AustLit

On Christmas Eve in 1833, a happily married but impoverished inn-keeper, Mathias, murders a wealthy Jewish visitor to the inn, driven by the chance at wealth. He uses the stolen money to pay his debts and rise in local society. But, fifteen years after his crime, his guilt drives him to hallucination: believing he can hear his victim's sleighbells outside the inn, he sleeps, dreams of being tried and convicted of the murder, and dies without his family ever knowing the source of their wealth and his guilt.

Based on the nineteenth-century melodrama by French writers Erckmann-Chatrian, which had been adapted for the Australian stage by director Lincoln, the story was a popular one for early film, and was adapted again in 1935. This film (like the 1935 one) is now lost.

Like the 1911 film The Bells, The Burgomeister is an adaptation of the nineteenth-century stage melodrama by French writers Erckmann-Chatrian. An inn-keeper murders a Jewish guest for his money but, years later, his guilt forces him into hallucinations of his victim's sleighbells and a dream state in which he is tried for and convicted of the crime.

Like The Bells, The Burgomeister is a 'lost film': in the case of the latter film, the National Film and Sound Archive knows of a single extant sequence.