Technical Specifications
Year: 1941
Director: Hans Trommer et Valérien Schmidely
Director of Photography: Ady Lumpert
Distribution: Margrit Winter, Erwin Kohlund, Emil Gyr
Runtime: 105 minutes
Language: Swiss German
Production: Pro Film Zurich
Distribution of the restored version: Cinémathèque suisse
Restoration Information
Restoration: Cinémathèque suisse, in collaboration with SRF, and the support of MEMORIAV (2017-2022)
4K Image Digitization-Color Grading-Image Restoration: L’Immagine Ritrovata
Sound Digitization: Cinévolution
Sound Restoration: L’Immagine Ritrovata
Subtitles: Mediamixtre
Synopsis
Based on the novel by Gottfried Keller, Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe transposes Shakespeare’s famous tale to a rural Swiss setting coloured by Swiss-German landscapes and accents. In the words of Freddy Buache, the “most beautiful and most authentic” film in the history of Swiss cinema is characterised by its distinctive use of purely cinematographic language. “Trommer and Schmidely have respected the author’s style rather than following the story word for word. They managed to invent cinematic equivalents. It is not an illustration of the book. It has been rewritten through the camera.” (F. Buache, Le Cinéma suisse: 1898–1998, Lausanne, L’Âge d’homme, 1998, p. 59).
Regarding the Film’s Restoration
When it was first released on 8 November 1941, Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe was not as successful as expected. The film was reworked and re-edited several times in the years that followed. As a consequence, several versions exist with variations in the length of shots, how they are edited together and even in their composition. The sound has also been revised, partially rerecorded and remixed for certain versions. As the original nitrate negatives of the image and the sound were destroyed in 1978 following the creation of a new version, the only elements available for the preparation of this new restoration by the Cinémathèque suisse were four significantly damaged and incomplete nitrate copies of varying lengths and edits. Intensive technical and historical research was carried out over five years to reconstruct Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe in a version that is as faithful as possible to the original version from 1941.