Shattered
About Shattered
In winter, a railway signalman, his wife, and their daughter live a bare routine in a house beside the tracks. A telegram says an inspector is coming and will stay with them. The daughter gives in to him. The mother hears noise, breaks into his locked room with an axe, and finds her. She runs to a shrine at the edge of the wood and freezes to death while praying. In the morning the signalman finds her body. The daughter asks the inspector to marry her. He refuses. She tells her father. He knocks, then strangles the inspector. The next day he stops a train, tells the driver he is a murderer, and the daughter watches the train leave across the snow.
Cast & crew
More about Shattered
Lupu Pick directed and produced. Carl Mayer and Pick wrote the script. Friedrich Weinmann was cinematographer. Giuseppe Becce composed the score; English sources also credit Alexander Schirmann. Werner Krauss is the signalman, Hermine Straßmann-Witt his wife, Edith Posca the daughter, Paul Otto the inspector, and Pick a traveler. The company shot in the Riesengebirge in February 1921. The original length is five acts, 1,356 meters. German censors passed it on May 3, 1921 (B.02158) and barred it to minors. Ufa was the German distributor. The subtitle on German records is Ein deutsches Filmkammerspiel. Drama in 5 Tagen.
Themes
Background
It opened in Berlin in May 1921, in the early Weimar film season that also produced Carl Mayer's other tight domestic scripts.
In film history
German film history treats Scherben as the first Kammerspielfilm: a small-cast story of ordinary people, unified in place and time, played without the fantastic sets of Caligari.
Making
Mayer and Pick built the film as a chamber piece: a few people, one house, five days, and almost no titles. Krauss plays the signalman without the grotesque makeup of his Caligari role the year before.
Look
Friedrich Weinmann shot the snow exteriors in the Giant Mountains and the cramped rooms of the signalman's house. Window glass, boots, and the scarecrow carry information that titles do not.
Music
Giuseppe Becce wrote the score that accompanied the silent picture.
Preservation
The film survives. A television print reached ZDF in 1973. Internet Archive holds a copy under the identifier silent-scherben.
Notes
- The Berlin premiere was May 27, 1921, at the U.T. am Kurfürstendamm and the Mozartsaal.
- Apart from the confession "Ich bin ein Mörder!", the story is told without intertitles.
- A storm breaks a window before the inspector arrives. His polished boots mark his rank, and a scarecrow stands in front of the house.
- Filmportal.de gives the original length as five acts and 1,356 meters.
- Filmportal.de records a first television broadcast on ZDF on March 27, 1973.
- The French release title was Le rail.
- The German censor card is B.02158, dated May 3, 1921, with a youth ban.
Scenes
- The mother chops through the inspector's door and finds her daughter.
- She dies in the snow at the wayside shrine.
- The signalman stops the train and says he is a murderer.
Influenced
- Sylvester (1924)
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-scherben)
Quotes
Ich bin ein Mörder!
