Mad Love (1921)

Mad Love (1921)

„Mad Love“ original: Sappho) is a 1921 drama film directed by Dimitri Buchowetzki, based on a story by Alexandre Dumas.

With english intertitles

Richard De La Croix has a brother, Andreas, who has been driven insane by a notorious vamp and socialite named Sappho. A man-about-town named Teddy takes Richard to the Odeon to meet her, but when Sappho actually meets Richard, he is unaware that she is the woman who drove Andreas insane. Sappho genuinely falls in love with Richard, and decides to leave her vampy ways behind her so that she can have him.

Sappho casts off her previous lover, an automobile company owner named Bertink, as she does. Richard and Sappho run off and engage in an affair. In the midst of their escapade, Bertink approaches Richard and lets him know that the woman he is with is the same one that drove his brother Andreas insane, and that he, Bertink, is the man that she left Andreas for. Richard is horrified and immediately terminates his relationship with Sappho.

Sappho tries to return to Bertink but is turned away, so she seeks out Teddy, Richard’s man-about-town friend, and starts a rebound relationship with him. Meanwhile, Richard returns home to marry his childhood sweetheart, but then balks at the wedding supper and runs off in search of Sappho. All this time, Andreas, the mad brother, is having troubled dreams about Sappho in the lunatic asylum where he is kept. When Richard starts on his search for Sappho, Andres intuitively senses that someone is going after her, so he breaks out of the lunatic asylum and also starts to search for Sappho.

Richard finds Sappho at a ball with Teddy, and starts questioning her about her newest lover, before breaking down and admitting that she is the only woman he really loves. Andreas, the mad brother, barges in on this reunion, and manages to lock Richard out of the room. Alone with Sappho, Andreas attacks her, and in the process of doing so accidentally kills her.

A 1921 German Black & White silent film (a/k/a „Sappho“) written & directed by Dimitri Buchowetzki, produced by Max Kiontke, based on a story by Alexandre Dumas, cinematography by Arpad Viragh, starring Pola Negri, Alfred Abel, Johannes Riemann, Helga Molander, Otto Treptow, Albert Steinrück, Else Wagner, and Ellinor Gynt. Alfred Abel is best known for his role as John Fredersen in Fritz Lang’s „Metropolis“ (1927).

In America when one thinks about early movie „vamps“, Theda Bara, Louise Glaum, and Valeska Suratt come to mind. There were others, too, in early American films, but less than a handful of examples of their works as „vamps“ have survived the ravages of time. Europe responded to the „vamp“ call, too, however, and though the world had been presented „A Fool There Was“ (1915) with Theda Bara and „Sex“ (1920) with Glaum and „She“ and others with Suratt, Germany, in an attempt to top all these, in the directorial hands of Dimitri Buchowetzki, took a literary work of [Père] Alexandre Dumas and turned it into this film.

Sappho was released in Germany in 1921. The film was barred from release in New York by the State Board of Censors in 1922. A censored version of the film entitled „Mad Love“ was finally released by Metro in 1923.

The New York Times review, „Slipping in ahead of Pola Negri’s first American-made photoplay, which is expected from Hollywood in the near future, „Mad Love,“ a motion picture made in Germany before Mme. Negri left for this country, came to the Capitol yesterday. And with it came the Pola Negri known to America through „Passion,“ „Gypsy Blood,“ „The Red Peacock“ and the others—the same vibrant, vivid, virtuos Pola who has made du Barry, Carmen and Camille live on the screen as real people whom you might like to know, or, if you are wise, keep away from.This time her rôle is different but of the same kind. Only her own variety makes the difference, however. She convinces you again that she is the particular person she is playing and no one else, but as a matter of fact she is simply another Carmen, or another Camille. Perhaps it’s Sappho this time. One who hasn’t met this lady since his rather remote adolescence, when Olga Nethersole made him want to die so he could go to Paris, cannot speak definitely. But anyhow, the rôle is Sapphic. And as Mme. Negri plays it, it is graphic.These old French stories of tempestuous passion, of wild women who finally fall in love with some three-dimensional youth from the provinces and then have to pay the penalty for their past, may seem out of date today. They are simple and swift and, to the modern mind, at least, too literal in their application of the male-versus-female formula. They are without benefit of Freud, too. There are no complexes in the way their people love and hate each other. Every emotion springs, leaps, rather, from a good old-fashioned cause that any horrified Victorian would understand.“

Buchowetzki At His Best! Stylized, stylized, stylized! People go crazy … literally crazy … lunatic crazy … all because of what they imagine is LOVE, and it’s really a lot of fun to watch!

Cast:

• Pola Negri – Sappho
• Johannes Riemann – Richard de la Croix
• Alfred Abel – Georg de la Croix
• Albert Steinrück – Andreas
• Helga Molander – Maria Garden, Richard’s bride
• Otto Treptow – Teddy
• Elsa Wagner – Richard's mother
• Ellinor Gynt – Dancer

„Sappho“ ist ein Filmdrama von Dimitri Buchowetzki aus dem Jahr 1921, das auf einer Erzählung von Alexandre Dumas basiert.

Darsteller:

• Pola Negri – Sappho
• Johannes Riemann – Richard de la Croix
• Alfred Abel – Georg de la Croix
• Albert Steinrück – Andreas
• Helga Molander – Maria Garden, Richards Braut
• Otto Treptow – Teddy
• Elsa Wagner – Richards Mutter
• Ellinor Gynt – Tänzerin