Wilhelm Tell

 Wilhelm Tell (1923) is a German silent film featuring Conrad Veidt in the role of Gessler, the villain. I have been reading Schiller's play and decided to look at excerpts from its operatic adaptation by Rossini; everything is on You Tube and I assumed I would find some scenes from the opera on-line.  As it happens, Rossini's grand opera based on Schiller's play seems to be as defunct as the wooly mammoth or the pterodactyl -- apparently, no one performs the work any more and I didn't find any scenes posted from the opera.  However, I encountered a silent film, with German intertitles, the sort of elaborate production in which costumes and settings are attributed to Teutonic professors with university affiliation.  I was skeptical about the movie and expected to watch only a little bit of the 88 minute film.  In fact, the picture was so fast-paced and engaging that I ended up watching the whole thing. Wilhelm Tell was an early production of Aafa Studios aka Radio Film, an enterprise that seems to have entered movie production with the agenda of developing sound pictures. Wilhelm Tell was directed by Rudolf Dworsky (the founder of Aafa) and Rudolf Walther-Fein -- in its early years, Dworski is listed as co-director on most of the studio's films.  Radio Film (Aafa) succeeded in releasing sound films around 1929, generally light comedies and operettas.  The only well-known picture produced by the studio is Dr. Arnold Fanck's "mountain film", The White Hell of Pitz-Palu (1929 -starring Leni Riefenstahl).  

Although not particularly well-preserved, Wilhelm Tell is intelligible -- some of the lighter tones now have decayed into over-exposure.  The film is an adventure movie, a gallop through the major plot points in Schiller's drama.  The picture is so fast-paced that it urges its viewers forward, notwithstanding a lot of melodramatically histrionic acting.  Furthermore, the picture has impressive, if uneven, production values and most of its shots look great.  As a pure action movie, the film holds up remarkably well.  (An exception is the famous opening scene in Schiller's play in which Wilhelm Tell ferries the fugitive Baumgarten across an Alpine lake in a violent storm -- the directors don't how to stage this sequence and, so, they revert to a oval iris effect in which we seem to be seeing a tempest in a very dimly lit bathtub.)

The co-directors keep things moving quickly --  there are very few establishing shots and the film grammar is more advanced, in some ways, than Hollywood pictures made today:  the plot is developed through cross-cutting between three parallel narratives.  There are no transitions.  The directors simply cut back and forth between the three stories, without any signals to the viewer that the plot is shifting perspective.  Presumably, Germans were well aware of the story, knew the play by Schiller and the Rossini opera, and the movie seems to be a compendium of the high points in these works, however, shuffled and rearranged to create an emphasis different from the drama.  (Schiller's play focuses on the alliance between the three provinces that comprise Switzerland, Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalder in their insurrection against the villainous Hermann Gessler, a figure similar to the Sheriff of Nottingham, an evil and rapacious representative of the Kaiser of the Holy Roman Empire. There's a nod to this narrative in an inventive shot early in the film -- we see a map of Switzerland with the principals of each of the three realms displayed in vignette profile over the territory that they represent.  But Schiller's focus on the political alliance or Bund between the provinces quickly fades into insignificance in the picture.)  In the first narrative, a man named Baumgarten comes home to find one of the sheriff's henchmen raping his wife.  He kills the bad guy with his axe and, then, must flee.  The second strand of the action involves Melchthal, a peasant who loses his oxen to Gessler's minions.  Melchthal assaults the sheriff's men and, also, has to flee.  Gessler arrests Melchthal's elderly father and has one of his henchmen burn out his eyes.  This inspires Melchthal to a titanic rage and he announces that he will kill Gessler and free the Swiss.  In the third narrative strand, Gessler sends a Swiss nobleman to escort a young woman with whom he is betrothed (he also may be her Vormund or guardian).  The nobleman falls in love with the young woman to the dismay of Gessler.  The villain throws the nobleman in a scary-looking oubliette and locks his girlfriend in the castle's tower.  The girl complains that she is a "prisoner" and, so, Gessler takes her into the dungeon to peer down at her boyfriend, languishing on straw at the bottom of the noisome hole -- "Now, there's a 'prisoner'," Gessler says sarcastically.  Of course, the young woman must sacrifice her honor to Gessler in order to secure the release of her lover.  The titular Wilhelm Tell is not really central to any of these plots -- he's a humble farmer who happens to have great skill with the Armbrust ( that is, crossbow).  Tell wins a marksmanship contest and is appointed a festival "king."  Tell is like the retired gunfighters in many Westerns -- he's not interested in politics and just wants to be left alone.  But when he goes into the market one day, he's ordered to bow or "reverence" Gessler's hat that has been posted atop a lance.  (Gessler's troops are Landesknechte, wearing round pewter helmets and carrying ten-foot lances -- they look like figures from a Brueghel engraving.) When Tell refuses the demand that he show obeisance to Gessler's hat, he's forced into the famous test of his skill as a marksman -- he has to shoot an apple off his feisty little boy's head.  (In the film, the six-year old's defiance is what gets Wilhelm Tell in trouble.)  Interestingly, the actual archery scene is remarkably underplayed -- we see Tell protesting, someone grabbing an apple off a tree, and, then, in a close-up the arrow piercing the apple.  Surprisingly, there are no shots of Tell aiming his crossbow and no picture of the child with the apple actually on his head.  In the film's frantic short-hand, we're not really even shown the dramatic scene -- it's just sketched for us.  (For some reason, this is very effective.)  The Swiss from their separate provinces gather at Ruetli and we see the yeoman swearing to make an alliance to oust Gessler -- the so-called Ruetli scene is a highlight in Schiller's play but here is economically represented by some shots of towering cliffs over a lake and, then, men gathering, at first a few, and, then, hundreds while raising their fists in the air and baring their breasts after the manner of the Revolutionaries in paintings by David (for instance, The Tennis Court Oath).

