Atlantis

This film is very well done according to every standard of film-making. The narrative runs smoothly, the cinematography is years ahead of the period and special effects run amok with imagination and quality. The DVD released by the Danish Film Institute is one of the very best copies of a pre-WW I film one can see nowadays. To be brief, its amazing, astonishing, mind blowing. The Danes began storing and archiving their films very early, so you get a clean second generation copy where most of US films of the period went to the glue or comb factory. It's a long film and tends to get a bit tedious; also the shipwreck scenes (done very well indeed) are rather brief and once they are over, the film turns back to mainstream melodrama. What makes this film rather hard on eyes, is the leading lady. I know it's an unkind thing to say, but the lady is really not beautiful. She is supposed to be a dancer, but her dance scene is atrocious and embarrassing. It's inconceivable why a handsome leading man should ever fall for that kind of middle aged hippie. All in all, a good pic, but to be viewed by intelligent spectators who can delve into history without expecting too much. There are some nice extras, even including an alternative ending, made for the Russian market!

Riding on the heels of the Titanic tragedy, Denmark's Nordisk Film "Atlantis," released in December 1913, eighteen months after the British boat's sinking, brought audiences realistic images of the real ocean calamity. The Danish producers denied the correlation, claiming their film was based on a Gerhart Hauptmann novel published pre-dating the Titanic launch by a month in 1912. But the popularity of the film, with its enactment of a passenger boat being evacuated in the middle of the ocean with great loss of life, could easily be directly linked to the Titanic.

"Atlantis" has a back story of a border-line insane husband of a dying wife who seeks respite in his travels, only to find love on a trans-Atlantic passenger boat. The liner Roland hits a half-submerged ship (not an iceberg) and sinks. "Atlantis," named after a dream our protagonist has right before the strike, brought the moving images of scrambling passengers loading into lifeboats or diving into the frigid waters to save themselves like no other "Titanic" film produced before. The film was so believable Norway banned it from being played citing poor taste in profiting from the liner tragedy a year earlier.

"Atlantis" eventually became Nordisk Films' most popular movie and was labeled a masterpiece by several reviewers, notably one film historian who was so bold to call it "one of the first modern movies." Besides the exciting 30-minute sequence of the sinking and rescue of the passengers, highlights include B-Roll of New York City pre-World War One and a lively exhibition of an armless entertainer who opens a bottle of wine on stage and pours it into glasses using his feet.

Future director of "Casablanca" and "Mildred Pierce" Michael Curtiz, listed as Mihaly Kertesz in the film as the main character's friend, was also an assistant director helping the production move along.

This movie is supposed to be based on a semi-autobiographical drama of the author (Hauptman).. While dramatisation, he has modified quite a few aspects, the poet dramatist Hauptmann has become a Bacteriologist ( Kammacher) and the estranged wife Marie has become insane Angelique.

One of the parts, supposedly forced on by Hauptmann, as a precondition for allowing the drama to be made into a movie was of the un-armed virtuoso Stoss (played by the real life armless virtuoso (Charles Unthan) was extraneous to the narrative, but then it made me aware of the person, and his genius, so I won't bicker on that.

The other part, or rather the actress, that had been forced on the movie, was the cabaret performer Hahlstroem (Orloff), who was the real life flame of Hauptmann for some time.

While changing the actual story to the screen-play, there were some changes made, and that were actually to the detriment of the story. had that been kept to the original, it could have been a far better one.

Despite her bouts of insanity, the hero, Kammacher, loved his wife, Angelique, and he had gone to US, in search of a cure. That aspect had been glossed over, and hence the shock, at the death of Angelique becomes strange. In between his infatuations with Orloff doesn't contradict his love (the opening Spider and moth dance had already delineated that). I wonder how Orloff, it being her real life narrative too, agreed to do the part, which completely lacks sympathy. Though the role wasn't of a spider, more of a social butterfly. In real life too, Hauptmann was attached to his wife Marie, and tried to reconcile, after his affair, not with Orlofff but with his would be second wife, Margaret, became known and she walked away on him.

Had it been handled a bit better, it would have been a master piece. Along with the above, and a few more, disconsonant factors, it also lacked pacing. Some of the reviewers had mentioned it to be slow.I will agree to a certain extent. It was slow at wrong places. Where it should have been slow, to build up the narrative, it went through too fast. For example Eva's character was never properly build up.

Over all, it isn't a bad movie for 1913, in fact it is quite above average, but missed, by just a few notches, to become a masterpiece.

The idea of a 1913 full length feature film from Denmark intrigued me and I was pleasantly surprised. The melodrama records the events in the life of a somber, but sympathetic researcher, starting in Europe and ending in New York. The sinking of an ocean line, a la Titanic, is well done. The acting is restrained and the plot coherent and interesting. Recommended for silent movie fans.

Denmark's Atlantis (1913), another ship-sinking story influenced by the Titanic tale and filmed off the coast of New Zealand, was one of the first full-length films ever made - it had a 1 hour, 53 minute running time. This version of the story from director August Blom appeared to sink a full-scale boat for realism. It was a very realistic and naturalistic-looking Titanic film with a well-staged action scene of the ship's sinking. The story is rather simple, despondent over his institutionalized wife, a doctor endeavors to cope by traveling through Europe and eventually to New York, surviving an ocean liner sinking on the way. The film was hailed as an impressive achievement for the cinema of 1913, especially for the sinking liner sequence that was influenced by the Titanic disaster. It was also one of the most popular films of the silent decades, and a worldwide smash hit.