Ernst Wendt – Die weisse Wüste AKA The White Desert (1922)

Quote:
Germany 1922 – Director: Ernst Wendt – Screenplay: Dr. F. Einar Stier, Ernst Wendt – camera: Mutz Greenbaum – animal director: John Hagenbeck – actors: Carl de Vogt, Eduard von Winterstein, Nora Swinburn, Fritz Orwa, Marta Bauer-Santen, Frieda Siewert-Michels, Dorinea Shirley, Carl Balta – 101 minutes –

For the last film, which was directed by Ernst Wendt, more time was spent preparing and filming and even filmed “on location” in Sweden. DIE WEISSE WÜSTE was released in July 1922 as “the great winter film” with “Laplanders, Samoyed, polar bears, sea lions, reindeer etc.” (the film). The Hamburg Ethnografica dealers Johannes Umlauff and Julius Konietzko formed the scientific advisory board, who also provided the equipment for the film. Since the British film dealer JG Wainwright was now Hagenbeck’s partner, a second negative was produced for international distribution, with alternative takes, a different cut and the British actress Dorinea Shirley, who replaced Carl de Vogt’s partner Cläre Lotto.

In terms of content, DIE WEISSE WÜSTE tries to tie in with the “Sweden films” that have been praised by German critics and that were characterized by the portrayal of people in Nordic nature. So the film takes an unusually long time to develop the characters. Joseph Roth described the action in the Berlin stock exchange courier: “The story of two girls and two lovers who come together after many difficulties does not necessarily require zoological difficulties. But since the animals are Hagenbeck’s fabulous specimens, since the naturalness of a polar bear is a beneficial recovery, after you have hardly got over the sweetness of an actress, this film is gratefully accepted despite organic weaknesses. The direction, even more the photography – the snow, the sky,

The reconstruction of the Munich Film Museum is based on an almost complete nitro copy of the English version of the film without a title, which Joel Archer found and identified in Australia. It was supplemented by nitro rolls from the first half of an Austrian rental copy with the original German titles, which, however, already had very strong nitro decomposition and in some cases could hardly be copied. They were made available by Michael Seeber, who stored them in the Federal Archives. The German censorship map of the film was also found in the Federal Archives, from which the wording of the subtitles for the second part of the film could be found. A comparison of the censorship card with the German subtitles received showed a great inaccuracy in the spellings and punctuation marks. On the censorship card, as in the German material, missing titles that are essential for understanding the plot had to be translated back from English. Two missing parts of the film were bridged by explanatory titles. Peter Eisheuer, grandson of the actor Fritz Orwa, composed the accompanying music.

(Stefan Drößler)

Die.weisse.Wüste.1922.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.x264-KG.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 40 min
Size: 	3.48 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 693 kb/s
BPP: 	0.091
Audio
#1:  	zxx 2.0ch AAC @ 253 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/E931CEE0FEB2B4D/Die.weisse.Wuste.1922.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.x264-KG.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/19EA8AFF356A641/Die.weisse.Wuste.1922.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.x264-KG.en.srt

Language(s):German intertitles with music
Subtitles:English