Erotikon
The National Film Archive, French Institute in Prague, Audio-visual Department of the French Embassy, Prague Symphonic Orchestra FOK, Museum Louvre and the Archa Theatre have arranged within the framework of the 100th Anniversary of World Cinematography the Premiere of the Restored Film from 1929
Idea, Script and Direction: Gustav Machatý
Director of Photography: Václav Vích
Music for the Restored Film composed by Jan Klusák
The chamber ensemble of Prague Symphonic Orchestra FOK conducted by Dr. Štěpán Koníček
Restoration of the Film: Mgr. Blažena Urgošíková and Ingrid Tětková
Premiere - June 9, 1994
Production: Gemfilm, 1929
Lending office: Slavia
Idea, Script and Direction: Gustav Machatý
Director of Photography: Václav Vích
Set Design: Julius Borsody and Alexander Hackenschmied
Ateliers: Kavalírka
Performing:
Karel Schleichert (Watchman on the railway)
Ita Rina (his daughter, Andrea - Ita)
Olaf Fjord (Georg Sydney)
Theodor Pištěk (Hilbert)
Charlotte Suza (His wife, Gilda)
Luigi Serventi (Jean)
L. H. Struna (Carter)
Milka Bálek-Brodská (Aunt)
Bohumil Kovář (Railway man)
Bedřich Saxl (Owner of the Tailor shop)
Vladimír Slavínský (dressmaker)
Bronislava Livia (Visitor of the Beauty shop)
Václav Žichovský (Owner of the Piano shop)
Without a doubt, the film of Gustav Machaty, Erotikon, belongs on the peak of the cinematography of silent Czech films. During the time in which it was created, it received universal recognition. The appreciation, which was already awakened and somewhat enthusiastic, emphasized his exceptionalism in the context of the current Czech productions. It was sold to many countries (even before its Czech premiere, it was sold to Austria, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Latin America, and later to Germany, France, as well as other countries). It also received considerable and recognized attention. In particular, the critics awarded his direction and talents as a camera operator, which proved to reshape more than just a calendar story in captivating action, as well as the interior world of the protagonists, their experiences, feelings and passions. (The film illustrates the seduction of a daughter of a railway watchman, who already married, meets her seducer after several years and almost succumbs to him again).
The ambitious director, who never hesitated to give himself to his experience which included a little less than twenty years in America, chose for his third film, an international cast of performers. Young Slovenian, Ita Rina, debuted in the main role of the watchman's daughter; her seducer was played by Norwegian Olaf Fjord, who was famous for his films in Germany. The man, who is marrying the seduced daughter, was played by Italian Luigi Serventi, and the flirtatious woman is German actress Charlotte Suza. From the Czech actors, Machatý chose Theodor Pištěk to play the role of the deceived husband and Karl Scheicher to play the father of the seduced girl. Machatý invited poet Vítězslav Nezval to collaborate in this project, but his name does not appear in the credits. The important collaborator was yet another Czech, Václav Vích, director of photography.
The piece was filmed in the Kavalírka atelier as well as in Karlovy Vary, where the Czech "pre-premiere" was also held in the cinema Elite from July 12 - 18, 1929. The reception of the premiere, as well as from those invited guests of the evening performance on February 27, 1929 at the cinema Passage in Prague, were very satisfactory and signalled a future success. However, at that time, the management of the film distribution company, Slavia, made a fateful error. In an effort to increase commercial activity, they decided to present Erotikon already in the autumn/winter season of 1929/30. The premiere was simultaneously held on January 3 - 16, 1930 in three Prague cinemas - Hvězda, Radio and Skaut. Unfortunately, that was also the same time when the entire world could hear music, song and speech coming from the film screen, and at that time, all the large premiere cinemas in Prague had already installed sound equipment. In the general excitement of the new achievement in film-making, the silent film didn't have a chance for any greater success. (Taken from the information of Myrtila Frída and Jaroslav Brož: Gustav Machatý - Legenda a skutečnost, the magazine Film a doba, pages 193 - 194/1969).
Disappointed from the insufficient audience reception, only time has been able to compensate the director. Erotikon - as well as Kreutzer´s sonata and Extase - was not forgotten in the history of cinematography. We can find the mention of his film not only in the study of Czech films, but also in the foreign history and encyclopaedia works. It is also true that in the reviews which reflect the past one hundred years of Czech film-making, and in the comparison of the works which preceded and followed Erotikon, Machatý's work takes a place of honor. Erotikon was also one of the first films which was brought back to life, during the revival of film works from the period following the Second World War, and which started to again be shown in the archives of cinemas and in the most diverse, national and international festivals and retrospectives. This version that the audience will see during these performances was longer than 1 800 metres (approximately the same length as the French version, presented under the title Seduction, and the German version from 1933 which contained sound).
In 1989, the film archive bought another copy of Erotikon, made from nitrate, an intensely flammable material, from a private collector, Milan Volf. It was about 400 metres longer than the archive's copy. Its first screening, then a detailed comparison and analysis, already brought about some surprising results:
- Volf's copy was an original "first generation" version from the Czech distributor.
