donpipone

A student's life in 19th century Prague wasn't quite easy without money. On the one hand side the sons of rich people are making a fool of Balduin (Conrad Veidt) on the other side the poor student himself, fallen in love with duke Schwarzenberg's daughter. Shadows between two trees, and the appearing of a dark man with an indecent offer. The fight against the devil (alis mammon). A mysterious atmosphere with pathetic actors. One of the most popular German silent-movies!!

where could we start? the story, the telling, the pilgrims meet each other in a train. who are these strange people, sitting in a train and going on a travel to a nowhere land. Handke has a specific word which i cannot translate at the moment. for using this word he has been criticised more than once: RUCK. and it is exact this ruck which is at the beginning of the narration. four people in a train, afterwards going into the woods which are supposed to be the ardennes in france.

The title of this experimental film draws a line between two different film sequences, firstly, the child's garden, which can be seen as a naive and colorful dime light. Only for seconds the scenes in the garden occur - people standing around are not to be seen clearly, there is also a fine tuning of illumination, Stan Brakhage doesn't want to show a constant picture, it is more than that, a poetic fragment of trashy light. Secondly, this film is an eloge to the sea, the antithesis of the playing child, is the serious movement of the life-bearing sea, graphically the life ends with the death, shown in the last sequence, in which a raven picks out the flesh of a dead, not clearly recognizable animal. The constant movement of the sea is ended by the abrupt fading of light. Filmed with a hand camera the foam and brightness of water are clothed by poetic cuts an the ending into the black of fading down.