Die Finanzen des Großherzogs

A multi-part story of a grand duke who has run out of money. He is being pushed by wealthy to men to sell off certain property, but he fights back through an alliance with a foreign woman.

Some have made something of the homoerotic opening with boys swimming, especially with Murnau being gay. I will not comment on it further than just to mention it here.

The film specifically referenced paintings, which is no surprise -- Murnau was an art historian. It has been said some directors view film as artists and some as cameramen. Murnau was an artist. This works well, and it is added to by the fact the sets were painted with shadows rather than using lights. A similar technique was used in "Caligari" by Weine's set designers... was this a strictly German invention? Allegedly, only half the original film exists today. Yet, the part that does exist still makes complete sense. Odd. Also allegedly, the anti-Semitism is toned down from the book, even though the character of Markovitz remains. The book is not available in English so this would be hard to verify. The inclusion of any anti-Semitism strikes me as odd, though, as I believe there were Jews working on the set.

While the big name here is director Murnau, pay attention to actor Max Schreck (better known from Murnau's "Nosferatu"), and notice this script was adapted by Thea von Harbou, the wife and creative partner of Fritz Lang.

David Kalat's audio commentary is brilliant and he ought to write a book on Murnau, though he does play down the role of Oscar-winning cinematographer Karl Freund, which is a mistake.

In F. W. Murnau's prior movie just before "The Last Laugh," the director exhibited the opposite restraint in his narrative by producing his only comedy, January 1924's "The Grand Duke's Finances." The story consists of a duke, leader of a small European country, who's in dire financial straights. His proliferate ways are creating for his tiny kingdom a situation where his main creditor is on the verge of kicking him out and taking control of the country. A marriage to a rich Russian grand duchess could solve the duke's debt crises. But revolutionaries and the creditor attempt to thwart the union, cascading the movie into a series of chases and conspiracies.

The script, written by Fritz Lang's wife, Thea von Harbou, and filmed by Karl Freund, was shot on location on the Adriatic coast as well as at the UFA Tempelhof Studios. "The Grand Duke's Finances" is a compilation of serial episodes and contains, unusual for Murnau, a series of bizarre gags and a cliffhanger of an ending.

Cinematographer Freund, whose career in film went back to 1916, later teamed up with Fritz Lang and scriptwriter von Harbou to produce the 1927 'Metropolis' before moving to America, where he shot 1931's 'Dracula.' He earned an Oscar for his cinematography in 1937's 'The Good Earth.' Freund's credited in designing flat lighting in the 1950s 'I Love Lucy' television series, allowing for the revolutionary three-camera studio setup that prevails in today's sitcom productions.

This is a truly odd little silent film--one you'd never suspect would be directed the same man responsible for "Nosferatu"! Instead of the usual serious film for which F.W. Murnau was known, "Finances of the Grand Duke" is like the blending of a comedy with a movie serial. Though the film is a regular full-length movie of 77 minutes, it play like a serial--with chapters and TONS of action--enough for a 12-part serial! While the overall effect is not great, it is pretty good and watchable.

The film is set in the fictional island kingdom of Abacco. The Grand Duke is so deeply in debt that creditors threaten to seize his kingdom. In addition, a speculator who wants to put in a sulfur mine is willing to finance a revolution since the Grand Duke refuses to have such a blight on his island. With these dark forces conspiring to take his throne, the Grand Duke has a possible solution in the form of a marriage proposal from a rich Russian Princess--who he's never even seen! Can this all be worked out or is the kingdom to be torn from him? Tune in and see.

While the humor in the film is rarely that funny, because so much happens so quickly, the film is breezy and watchable--especially to Murnau fans who want to see everything he made--even his seemingly lesser works. Overall, not bad but not great either--more like a pleasant time-passer.

This film by the great F. W. Murnau is far from his best. Not quite a three star effort but better than a two. One review states that the original was two hours long. If that was the case, I don't think the extra length would have helped as this version, at 77 minutes, seems long enough as it is. Sometimes too long.

