The Airship (1983)

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Movie
Original title The airship
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1983
length 117 minutes
Rod
Director Rainer Simon
script Fritz Rudolf Fries
Rainer Simon
production DEFA , KAG "Johannisthal"
music Friedrich Goldmann
Karl-Ernst Sasse
camera Roland Dressel
cut Helga Gentz
occupation

Das Luftschiff is a German DEFA feature film by Rainer Simon from 1983, based loosely on the novel of the same name by Fritz Rudolf Fries from 1974.

action

The film begins in an air raid shelter at the end of the Second World War . Chico, a boy aged 11, raves about his grandfather, who he only knows was a great inventor. When the fighting is over, he decides to look for him, and with the help of his aunt, he sets off. She meets a nice young man on the way, so that Chico continues looking alone. Here he receives help from an anti-fascist who wants to support him, because he thinks that his grandfather fought on the side of the International Brigades in Spain . But it's not as simple as that, as the film, which was always shuttling back and forth in its times, shows.

Also right at the beginning you can see Chico's grandfather Fran Xaver Stannebein in a flashback, how he, as a 15-year-old member of a Leipzig aviation association, is supposed to show during a demonstration how one can fly with wings. He later becomes an obsessed inventor who set his mind on building an airship with propeller blades. In order to earn money, he first emigrates to Spain , becomes a sales representative, starts a family with the Spaniard Dona Mathilde and has several children. His dream of the airship persisted, so he left work and family for Berlin . When he arrived, he initially resided in the Hotel Adlon as general manager and tried to get in touch with foreign ambassadors and major German industrialists to finance his project. But success does not come until he has to look for accommodation in very simple hotels even because of dwindling funds. One reason for the failure of his negotiations is that Stannebein refuses to equip his airship for military tasks.

But then there are people who want to support him financially, but only if he first builds a runway in Spain for his airships. He doesn't need that, because his aircraft should be able to take off and land vertically, but the possibility of finally getting the money for his invention in a second installment convinces him. After completing the runway and the lack of money for his airship, he realizes that he was cheated by his clients and that the concrete runway was only intended to serve the German troops of the Condor Legion in the Spanish civil war , he travels back to Berlin, not without a few more beforehand liberate trapped republicans. In the capital he wants to complain about the fraud and is sent to an asylum .

In 1945 the rest of the family started thinking about Chico, who had meanwhile arrived at the hospital. At the same time, his aunt arrives with her new boyfriend, who, however, immediately disappears in the car. His grandmother also arrives, who has set out on a bicycle with a neighbor. Everyone has to recognize that Franz Xaver Stannebein has become a victim of euthanasia .

production

The airship was shot on ORWO color with the support of studios from Madrid, Prague and Sofia by the artistic work group "Johannisthal" and had its festive premiere on March 17, 1983 at the Berlin Kino International . The first broadcast in the 2nd program of the television of the GDR took place on May 25, 1984. On December 1, 1985 it was first broadcast by ZDF in the Federal Republic.

criticism

Horst Knietzsch wrote in Neues Deutschland that, according to his own statement, after reading the novel, Rainer Simon had no intention of making a film out of this material. Knietzsch said it would have been better if Simon had stuck to this opinion. In the film, time and space are set against each other, the scenes bounce and jump back and forth, figures remain shadowy, metaphors do not illuminate the processes, but rather darken them.

The lexicon of international films writes about the film that it uses flying as a metaphor for freedom, space and self-realization, whereby it is laid out in an associative narrative style and, because of the complicated use of various cinematic means, can only address an interested audience.

Awards

literature

  • The airship In: F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , p. 375.
  • Das Luftschiff In: Ingrid Poss / Peter Warneke (eds.): Spur der Films Christoph Links Verlag, 2006, ISBN 978-3-86153-401-3 , pp. 397 to 399.
  • Matthias Struch: The flights of Franz Stannebein. Das Luftschiff (1982/1983) in: Michael Grisko (ed.): Die Zeit, die Welt und das Ich. On the cinematic work of Rainer Simon, Bertz + Fischer, Berlin 2016, pp. 123–141.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Neues Deutschland from March 19, 1983; P. 4
  2. ↑ The airship. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used