Sunday, November 23, 2008

The Indian Tomb #2


master shot, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

Master Shot

Budgeted at more than 20 million German marks (a huge sum in those days), this lavish, 2-part action/adventure film takes place in an atmospheric Indian setting. (The “authentic” Indian locations were all filmed in Germany in Weissensee, a suburb of Berlin.) The elephants and tigers that appear in the film were most likely obtained from one of the big German circuses that was convenient to the Berlin area. (The elephants only appear in two sequences in Part 1, but the tigers are featured prominently in both parts.)

Posted by Buckles at 11/23/2008 06:16:00 AM

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Elephants and Tigers would have come from Circus Hagenbeck or Circus Busch who had a permanent Circus in Berlin.

23 November, 2008 15:46
Raffaele De Ritis said...

This movie was an important important insipration for the circus history....
The elephants are in fact from Sarrasani (at least, is what is said in Sarrasani's biographies). It seems that is while making this movie that Hans Stosch, the circus founder and director, became fascinated with the oriental mood, and consequently adopted the white oriental colonial costume and turban to present his elephants, becoming famous as "the circus maharadja". This atmosphere is also at the origin of the oriental front of the house that Sarrasani built, followed later by Krone and the others.
I'm not sure about the african tusked elephant, I don't think Sarrasani owned one. The tigers, if came from Sarrasani, must be from Otto Sailer Jackson.
Circus Busch building didn't owned elephants or tigers at that time; and the Hagenbeck company was not in the area. Sarrasani had a lot of connections at the time with the theatrical and movie business.

I'm sure Buckles doesn't have trouble in finding and posting a Sarrasani indian costumed picture...
By the way, I prefer much better the wonderful Fritz Lang's remake of the movie from the 50s.

24 November, 2008 04:17

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