Cloves in aspic

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Movie
Original title Cloves in aspic
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1976
length 90 minutes
Age rating FSK o.A.
Rod
Director Günter Reisch
script Kurt Belicke
Günter Reisch
production DEFA , KAG "Johannisthal"
music Reinhard Lakomy
camera Günter Haubold
cut Monika Schindler
occupation

Nelken in Aspik is a German DEFA film satire directed by Günter Reisch in 1976.

action

Wolfgang Schmidt works as an advertising artist in the House of Advertising. Although he is completely untalented as a draftsman, he can speak eloquently and verbosely and is very committed to society. He likes to give speeches, appears in his spare time as a football commentator and attends every possible further training. His cadre file is a full, large folder. Siegfried Huster from the superordinate central office for light print products is looking for a new employee for the head office. Schmidt's cadre files make an impression on him and although the director of the House of Advertising , colleague Kühn, wants to convince Huster of Schmidt's inability, he urges a personal meeting. When Huster's handshake, Schmidt grits his teeth so hard that he loses an incisor. Since he now tends to lisp, he is silent on all of Huster's questions and promptly gives the correct answers.

After work, he has to comment on a football game and, with his idiosyncratic commentary and lisp, brings the goalkeeper Dr. Jonas so out of his composure that he not only has to accept a very absurd goal, but also receives a dismissal because of verbal failures. He swears revenge on Schmidt, which is promptly possible when they both see each other again at the dentist - Schmidt as the patient and the goalkeeper as the attending doctor. To his great delight, the doctor sees in the X-ray that Schmidt not only had milk teeth and second teeth, but even a few third teeth. Satisfied, he also pulls Schmidt's second incisor, as otherwise the third cannot break through, and prescribes him strict soft foods for the next six months. The psychiatrist, in turn, tells Schmidt that it would be best for his psyche if he were completely silent. Schmidt now has a full beard and wants to go fishing when the news reaches him that he has been promoted to deputy head of department.

Schmidt is now involuntarily silent on his way up. Through a ludicrous action at a trade fair in San Francisco - his advertising technology was sent to Tokyo and the puppet master's dolls Eberhard Kurz to his trade fair - he was able to sell thousands of Pittiplatsche and sandmen . His suddenly calm manner leads to supposed decisions that are due to the silence and that Schmidt never wanted to make. His reputation grows more and more and so does his colleague Cilly and he become a couple. Schmidt is soon the acting director of the House of Advertising, but feels increasingly helpless and helpless with increasing responsibility. On the advice of his psychiatrist, he suggests that the management of the company be extremely streamlined. He wants to rationalize himself away, but in the end is appointed sole director general. His most radical decision followed: he had his work stopped entirely and all of the Group's advertising space painted white. The hoped-for termination did not materialize because the “White Advertising Week” met with great public interest and only made Schmidt better known. Now he reveals the real reason for his silence to Huster. He flees the city and wants to kill himself, but he wants to be run over on disused tracks. The next morning comes the big surprise: his third front teeth have finally erupted and he can talk again. Now his long-awaited official descent follows.

Five years later he is married to Cilly and they both have several children. Schmidt has finally found his professional fulfillment: He works as a guide on city tours and can prove his talent for speech.

production

Nelken in Aspik was filmed in Berlin in 1976. The models were Soviet “eccentric comedies”, some of which were absurdly over the top. Nelken in Aspik was premiered on September 24, 1976 in the Erfurt Panorama Palast . Since many actors in the film showed solidarity with Biermann in the course of Biermann's expulsion in 1976 or left the GDR, the film was only shown in cinemas for a short time.

Previously, however, the censors even had musical ridiculous verses such as “Advertising for the Wartburg is the purest mockery. If you want to buy one, your son will get it ”, sung by Reinhard Lakomy, not objectionable. In the film, various GDR personalities from cultural life are caricatured, for example in a television program with the sports reporter “H.-F. Floertel ”picks up a caricature by Heinz Florian Oertel , while the cultural critic“ R. Ribnitz-Damgarten “ Renate Holland-Moritz caricatured. "It's hard to believe that this limitless and eccentrically cheeky parody of the advertising world and the shrines of the nation was approved as a production for the 30th anniversary of DEFA," was the retrospective assessment.

In the film, the title Carnations in Aspic refers to flowers in cling film - the advertising slogan initiated by "Wolfgang Schmidt" once again shows his inability.

criticism

The contemporary criticism found that with the film "devoid of any relevance to reality [...] a slap [begins], the gags of which are sometimes really quite funny". Other critics said that less would occasionally have been more, since “not every 'profundity and nonsense' […] comes to the surface”.

The film service called Nelken in Aspik a "satirical comedy about undesirable developments in cadre policy in the GDR, which sabotages its thought-provoking criticism through grotesque exaggerations and dramaturgically untamed ideas and ultimately flattens it into clothes."

For Cinema , the film was a "small subversive work from the GDR".

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Habel, p. 434.
  2. ↑ See progress-film.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.progress-film.de  
  3. ^ Renate Holland-Moritz: cinema owl . In: Eulenspiegel , No. 43, 1976.
  4. ^ Ele in: Saxon Latest News , September 12, 1976.
  5. ↑ Cloves in aspic. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  6. ↑ See cinema.de