I Don’t Want to Be a Man
(Ich möchte kein Mann sein) (Projektions-AG Union für Universum Film-AG, Germany, 1918)
Dir.: Ernst Lubitsch; scen.: Hanns Kräly, Ernst Lubitsch; cast: Ossi Oswalda (Ossi), Curt Goetz (Dr. Kersten), Ferry Sikla (attorney Brockmüller), Margarete Kupfer (governess); DCP 4K, 45’ (transferred 18 to 24 fps), black and white; intertitle/subtitle language: DE/EN, PL; source: Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Stiftung.
Ernst Lubitsch's film gives Ossi Oswalda an opportunity for some delightful cross-dressing. She plays an archetypal comedy heroine of the 1910s, an insubordinate young woman who defies her stern governess in her determination to have her own fun. When her father goes away on a business trip, he appoints a new young male guardian, whose determination to be strict is undermined by his own delight in having fun. Ossi evades supervision by dressing up in a tailcoat and topper and going off to a dance. In a bar she encounters her young guardian, who fails to recognize her and takes her for a man. They become the best of friends, and the next morning find themselves side by side in Ossi's bed. It is at this moment that she realizes that, in the words of the film's title, "Ich möchte kein Mann sein" ("I do not want to be a man"). To the contentment of both, she changes her clothes and reverts to being Ossi.
Again, there is a fascinating comparison with the gender switches of Asta Nielsen in “Das Liebes-ABC” (The ABC of Love) and Gloria Swanson in “The Danger Girl”. Ossi Oswalda is extremely adept at juggling the genders, interpreting both roles and challenging the audience - who always know her "actual" gender - to contemplate the multiplicity of possibilities for identification. Oswalda successfully integrates the exhibitionist and demonstrative performance styles of the early film comedians with a complex narrative form.
CP
Ossi Oswalda (1895?/1897?/1899?-1948)
Ossi Oswalda was working as a model and as a dancer at the Berliner Theatre when she was discovered by Hans Kräly, who in turn introduced her to Ernst Lubitsch. Lubitsch changed her name from the original Oswalda Säglich, and developed the comedy talents of the sparkling blonde in a number of medium-length films, in which she played such varied roles as an apprentice, a duchess, a diva, and a girl from the ballet. In 1919 he directed her in her best-remembered features, “Die Puppe” (The Doll) and “Die Austernprinzessin” (The Oyster Princess). By 1921 she had already attracted a reputation as "the German Mary Pickford", and that year she founded her own company, Ossi Oswalda-Film GmbH, managed by her husband, Baron Gustav von Koczian. In 1925 she was put under contract by UFA and continued to work in comedies, though her popularity began to decline sharply, so that by the beginning of the sound era her career was virtually over. In the 1940s she lived with the producer Julius Aussenberg in Prague, where in 1943 she shot her last film, “Ctrnacty u stolu” (Fourteen at the Table), from her own screenplay. She died in Prague, reputedly in poverty, in 1948.
DR
The source for the digitization, handled by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation, was a interpositive from the collection of German Federal Archive, copied in the 1980s from an unknown source.
Fr, Apr 20 | 6pm | Kino Iluzjon