Hanna Amon (1951)
Hanna Amon is a 1951 German color melodrama, directed and co-written by Veit Harlan. (Author Richard Billinger, in pre-war years somewhat infamous for writing over-heated books about pagan sexuality in Upper Austria, is credited with the “idea” of the film and later turned the plot into a play, “Ein Tag wie alle” (“A Day Like Any Other”).)
Hanna Amon starts out with the tragic heroine, played by popular star (and wife of the director) Kristina Söderbaum, being released from prison. Harlan wastes no time in making his stance clear: In an early close-up, Söderbaum is arranged with a golden picture frame on the wall behind her to serve as a halo. This is not going to be a subtle movie.
The film-length flashback ensues: Hanna (Söderbaum) and her younger brother Thomas live in a vaguely (it couldn’t have been otherwise: this is 1951 Germany) incestuous relationship on their farm (In her autobiography, Nichts bleibt immer so, Söderbaum stated: “All allusions to a possible brotherly love were eliminated.” Veit Harlan, in his autobiography, Im Schatten meiner Filme, claimed: “A great poetic thought was systematically destroyed, damaging the poet as well as the director and the actors. And certainly the business, too.”)
However, this idyll is threatened by countess Vera Colombani. Vera (played with great gusto by Ilse Steppat) is a cold-blooded, evil temptress right out of a storybook. We first see her berating and spurning her latest lover, reducing him to tears; we later learn that he committed suicide. She shoots one of her horses for failing to win a race (“We are too proud to lose a race, aren’t we, Lady?”) She is compared to a spider, to the devil himself. (Harlan also links her both to birds of prey and to migratory birds. Symbolism runs rampant in Hanna Amon.) A character says “In earlier times, one like her would have been burned at the stake.” She could have been played by Bela Lugosi in a wig.
Soon, the inevitable happens: Thomas and Vera are alone in a room, and now the seduction will take place. The audience, happily expecting a campy showpiece, leans back. But suddenly, spurned by an innocent line of dialogue, cynical, ice-cold Vera flies into a violent rage and, turning to the window, proceeds to literally tear down the curtains, screaming: “Sometimes I want to destroy whatever comes my way!”
It is a breathtaking moment. For Vera is not putting on an act: She is clearly serious, revealing her vulnerability, her humanness, in a startlingly over-the-top moment which a better-bred movie would never have dared to depict. And Harlan, not one to loosen his grip, cuts to a shot of Thomas staring at her as if hypnotized, slowly stammering “I… love… you…”
(The copies currently in circulation, based on broadcasts on the Pay TV channel “Heimatkanal”, are missing both the eruption and this line, thus depriving audiences of a key moment. Pre-2003, Heimatkanal broadcast a notably different edited version of the film, in most cases offering less material than the newer master, but containing this scene. If there ever was an argument for “director’s cuts”, here it is.)
From now on, the film gets increasingly feverish and deranged — or is it Hanna, having lost her brother, who gets increasingly feverish and deranged? At one point, she has a flashback to ancient Egypt, and it she who fires a deadly shot to save the honor of the Amon family. Eventually, Vera, for all her flaws, may well be the most sympathetic (in any case, the most relatable) character in this triangle. And yet, the film, to its very end, insists that Hanna should be regarded as our heroine, up to the point that her death is underscored by heavenly choirs and that she is praised by a priest in the pulpit.
Harlan — as his biographer Frank Noack states — ”did not understand his own films”. It is a surprising statement, but Noack is on the money, just as he is in calling Harlan a “primitive” in his art, incapable of irony. In Hanna Amon, painted with the broadest possible strokes, frequently pretentious, often absurd and yet oddly compelling, Harlan actually seems to believe that he is telling the tragic story of a heroic woman… while meanwhile, Harlan, the subconscious artist, hints at quite a different story. It is a noir nolens volens, and there’s nothing quite like it, especially from 1950ies Germany.
Hans Otto Borgmann’s dramatic film music, juggling with leitmotifs in the best Franz Waxman manner, is just as appropriate to this Agfacolor noir as are the performances: Lutz Moik acts just like he had done in the fairy tale Das kalte Herz (1950), Ilse Steppat (who was married to Max Nosseck and, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), shot James Bond’s wife), seems to have the time of her life (the way she asks “Tea!” from her maid is worth the price of admission in itself) and even little Caspar Veit Harlan does a good job. (Of course, given that — according to Moik, quoted by Noack — four months of rehearsal proceeded the filming, this should be expected.) Only Söderbaum, with her squeaky voice, has a hard time delivering lines like “Why is my love impure?” However, as her character is off the rockers anyway, it doesn’t matter much.
At its premiere Hanna Amon was greeted with sensational protests — not because of the incest suggestions than because of Harlan’s Nazi past. Still, it was a huge commercial success, attracting 5 million viewers to German cinemas and getting exported to Spain (El gran amor de Ana Amon, 1956), Portugal (Hanna Amon, 1953), Finland (Hanna Amon, 1953) and Sweden (Fången 393, 1953). In a 1952 poll, Hanna Amon came third in the list of films most popular in Germany — Rebecca, the only American movie in the list, came fourth. However, while Harlan’s earlier Immensee (1943) and Opfergang (1944) have been restored and released on Blu-Ray, at the time of this writing Hanna Amon can be seen only on German pay TV.
Film-Echo: The material has heavily operatic traits…. Through the inclusion of choirs and symbolic appearances the direction achieves a tightness of goings-on that won’t leave audiences indifferent.
Filmwoche: The sweeping direction again confirms the unbroken vitality and individuality of the consummate artist Harlan.
Filmbeobachter: Pathetic invocation of pure brotherly love, full of dripping sentimentality and misplaced Christian symbolism.
Katholischer Film-Dienst: Out of this touching story grew a color film in the well-known Harlan manner. Peasant ethics, faith in duty, sense of family, love for children, Dirndl heartiness, and ponderous appeal to religiosity, with pagan–Christian symbolism in image and music, to the ‘deutsche Gemüt’ [German soul] .”
ABC (Madrid): … perhaps the best of this is the composition of its cadres, the harmony that presides over its images, the beautiful colors that animate it. The conflict is interesting, but it is narrated too slowly, with excessive detail, and with repetition of situations, as well as with prodigality in the dialogues (…) We will admit to the visual beauty of the film, especially in some moments, and especially in the competition of carriages pulled by beautiful horses. The performances turned out a little exaggerated. Kristina Söderbaum is the most sober in expressions and gestures, but others, mainly Ilse Steppat, in our opinion exaggerated, removing veracity and effectiveness from the characters they embody.
