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The 19th century: Because Johann Suter (Luis Trenker) is politically
persecuted in his native Germany, he flees to the USA, where he soon
becomes a celebrated trapper in the Midwest - but he's looking for
adventure, so he and two friends (Luis Gerold, Paul Verhoeven) decide to
make it to the West Coast. They almost die trying, but Suter is such a
daredevil that he ultimately not only saves his friends but also
Marshall's (Reinhold Pasch) treck - and out of gratitude, Marshall and his
lot immediately swear allegiance to Suter. Before long, Suter not only
finds a passage to the West Coast, he also finds inhabitable land and
manages to secure the property from the (then still Mexican) gouvernment.
Under Suter's reign, the region flourishes ... but then gold is found, and
Marshall wants to abandon all common sense to exploit the land instead.
Suter is against it, but Marshall and company are overcome by greed that
they not only ignore his reservations, they also kill his sons (Werner
Kunig, Karli Zwingmann) as a warning, upon which Suter's wife (Viktoria
von Ballasko) decides to die spontaneously out of grief. California has
since fallen to the USA, and Marshall and his cronies want to secure their
gold fields, which were granted to Suter according to Mexican law, in a
fair trial, but the court of law decides in Suter's favour. The judge
however suggests to Suter to give up most of the land to avoid an
uprising, but Suter's so embittered he refuses ... and is almost lynched
when that uprising occurs (but so are his opponents), and a fire destroys
all of San Francisco in the process ... The final scenes shows Suter as
an impoverished man on the steps of the Capitol - and the spirit who has
once suggested for him to go to the USA visits him once more ... showing
him pictues of progress for no apparent reason ... This is a
beautifully filmed movie that really shows where its budget has gone, and
that knows how to paint impressive, even epic pictures - at the same time
though, it's not a very good movie. And that's not so much because it's
historically inaccurate (yes, Johann Suter aka John Sutter actually
existed and did some of the stuff depicted in this movie), but because it
paints the picture of its hero in a way too favourable light - This Johann
Suter simply cannot do wrong, he has the right answer to pretty much every
question, does not know vices such as greed, and is a daredevil if there
ever was one. Now even within the film's plot (as opposed to John Sutter's
actual biography), you can find weaknesses in Suter's judgement, but they
are glossed over by the film as such, none of his decisions are ever
questioned, as if he was ... well, I'll leave it to you to make the
connection between Germany in 1936 and the Führer. But that's not even
the worst of it, the story of a knight in shining armour might still work
to some degree if backed up by a good storyline ... which Der Kaiser
von Kalifornien just fails to deliver, it functions as a mere monument
to a hero rather than the story of a hero - which is more than a tad
annoying. Still, the film is of more than a little interest to all film
historians as an early German Western with a then well-known mountaineer
(Trenker) in the lead, plus it does look great ... it's just not a
very good film, now is it?
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amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
eThaiCD.com
find The Emperor of California at adultvideouniverse.com
