The Eskimo Baby
About The Eskimo Baby
Anna von Thorn calls on the parents of her fiancé, Knud Praetorius, who writes from Greenland that he is coming home with a surprise. The surprise is Ivigtut, played by Asta Nielsen, who pulls a train's emergency brake, greets people by rubbing noses, and sleeps on a bearskin. She is shut out of a family evening because of her clothes, rows into town, steals a corset and a shirt from a shop, and is caught. Knud pays and takes her home. He later leaves her behind when she is ill. Anna tells her he will not return. Ivigtut collapses, a doctor finds she is pregnant, and she gives birth to a boy. Knud comes back glad of the news. The story has them already married at Cape York. Anna breaks with the family. Knud, Ivigtut, and the child return to Greenland, and his parents accept her.
Cast & crew
More about The Eskimo Baby
Shot in 1916 and held back by the war. The premiere was April 4, 1918, at the Marmorhaus in Berlin. Direction is credited either to Heinz Schall or to Walter Schmidthässler. Louis Levy wrote the script, with Martin Jørgensen also named on some credits. Alfred Duskes produced. Carl Ferdinand Fischer was the cameraman. Freddy Wingardh, in his only known film, plays Knud. Berlin censors banned it for children in December 1918. One of the Nielsen films made that summer at the Union-Atelier she rented in Tempelhof.
Themes
Background
The negative was finished in 1916 and sat until April 1918 because of the First World War. By the premiere the war was in its last year.
Making
The Greenland material is played in a Berlin studio: a bearskin on the floor, a mirror, an electric bell, and a shop window, with Nielsen in fur trousers.
Look
Carl Ferdinand Fischer shot the comedy at the Union-Atelier in Tempelhof, matching studio interiors to the train, the shop, and the family rooms.
Music
Silent on release. Maud Nelissen wrote a score for the 2012 Edition Filmmuseum DVD.
Preservation
A 1,125-meter nitrate with Danish titles is at the Danish Film Institute. By 2000 it had been restored with the Deutsche Kinemathek, with a duplicate negative and German intertitles. The Filmmuseum München included that version in a 2012 Edition Filmmuseum DVD, with three other Nielsen films.
Notes
- The German title is Das Eskimobaby.
- Ivigtut's full name in the film is Ivigtut Sigurdsen.
- Nielsen said she could not finish the 1916 group as planned because her daughter Jesta was ill and she had to go to Copenhagen.
- After Dora Brandes and Das Liebes-ABC were completed, unfinished negatives from the series were sold on during a payment fight. A fire at a copying works later destroyed six original negatives. Nielsen won a 1922 lawsuit over the insurance, and inflation wiped the payment out.
- A 1,125-meter nitrate with Danish intertitles survived at the Danish Film Institute.
Scenes
- Ivigtut pulls the communication cord on the train because she does not know what it does.
- She rows into town, takes clothes from a shop, and is caught still wearing a mix of the stolen dress and her own fur trousers.
- Knud returns for the baby, and the three of them leave for Greenland.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Das Eskimobaby (1918).webm)
- Edition Filmmuseum DVD (2012)