Atlantis

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.

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.

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!

As someone who taught courses on silent films at a local university and someone who has been interested in silent films for more than 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 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 top 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 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...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.

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.