The Boy in Blue (1919 film) on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
''The Boy in Blue'' (german: Der Knabe in Blau and also known as ''Emerald of Death'') is a 1919 silent German
''The Boy in Blue'' (german: Der Knabe in Blau and also known as ''Emerald of Death'') is a 1919 silent German drama film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...
directed by F. W. Murnau
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe; December 28, 1888March 11, 1931) was a German film director, producer and screenwriter.
He was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Ibsen plays he had seen at t ...
. It was Murnau's directorial debut
This is a list of film directorial debuts in chronological order. The films and dates referred to are a director's first commercial cinematic release. Many film makers have directed works which were not commercially released, for example early work ...
. The film is now considered to be a lost film
A lost film is a feature or short film that no longer exists in any studio archive, private collection, public archive or the U.S. Library of Congress.
Conditions
During most of the 20th century, U.S. copyright law required at least one copy o ...
, though the Deutsche Kinemathek
Die Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen is a major German film archive located in Berlin.
History
The Deutsche Kinemathek opened in 1963. Until the opening of a permanent display in the Museum of Film and Television Berlin (Mu ...
film archive possesses 35 small fragments ranging from two to eleven frames in length.
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough (14 May 1727 (baptised) – 2 August 1788) was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of ...
's painting ''The Blue Boy
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
'' and Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
's novel ''The Picture of Dorian Gray
''The Picture of Dorian Gray'' is a philosophical fiction, philosophical novel by Irish writer Oscar Wilde. A shorter novella-length version was published in the July 1890 issue of the American periodical ''Lippincott's Monthly Magazine''.''Th ...
'' were inspirations for Murnau to create this film.
Plot
Thomas von Weerth (Ernst Hofmann) is a poverty-stricken aristocrat who lives in his broken-down castle with a single old servant (Karl Platen). His sole expensive remaining possession is a painting of an ancestor (similar to Thomas Gainsborough's painting ''The Blue Boy
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
''), which depicts the ancestor wearing a gigantic emerald. According to family myth, the emerald is cursed, and the son of the ancestor hid the emerald somewhere in the castle to stop the curse. Weerth has been searching for it for years.
One night, Weerth dreams that his ancestor steps out of the painting and shows him where the emerald is. The next morning, Weerth goes to the spot and indeed finds the emerald. The servant pleads with him to throw it away, but he refuses.
That night, a roving band of gypsies comes to the castle. They sing, dance, and put on skits for von Weerth, who falls instantly in love with a blonde gypsy girl (Blandine Ebinger). As she forces von Weerth to dance attendance on her, the rest of the gypsies steal the emerald and everything else in the castle and set fire to the building. The gypsy girl laughs as she and her comrades flee.
Von Weerth falls seriously ill. A young gypsy actress (Margit Barnay), however, fell in love with von Weerth. She now returns, nurses him back to health, and they fall in love.
Cast
See also
*List of lost films
For this list of lost films, a lost film is defined as one of which no part of a print is known to have survived. For films in which any portion of the footage remains (including trailers), see List of incomplete or partially lost films.
Reas ...
References
External links
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Boy In Blue 1919 films 1919 drama films 1919 directorial debut films 1919 lost films Films of the Weimar Republic German silent feature films German black-and-white films German drama films Films directed by F. W. Murnau Lost German films Lost drama films Silent drama films 1910s German films 1910s German-language films