| 4 Devils | |
| Director: | F. W. Murnau |
| Producer: | William Fox |
| Starring: | Janet Gaynor Charles Morton Mary Duncan Barry Norton |
| Music: | Ernö Rapée Lew Pollack |
| Cinematography: | L. William O'Connell Ernest Palmer |
| Studio: | William Fox Studio |
| Distributor: | Fox Film Corporation |
| Runtime: | 100 minutes (Part-Talkie Version) 97 minutes (Synchronized Version) |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | Sound film (Synchronized) English Intertitles |
4 Devils (also known as Four Devils) is a lost 1928 American synchronized sound drama film directed by German director F. W. Murnau and starring Janet Gaynor.[1] [2] While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the sound-on-film movietone process.
Four orphans become a high wire act and encounter sinister goings-on at a circus. An old clown takes in the four children Charles, Adolf, Marion and Louise to protect them from the brutal circus owner who is their guardian. He raises them and trains them to become acrobats. The years pass and the four children soon become successful trapeze artists who call themselves the "Four Devils". Charles and Marion are now a couple. But when they perform at Cirque Olympia in Paris, Charles gets involved with a beautiful stranger. Marion learns about the relationship and is distracted by it. At the finale of her performance, in which she works without a net, she crashes. Marion survives, and Charles, touched by the near-catastrophe, returns to his girlfriend.
The film featured two theme songs titled "Marion" and "Destiny" which were both composed by Erno Rapee and Lew Pollack.
4 Devils was released by Fox Film Corporation and was produced by William Fox, who had hired Murnau to come to the United States. It was initially released without dialogue with a synchronised music score and sound effects in October 1928,[3] and grossed $100,000 in New York City, but because of the talkie picture craze, Fox pulled it from distribution and ordered sound to be added.[4] A 25% talking version, incorporating "synchronised sound effects, music and dialogue sequences", was made without Murnau's cooperation.[5]
No copies of either version of the film are known to exist, and 4 Devils remains among the most sought after lost films of the early sound era. Details of the movie can be found on the DVD for Sunrise,[5] released by Fox as part of their 20th Century Fox Studio Classics collection.Film historian and collector William K. Everson stated that the only surviving print was lost by actress Mary Duncan, who had borrowed it from Fox Studios.[6] Martin Koerber, curator of Deutsche Kinemathek, is more hopeful, writing that the print was given to Duncan, and that her heirs, if any, may yet have it.[5]
In 2003 the documentary short Murnau's 4 Devils: Traces of a Lost Film by film historian Janet Bergstrom was released, showing a reconstruction using stills, drawings, sketches and script drafts.
The source novella by Herman Bang was first adapted into film in 1911[7] by Robert Dinesen and Alfred Lind, and finally in 1985 by Anders Refn. The screenplay for the 1928 film was novelized by Guy Fowler and published that year by Grosset & Dunlap as a hardcover photoplay (movie tie-in) edition.