“Film history has not handed us down the name of Reinhard Bruck, a script-writer and director who was active in Germany at the beginning of the century. All his films are unknown to the present generations, except for Die Nachte des Cornelis Brouwer – which reached Italy under the title of Notti di follia – and Boccaccio (Boccaccios Liebesabenteuer, 1920). Peeping into various catalogues of the period, we find him listed as the director of an Arabic fantasy: Halbwelt, in 1911 and of Zouza (id), both with the famous French imaginative Polaire (1877-1939) and the future director Richard Oswald who was acting here.
The name Bruck reappears after a long eclipse, probably due to the war, in 1919, at first as script-writer (Das Gelubde der Keuschheit, directed by Nils Chrisander), and then as director of Puppen des Todes, with Albert Bassermann, of Die Verschleierte (1920) with Tilla Durieux and of Briganten Rache (id.) with Asta Nielsen, filmed in Yugoslavia.
There are two versions, both his – 1919 and 1921 – of Das Eid der Stephan Hutte, from the novel by Felix Hollaender, which had already been released in 1912 in two episodes by Viggo Larsen, who also acted in the film along with Wanda Treumann, and which would have been taken up again in 1925 by E.A. Dupont as the subject for Variétés interpreted by Emil Jannings and Lya de Putti, and which 10 years later in a sound film would have a triple version -franco-(Variétés, directed by Nikolas Farkas,with Jean Gabin and Annabella) -anglo- (The three Maxims, directed by Herbert Wilcox, with Anna Neagle and Tullio Carminati) – German (Variétés, directed by Nikolas Farkas and Jacob Geism with Hans Albers and Annabella). After an oriental adventure entitled Haschisch, das Paradies der Holle (1921) with Fritz Körtner and Tilla Duriex, Die Nachte der Cornelis Brouwer is the last title attributed to Bruck, registered in the catalogues. The film takes up the theme of the ‘Doppelrolle’ again, which is so frequent in German cinema. Incidentally, it must be remembered that it was Bassermann himself, protagonist of the film, who dealt with a similar theme in Der Andere (1913) by Max Mack”. (Vittorio Martinelli)