Temptations of a Great City
About Temptations of a Great City
Dunning letters pile up for Metha Hellertz (Augusta Blad), a rich widow, because her son Aage (Valdemar Psilander), a bank clerk, is spending her money on nightlife. She forgives him once. He borrows from Hansen (Holger Hofman), a waiter who also lends at interest, and falls in with Hansen’s daughter Anna (Clara Wieth, later Pontoppidan). Aage brings her home to dinner; his mother finds them and throws Anna out. To pay for Anna’s spending he forges his mother’s signature. Broke, he slips into the childhood apartment at night to steal, sees himself in a mirror, and stops. Anna takes his promissory note from her father. Hansen has a stroke. The note is gone, and the pair are left together.
Cast & crew
More about Temptations of a Great City
August Blom directed from a script by Ljut Stensgaard and Erling Stensgaard. Axel Graatkjær photographed it. The Danish premiere was 6 March 1911 at the Panoptikon. The Danish Film Institute lists Nordisk negative 780: 820 meters, 35mm, black and white. International titles included Temptations of a Great City and Versuchungen der Grossstadt.
Themes
Making
Psilander plays the weak son of a privy councillor’s widow; Blom stages the theft he does not commit as a mirror shot inside her living room, which the Danish Film Institute still cites as the film’s set piece.
Audiences
Nordisk treated it as one of its biggest draws, and Psilander’s billing abroad followed from it.
Look
Axel Graatkjær shot the 820-meter negative. The institute notes his contre-jour lighting and the mirror that shows Aage entering his mother’s room at night, widening a single set into two views of the same theft.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
The Danish Film Institute catalogs a surviving 35mm picture negative, Nordisk no. 780, at 820 meters.
Notes
- Danish title: Ved Fængslets Port (At the Prison Gate). Other titles include Foran Fængslets Port and Storbyens Fristelser.
- It was Valdemar Psilander’s first film for Nordisk. The institute calls it one of the company’s largest successes and the picture that made him an international star.
- The Danish Film Institute groups it with Urban Gad’s Afgrunden (1910) as a marker of the start of Denmark’s strongest silent years.
- Variety singers Stella (Thora Meincke) and Didi (Gudrun Bruun Stephensen) appear in the nightlife scenes. Richard Christensen is Aage’s friend Bruun; H. C. Nielsen is Block. Julie Henriksen plays the Hellertz maid.
- The institute singles out the night break-in, played in a mirror, and Graatkjær’s backlighting.
- Rated for all ages on its Danish release.
Scenes
- Metha finds Aage and Anna at the dinner she was not meant to see and puts Anna out of the house.
- Aage forges his mother’s name to cover Anna’s bills.
- At night he steps into her sitting room to steal, catches his reflection, and leaves the money.
- Anna gets the IOU from Hansen; he collapses.
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-ved-fngslets-port-aka-temptations-of-a-great-city)
