Original subtitles

E. A. Dupont's film THE ANCIENT LAW premiered on October 29, 1923 at the Marmorhaus theater in Berlin.

The original negative and the German version have not been preserved.

Copies of export versions have survived in various film archives worldwide,

but these were all shortened and in some cases the sequence of scenes has been changed.

In 1984, Lothar Schwab edited an initial reconstruction of the original in black-and-white for the Deutsche Kinemathek.

At that time, the intertitles could only be obtained via back-translations from various languages.

The revision in this edition was inspired by the discovery of the censorship office card for THE ANCIENT LAW.

With its help, not only the original wording of the intertitles,

but also the narrative sequence of the German premiere version could be reconstructed.

The source material included five vintage nitrate prints in color

of the Swedish, French, Russian, American and Italian export versions,

The length of the world premiere print has been restored in the reconstruction.

The coloring of the scenes is based on the Swedish and American versions.

The 3K scan took place at ARRI in Munich and Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna.

The digital restoration and mastering were carried out in 2017 at ARRI in Berlin.

Yiddish translation by Arun Viswanath

Archive material:

Scan:

Digital restoration and mastering:

Digital image processing:

Color correction:

Music (2017)

Reconstruction of the film:

With special support from: