A Brief History: Das Sandbad

Saturn Films is the very first Austrian film production firm. It exclusively devotes itself to ingenuous little saucy films.

Johann Schwarzer, its founder, enjoys giving variety to the shooting style and locations. This film belongs to a nude series titled “Natural Scenes” (Natur-Szenen), shot outdoors.

A catalog keeps the trace of some hundred productions that have disappeared today. Its small format makes it possible to mail order discreetly on the basis of an appealing synopsis. For instance, concerning the film Adolescent Games, the catalog mentions that three young women in “Eve’s costume” play different games: cricket, tag, or with a jump rope. A photo comes with the text.

In a Saturn film, the undressed protagonists are always women. The excuse for undressing is sometimes a theme, which might be exotic: as in Slave theft (Sklavenraub), or mythological: Diana bathing, Amazons (Amazonen), Fauns and Spirits (Faunen und Nixen).

Between 1906 and 1911, Saturn’s activity quickly flourished and found many fans across Europe. But after only five years in business, the Vienna government ordered the company to shut down operations on the grounds of immorality. The ethics police hacked the films to pieces. The catalogues, negatives and copies all suffered the same fate.

The majority of Saturn films come from collector Albert Fidelius, the son of a German distributor, who began collecting primitive films in 1933. The collection was then purchased in the 1950s by German film director Gerhard Lamprecht, who founded the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek several years later..

In the 1990s, original nitrate-based films (mainly negatives) were entrusted to the Filmarchiv Austria, where they were duly restored.