. As someone who teaches courses on silent films at the local university and someone who has been interested in silent films for half a century now, I have seen quite a few silent movies over the years including several of this vintage but I have never seen one this old that is as accomplished as ATLANTIS. Before the outbreak of World War I France and Italy were recognized as being in the forefront of motion picture production but the finest films overall were coming out of Scandinavia and especially from Denmark’s Nordisk studios. No better example exists (that I have seen) than this film.
ATLANTIS is based on a 1912 novel by German author Gerhart Hauptmann who is best remembered today for his 1896 play THE WEAVERS. It is the story of a German doctor (Olaf Fonns) whose research is rejected and whose wife has become mentally unstable. In an attempt to pull his life together he travels to Berlin and later Paris where he meets a young dancer (Ida Orloff) whom he falls in love with. On an ocean voyage to New York their passenger liner strikes an object and sinks and only they and a handful of others are rescued. Upon reaching New York the dancer refuses to settle down with him and he then becomes attracted to a young sculptress (Ebba Thomsen). Going to a mountain cabin to recoup, he becomes dangerously ill but is nursed back to health by her. After his wife dies, they return to Europe to live together and take care of his children.
ATLANTIS was published a month before the TITANIC set sail but the eerie similarities between it and the fictional shipwreck in Hauptmann’s book made it a bestseller and a natural for being turned into a film. August Blom, the head of production at Nordisk, directed the film in a simple and straightforward manner, concentrating on the human drama in a way that looks forward to the films of Victor Sjostrom, Carl Dreyer, and Ingmar Bergman. What makes the film fascinating to an audience of today are the glimpses of a pre-World War I Berlin, Paris and New York City. One sequence highlights performer Charles Unthan who was born without arms and is able to do incredible things with his feet. The camerawork is static but uses movement within the frame to its advantage and the performances are quite restrained for the time. In fact the film has a very modern feel to it.
I first heard about this film in an interview given by David Shepard of Film Preservation Associates back in 2000. He listed it as one of his proudest accomplishments at the time and so it is. The picture quality is absolutely stunning from the crispness of the image to the corrected projection speed (20 frames per second instead of the standard 24). The only thing that prevents ATLANTIS from obtaining a full 5 star rating is the piano score by Robert Israel. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it but of a movie of this scope with its multiple characters and its leisurely pace would benefit from a score that utilizes more instruments. The piano score was a budgetary decision as ATLANTIS only sold around 150 copies and was never released on VHS or DVD in America. It’s a remarkable achievement that deserves to be seen outside of Region 2 so hopefully it will one day get a DVD or even Blu-Ray release in the States. In the meantime film lovers in the U.K. should see it before it becomes no longer available.
The Capsule Critic 