Im Auto durch zwei Welten

For this prototype road movie, race car driver Clärenore Stinnes (1901 – 1990) and Swedish cameraman Carl-Axel Söderström covered 46,758 kilometres. Travelling in an Adler sedan and sponsored by companies like Bosch, Aral, Varta, and Continental, they drove through 23 countries and once around the globe – from Frankfurt across the Balkans, to the East, northwards to Siberia, across the Gobi Desert, from China to Japan, then along the Andes to the USA and, finally, by ship from New York back to Europe ... “All travellers film their trips, and so they should!” announced Clärenore Stinnes in 1931. For her, the film was evidence of faraway lands conquered. In her reports from the road, for which she voiced her own commentary, she provides an inventory in chronological order of the impressions of a tourist, natural beauty, cultural monuments, and fleeting encounters with people and animals along the way – “the automobile makes the big world small”. But she also gives us unvarnished images of the dangers and difficulties of the trip. As her cameraman put it, he did “more pushing than filming”.