nach dem Drama von Percy Robinson, To what red hell, 1929

Remake: dämonisches Ich, Das (L. Huntington, UK, 1946)

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At last the world would see what British producers could do with such material as Percy Robinson's tragedy provided, acted by a company of consummate artists who would speak in a language that could be recognized as the King's English. The general public, it must be admitted, remained cold. The masses had never heard either of the play or its author. Only a very small moiety of the theatre-going public had had the good fortune to see Miss Sarah Allgood in the part of the Irishwoman whose son was condemned to death for a murder he had not committed. That moiety was not altogether agreeably surprised to hear that Miss Thorndike was to appear in Miss Sarah Allgood's creation.
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What the piece chiefly fails in is its lack of brisk action. It is slow to an almost intolerable degree. Criticism has also been made of the theme in which a drunken epileptic plays one of the chief parts. (Rezension der New York Times, 1929)
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9D03E1DA1030E73ABC4E53DFB6678382639EDE

DRAMA. An epileptic strangles a girl during a seizure and subsequently commits suicide when the girl's sweetheart is arrested and condemned to death for the crime. Note: The film was originally to be made as a silent and went into production in early 1929. Twickenham studios installed R.C.A. sound equipment in April 1929, and the film was scrapped and re-made over the next two months as a sound film. The film was trade shown in September, when it was 14,000ft long. Cuts of 3,000ft were announced and the film was withdrawn and not reviewed. A revised copy of 8,000ft was trade shown in October, which saw the long opening section removed and an added prologue delivered by Sybil Thorndike. The NFTVA copy lacks this prologue and all opening titles except a quotation containing the film's title. It is 6,700ft long. From stills of the film, scenes with an elderly woman (his mother?) and Harold have been cut out, although she appears briefly in the background during the night-club scene (she is incorrectly identified as Sybil Thorndike in a still given in Quinlan's `British Sound Films'). A scene with a priest and Nolan in his cell is also missing. The review in the Bioscope (see below) makes clear a number of differences between the first and second versions. Refs: Rachael Low, The History of the British Film 1918-1929, p 180. Bioscope 18.9.29 (report on first trade show) Bioscope 23.10.29 p 37 (review) Gifford 08750

http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/title/55016?view=synopsis