Wilhelm Tell is thrown in jail and Gessler plans to execute him.  However, first Gessler must proceed with a squadron of lance-bearing cavalry to the castle where he has locked up the woman that he has raped.  He now intends to marry her.  (It's not clear that he raped her, although this is implied -- maybe, he just chivalrously demanded that she marry her; silent films often allow the audience to imagine the worst and, then, reveal that the situation is little less dire than expected.)  For some reason, Tell's captors load him onto a little skiff to cross Lake Lucerne.  Along the way, another terrible storm blows up and, because Gessler's henchmen somehow know that Tell successfully rowed Baumgarten across the lake in a similar tempest, they let  him take the helm.  This is a bad idea because Tell overcomes them and leaves his captors to the mercy of the gale.  (The shots on the turbulent lake are poorly managed and have the curious bathtub effect mentioned previously).  With his cross-bow, Tell makes his way to shore and climbs up to a defile overlooking the path that Gessler is traveling to his wedding.  Tell puts the second bolt in the Armbrust, the one he was reserving for Gessler if he missed his shot on the apple.  From a great distance, Tell fires and kills Gessler who cries out "the second bolt" before falling off  his horse --   Tell's "shot that is legendary because of the extreme range" at which it was taken. (So we are informed by an intertitle.)  The cavalrymen with the big lances carry Gessler's corpse to the castle where his bride-to-be feigns horror but, also, rejoices.  Wilhelm Tell lights fires on the mountain tops signifying that the insurrection should begin.  The thug who blinded Melchart's aged dad is captured by the rebels led by the enraged Melchart.  He drags the bad guy to his father and is about to do something ghastly to him when the elder Melchart intervenes, crying out a non sequitur that "the first fruit of freedom is forgiveness."  Tell climbs up to a high mountain peak overlooking a vast ridge of snowy peaks.  He disables his cross-bow and, converting it into a religious symbol, stabs the weapon into the sod.  The Armbrust has now become the symbol of the Prince of Peace.

The movie is grotesquely over-acted with people clasping at their hearts or showing shock by throwing their heads back and, then, tugging at their own hair.  But it's an effective movie, curiously non-violent, but inspiring in its own way and Conrad Veidt is an impressive villain

The film was remade in 1934 as a sound picture.  Conrad Veidt, apparently, specialized in playing the role of Hermann Gessler, the villain, in performances of Schiller's play and he reprises the part in the 1934 film.  The doughty Hans Marr, acting the part of Wilhelm Tell, also reprised his silent era performance in the sound film.