- The copy contained a seventy metre-long sequence that was not found in any known version. The scene is a trip when the husband of the seduced girl understands that his marriage is endangered. In the reflection of his car mirror, he sees his wife holding the hand of her seducer.
- Many of the other sequences were considerably longer (especially the scene in which the other characters enter the lovers' triangle, for example during the operation or the evening celebration in the bar) and also in its more entirety and would-be more closed with a lightly fade out of the metaphorical significance.
- The subtitles were substantially fewer, the originals were evidently superfluous because they were replaced by "talkies".
- The name of the protagonist was Andrea in contradiction to the shorter version where the name Ita was used to increase her attractiveness.
The conclusion of this investigation was anything but ambiguous: throughout all the difficulties and uneasiness of the work to utilise all possibilities in the restoration of the film. In the period that followed, the comparative analysis of all known material and its confrontation with the preserved written archive material followed. In addition to Volf's copy, we had at our disposal yet three other shorter versions of the film: Czech, French - which was in video format and lent to us by the film archive of C. N. C. in Bois D'Arcy, and a German copy which contained sound. The German and French versions did not bring about any further enlightenment. The Czech version, however, contained fragments which were also not in Volf's copy. The length of these fragments was made up from several frames almost two metres in length; one part measured an exceptional 5.3 metres. After its reconstruction, the film measured 2 365.4 metres and it came close to its original length of the copy from the Czech distributor that was screened in cinemas in the 1930s.
No special laboratory for archive films exists in the Czech Republic, and for that reason the technical restoration was considerably difficult. The film was partly damaged, emulsion had impaired some of its entire length, sometimes even the strong grooves were badly damaged. The greatest part of the damage were the scratches which were possible to remove, thanks to the personal effort of the workers of the trick studio TRILOBIT of AB BARRANDOV.
Mgr. Blažena Urgošíková
Gustav Machatý
(born on May 9, 1901, in Prague, died December 14, 1963 in Munich)
He was son of a wealthy Prague businessman and realty owner. He came into contact with film when he was twenty years old - since that time, the charm of film had never left him. He terminated his studies in secondary school and began working at Pragafilm and Escelsiorfilm.
He was assistant director, actor, and was one of the founder of the production film company KLIM, which also included its distribution division. He tried to receive experience from D. W. Griffith and Erich von Stroheim in Hollywood, and after his return from the USA, he also appeared in a small role in a film by Karel Lamač Bilý ráj (White Paradise, 1924). About two years later, he woke the attention of his home and foreign critics and audiences with his directorial debut of the film Kreutzerova sonáta (Kreutzer´s Sonata), which truly exceeded the level of the present line of Czech films. After this unexpected and yet greater victory - and after his next, however unsuccessful, film Švejk v civilu (Švejk in Civil Service) - Gustav Machatý created Erotikon (1929). Thanks to its extraordinary artistic qualities, the film brought much acknowledgment to its creator. Along with the Machatý's film, Extase (1933), it opened the way to the entire world, after its great succes in the Viennese Biennalle in 1934, and has been quoted in all histories of film art. After this success, Gustav Machatý left Czechoslovakia, and since that time he only worked abroad: in Austria, Italy and USA, where he left before World War II. From this time, we can name also his participation in the film from 1939 Anna Karenina (directed by Clarence Brown and which starred Greta Garbo) and Machatý's most successful American film Jealousy (1945). At the beginning of the Fifties Machatý moved to Munich, where he worked as a Docent of film direction in Munich´s Institute for Film and Television. He made his own films, for example in 1956 film Suchkind 312, and collaborated also with other creators. After World War II, he visited his home country several times, especially on the occasion of the International Film Festivals in Karlovy Vary.
(taken from Šárka Bartošková and Luboš Bartošek: Filmové profily, page 269, 1985 and Variety, December 18, 1963 - obituary of Gustav Machatý)
Jan Klusák
(composer; born in Prague April 18, 1934)
He graduated from the Prague academy AMU (Akademii můzických umění) under the guidance of Jaroslav Řídký and Pavel Bořkovec from 1953 - 57. Since that time, he has worked as a composer, also as a film and theatre actor. He is also author of prose and librettos of his own operas. In his compositions, he came through Neo-Classicism and serial techniques of the Viennese School II, but his models were Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler. The greatest work of this period is the Variace na Mahlerovo téma (Variations on Mahler's Theme (1962). From the end of Sixties, he formed the idea of the authors' individual composition, and his main direction was the connection between rationality and intuition. The author's entire life intention was the creation of works from only one thought and that materialistic economy that leads him to Webern´s connection of everything with everything. During the creation of his style, astrology and magic practices played a definite role; Jan Klusák called his own composition method novoplatónskou (neo-Platonism). His personal view is also characterised by those authors whose text he set to music: Halas, Holan, Kafka, Sofokles, Dante, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Dostojevsky, as well as the Bible. He demonstrated his sense of humour in work he did for the Theatre of Jára Cimrman, as well as in the works with the applied musical collage. He showed his extraordinary understanding for the atmosphere of film work in the restoration of the film The Count of Monte Christo (dir. Henri Fescourt, 1928) in which he composed music for the new version. Klusák´s compositions belongs to the most performed Czech compositions, and are also often presented abroad.
Erotikon (programme from the performance)