Max Reinhardt and Film
Reinhardt was much more interested in film than most of his contemporaries in theater. He made films as a director and from time to time also as a producer. His first staging for the film was Sumurûn (1910). After that, Reinhardt founded his own film company. He was chosen to direct the film adaptation Das Mirakel (1912). Controversies around the staging of Mirakel, which was shown in the Vienna Rotunde in 1912, led to Reinhardt's retreat from the project. The author of the play, Reinhardt's friend and confidant Karl Vollmoeller, won the French director Michel-Antoine Carré to finish the shooting.
Reinhardt made the films Die Insel der Seligen and Eine venezianische Nacht for the German film producer Paul Davidson, in 1913 and 1914. Both films meant a lot of work for Reinhardt's cameraman Karl Freund, as Reinhardt also demanded special shootings like that of a lagoon in the moonlight.
Die Insel der Seligen was praised by the critics above all for Reinhardt's work on the clearness of expression and a vivid play of the features. The film attracted attention through its erotic acting. Its ancient mythical setting included sea gods, nymphs, and fauns, and the actors appeared naked. The part playing in the present fit the strict customs of the time of the late German resp. Austrian monarchy. The actors had to live up to the demands of double roles. Wilhelm Diegelmann and Willy Prager played the bourgeois fathers as well as the sea gods, Ernst Matray a bachelor and a faun, Leopoldine Konstantin the Circe. The shooting for Eine venezianische Nacht by Karl Gustav Vollmoeller took place in Venice. Maria Carmi played the bride, Alfred Abel the young stranger, and Ernst Matray Anselmus and Pipistrello. The shooting was disturbed by a fanatic who incited the attendant Venetians against the German speaking staff.
In 1935, Reinhardt directed his first film in the US, A Midsummer Night's Dream. He founded the drama schools Hochschule für Schauspielkunst „Ernst Busch“ in Berlin and the Max Reinhardt Seminar. Many alumni of these schools made their career in film.
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