Hunt For Berlin Ripper 1910

[Howard Brown]

Not sure what to make of this...whether it was a stage production or short film.

Daily Alaska Dispatch
Juneau
December 5, 1910
**************

[Chris G.]

Hi How

If you read down the listings it looks as if each program begins with an overture then there is a bit of comedy, a song, a dramatic piece, etc. So it looks as if "Hunt for the Berlin Jack-the-Ripper" was a short drama or film that was featured between the other types of entertainment.

Stan Reid seems to have heard of it as a film, as in a thread at Casebook on Eddowes from 2005, he wrote:

"In addition to the two prewar "Lodger" films and movies that mention JTR like "Farmer Spudd and His Missus Take a Trip to Town", other releases in that era with a Ripper theme were "The Threepenny Opera" (1931) as well as the G. W. Pabst German Expressionist work "Die Buchse der Pandora" (1928). There are also at least three other older films that may be about JTR but for which there is not enough, as far as can be discerned, information extant to know for sure. They are "Berlin Jack the Ripper" (1909), Spring Heeled Jack" (1909) and the Mexican two-reeler "El Destripador" (1914). Those are all the ones I know of at least."

The movie is in the Internet Movie Database as having been released in the U.S. on 18 October 1909, a short black and white silent made in Italy, original title of "Lo sventratore di Berlino." It appears to be available on line, e.g., see http://www.fstage.com/english/lo-sve...lino-1909.html.

All the best

Chris

[Stan Reid]

Yes Chris, I remember writing that and I think I also sent it to Amanda Howard to put on her site as a potential true-crime inspired serial killer movie. Unfortunately, I don't know much more about it now than I knew when I made that post.

[Chris G.]

Thanks, Stan. Looking at the site for "Lo sventratore di Berlino" that I cited in my last post, I am wondering if the Anglicized version was made in Alaska, because one of the people involved is listed is an animal trainer named "Paul 'Sled' Reynolds"! See below. This might imply, whether done in Alaska or not, that more than just English titles were added but some extra footage as well.

Lo sventratore di Berlino (1909)

Art Direction: Nick Basset
Costume Design: John Harding, Mayes C. Rubeo, Deborah Lynn Scott
Assistant Director: Maria Battle-Campbel
Makeup Artist: Michele Barbe
Animal Wrangler / Animal Trainer: Elizabeth McMullan, Paul "Sled" Reynolds
Production Company: SAFFI-Comerio
Playtime: perc
Aspect Ratio: 1.33

According to a book found on Google Books on Italy in Early American Cinema: Race, Landscape, and the Picturesque by Giorgio Bertellini (2009), the Italian film production company SAFFI-Comerio in the same year made a film entitled Dalla pieta all'amore (Pity and Love) described as one of a couple of "tear-jerking melodramas of loss and romantic rescue" to be produced in Italy about the September 1909 eruption of Mount Etna. We might deduce that "Lo sventratore di Berlino" renamed "The Berlin Ripper" for the English-speaking market was a similarly melodramatic film.

Best regards

Chris