Professor Steinacks Metode el. Foryngelseskuren

1921 Animation 6 minutes Directed by Robert Storm Petersen

About Professor Steinacks Metode el. Foryngelseskuren

A scientist has a serum that turns the old young and the worn-out new. His first patient, a very old man, gets one injection and shrinks, step by step, into a baby. Three little men steal the syringe. They go through town dosing men and livestock who look as if they need it.

Cast & crew

More about Professor Steinacks Metode el. Foryngelseskuren

Robert Storm Petersen, Storm P., drew and directed this short cartoon. Karl Wieghorst photographed the drawings. It opened at the Palads Teatret in Copenhagen on February 21, 1921. Danish titles are Foryngelseskuren and Professor Steinachs Metode. The intertitles are in Danish. It was the second cartoon in a short series built on Storm P.'s newspaper strip, the three little men.

Themes

  • A serum that runs backward
  • An old man turned into a baby
  • The three little men with a stolen syringe
  • rejuvenation
  • serum
  • three little men
  • Storm P.
  • injection
  • baby

Background

Rejuvenation was a medical fashion when the short opened. Steinach, in Vienna, was promoting operations that were supposed to make older patients young again. The cartoon takes the claim one injection further, down to a baby.

Making

Storm P. was a cartoonist first. These films are his drawings photographed by Wieghorst, with the same three tiny men who already had a daily strip.

Look

Karl Wieghorst photographed Storm P.'s drawings.

Preservation

The Danish Film Institute streams a copy on Stumfilm.dk, with the original Danish intertitles.

Notes

  • Storm P. appears in the credits as well as directing.
  • The three little men had run in Danish newspapers since the early 1910s before they moved into these cartoons.
  • Other shorts in the same run include Øen, En Ande-Historie, Klarinetspilleren, and Jernmiksturen.
  • The alternate title names Professor Steinach. Eugen Steinach's rejuvenation operations were news in the early 1920s, and the serum is the film's version of that cure.

Scenes

  • One injection takes the old man down, stage by stage, until he is a baby.
  • The three little men make off with the syringe and start dosing men and animals.

Influenced by

  • Eugen Steinach's rejuvenation method

Also available

  • Stumfilm.dk (Foryngelseskuren)