It would seem that Murnau was trying to make an Ernst Lubitsch like comedy now that Lubitsch had gone to America but it lacks the sparkle necessary to bring that off. With the exception of Alfred Abel (METROPOLIS), the performers are good but not great. It takes a special kind of performance to make this comedy of intrigue work. The scenario is no great shakes either.

The look of the film is what makes the picture worth watching and that's the least you would expect from one of the silent cinema's great visual stylists. The cameraman was Karl Freund who also worked on THE LAST LAUGH and would go on to directing in the 1930s and then to pioneering live TV camerawork on I LOVE LUCY in the 1950s.

This is the weakest of the three Murnau titles released by Kino but that doesn't mean that it is not without interest. No Murnau film could be without interest. The other two in the set are THE HAUNTED CASTLE and the restored DVD version of FAUST. They join NOSFERATU, THE LAST LAUGH, and TARTUFFE (already released) as part of a 6 DVD set although you can buy them separately...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.

Any film directed by F.W. Murnau merits serious attention, but "The Grand Duke's Finances" is especially noteworthy because it's one of Murnau's rare attempts at comedy. Based on this one film (the only Murnau comedy I've seen to date), Murnau's comedic skills were far less developed than his flair for drama and melodrama. However, there are some good points throughout this film.

The plot is not especially credible nor especially funny, and each chapter of the story is prefaced with an introductory title which (except for the climactic one) features a long, long description of who these people are and what they mean to accomplish.

The best performance in the film is given by Alfred Abel. I've seen Abel in a few other comedies, and I usually find him stolid and stiff. Here, surprisingly, he's quite funny as a wealthy eccentric who resorts to various scams and false identities to enrich himself even more. Wearing long sideburns and an unusual makeup, in this film Abel looks remarkably like Eddie Foy Junior! Abel also gets the funniest dialogue in the film, courtesy of the silent intertitles. When beautiful Mady Christians wants to evade her pursuers, Abel deftly makes her look extremely unattractive and then he remarks: "This is how I expect my wife to look." When she faints at Abel's table in a bistro, he suavely asks the waiter for a glass of cognac, apparently to revive her ... and then Abel drinks it himself. I anticipated as much, but then Abel uses the cognac's lingering fumes to revive her.

Although long stretches of this comedy are unfunny, nevertheless "The Grand Duke's Finances" contains the earliest example I've ever encountered of a perennial sight gag that I call "the punctuated stampede". We've all seen this gag in dozens of cartoons: a mob of figures rush across the screen, followed by a pause, and then one last little straggler brings up the rear. In this film, for no discernible reason, a top-hatted Abel contrives to send a pack of wolfhounds racing through his own mansion ... with a little dachshund bringing up the rear to punctuate the stampede.

In the central role of Don Ramon the Twenty-Second, Grand Duke of the Mediterranean nation of Abacco, Harry Liedtke is only vaguely amusing. Fans of "Nosferatu" will be intrigued to see Max Schreck's name in the cast list here. Schreck plays one of a quartet of political agitators. He wears a long straggly beard and looks impressively gaunt but has almost nothing to do, except for one amusing bit of physical business when a maidservant chases him out of the Grand Duke's castle. A far more impressive (and much more physical) performance is given by Hans Schaufuss as Schreck's hunchbacked co-conspirator. Schaufuss leaps, capers, goggles at the camera, swings from a rope, and gives a performance even more athletic than Lon Chaney's Quasimodo.

The exterior photography is excellent, and I felt a nostalgic twinge during a shot of a tram moving through a city's streets at night. Several sequences were shot on shipboard, and I was pleased to see the horizon heaving up and down realistically, unlike in so many Hollywood films which feature stationary cameras in "shipboard" sequences. Near the end, there's a funny shot of a woman chasing a man into the distance ... but Leo McCarey would have done it better. Murnau was a great director of dramas, but his comedic efforts fall very far short of Ernst Lubitsch's comedies. I'll rate "The Grand Duke's Finances" 6 out of 10.