, therefore, that her status as an independent, free-thinking woman is to blame for the wholesale destruction of the city and all its people and, by extension, the population of the surrounding countryside?
This project was not Lang’s first time as a screenwriter. He was already established in the role when he joined the production company Decla in 1918. It became a hectic time for him, as not only did he write half a dozen features over the subsequent year, including this one, but he also began his directorial career with three more projects he wrote. This demanding workload may explain the diverse elements and grabbag of story ideas that he brought together for this film. To begin with, the relationship between von Kierska’s Julia and Mannstädt reflects that of Esmeralda and Archdeacon Frollo from Victor Hugo’s 15th Century novel ‘Notre-Dame de Paris’, which was filmed several times in the silent days, most famously as ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ (1923) with Lon Chaney. Esmeralda is the outsider and representative of sexual liberation who arrives and becomes the target of the supposedly devout Archdeacon whose repression of his physical urges has unbalanced his judgement.
Further literary touchstones are Poe and Dante, the latter no doubt inspiring a brief vision Becker has of lost souls in the underworld. Despite the film’s high budget, this sequence is somewhat disappointing in scale and creativity and certainly can’t hold a candle to the Italian epic ‘L’lnferno (1911). Poe’s short story ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ is the inspiration for the final 20 minutes of the film, and it is well worth waiting for. Death (Julietta Brandt) appears as a skeletal young woman in rags playing the violin as she dances through streets filled with corpses. Lang was to return to the theme, of course, with the celebrated ‘Destiny/Der müde Tod’ (1921). The plague as a resolution to the story is easy to understand when you realise that the Great Influenza Epidemic had broken out in 1918. More commonly known as the ‘Spanish flu’, it claimed millions of lives over the next two years. Estimates of the global death toll vary wildly, but some have even put the figure as high as 100 million.
Of course, it’s impossible to know what was in the mind of any of the filmmakers involved and whether the underlying tones of misogyny were conscious or not, although it’s a fair bet that the anti-church sentiment was intentional. It is also possible to read the film as political in nature, even prophetic in a way. Before the First World War, Germany was a highly regimented society, emphasising ritual, organisation and deference to its leaders and the political establishment. After their defeat in 1918, those societal norms were rejected by the general population, who felt betrayed. There followed the establishment of what later became known as the Weimar Republic, a time of political and economic turmoil but far greater individual freedoms and cultural expression. Is it possible that Lang recognised the beginning of this pattern of societal change and its eventual collapse?
These themes and their possible interpretations are, without a doubt, the most interesting aspect of this production when viewed over a century later. However, the film is also an entertaining piece in its own right. There’s a definite sense of grandeur to director Rippert’s presentation, best personified by von Kierska’s bathhouse, which features an elaborate design, a sunken tub and attendant peacocks! The performances are solid throughout, and although von Kierska’s role as the irresistible Julia is a little on the ridiculous side (no man is safe!), she does manage to invest the role with a level of dignity rather than deliver a crass or obvious Jezebel. The underworld sequence also includes a brief appearance by a dragon, which bears a striking resemblance to the creature that appears in Lang’s own fantasy epic ‘Die Nibelungen (1924).
After a successful stage career, Rippert entered films as an actor in 1906. He became associated with Berlin’s Continental-Kunstfilm company and began directing films for them in 1912. His most famous work is the six-part serial ‘Homunculus’ (1916), which married science-fiction elements, such as androids and mad scientists, with a story echoing Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’. Sadly, only a truncated version lasting 196 minutes has survived, and, at the time of writing, only a two-hour, un-subtitled version seems to be readily available to view. Rippert’s last directing credit was in 1925, and aside from editing one short subject in 1933, he appears to have retired from the business. He suffered a stroke in 1937 and passed away in January 1940.
Interesting both for its signposts to Lang’s later career and as an artefact in its own right.
Mark David Welsh 