Under the bridges
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Under the bridges |
 | |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1946 (shot 1944 ) |
| length | 99 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Helmut Käutner |
| script |
Helmut Käutner , Walter Ulbrich based on a script by Leo de Laforgues " Under the bridges of Paris " |
| production | Kurt-Fritz Quassowski |
| music | Bernhard Eichhorn |
| camera | Igor Oberberg |
| cut | Wolfgang Wehrum |
| occupation | |
| |
Under the Bridges is a German black and white - feature film from the year 1944/45, following the example of European film movements that time. It was filmed in Berlin , Potsdam and Havelland , west of the German capital, from May 8 to October 1944, while the fronts of World War II were already reaching Germany, and is set in the professional life of inland shipping . As a so-called defector film, it had its world premiere in Locarno in July 1946 .
The plot
In the film, the protagonists Hendrik and Willy are constantly on the canals and rivers between Berlin and Rotterdam with a barge (initially the “Liese-Lotte” ) in a group of several barges . The two friendly young boatmen , both common owner, living day and night on their boat which is theirs for eleven years (in movie time since 1933).
Every now and then they have love affairs on land, represented by a waitress in Café Meseritz and another woman (in the film in Havelberg ). Because of the confusion between the women of their first names and the order they placed, the boatmen realize that superficial affairs are not good for them for their barge-dependent life on board. You decide to change that. From then on, both of them dream of strong ties and their own engine for their boat .
On a summer night, her barge association moored to a bridge on their journey towards Berlin (in the film on the Glienicke Bridge between Potsdam and Berlin). From the boat, Willy notices a young woman crying who apparently wants to throw herself into the Havel and draws Hendrik's attention. However, she does not jump, but throws a ten- mark note from the bridge, which the two fish out of the water. Because the last bus is already gone, Hendrik offers the woman who introduces himself as Anna Altmann - after she demands her money back from him for a hotel room in Potsdam - to come on the boat and like on a steamer for ten marks to go back to Berlin, where she has a small apartment. She accepts and sleeps in the cabin while the two skippers sleep on the bow. During the night there is a romantic scene in which Hendrik explains to Anna the unusual noises on board a boat, which he calls “fine music for falling asleep” .
Soon they both fall in love with her, and since they are very different - one more pensive, the other jovial-cunning - each in his own way. During the mooring maneuver (in the film on Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin ), Hendrik and Willy decide to suggest to Anna that one of them should stay on board on the next trip to Rotterdam to find out which of them Anna will choose. After Willy, who has decided to offer Anna the agreement, tries somewhat tactlessly to confront her about where the ten marks came from, but Anna does not want to reveal the origin of the money, a conflict arises. Annoyed, Anna leaves the moored boat. Leaving the Anna tells of a pedestrian bridge (in the film, the former Schlüter Steg bridge) the two who are down on their boat that they had the money earned by modeling. This is followed by an almost cheerful scene in which Hendrik and Willy, initially ignorant of each other, look for pictures with Anna in the same museum and catch each other in an exhibition room.
Then the two men make an agreement: whoever can win Anna over has to forego his share of the boat. Willy goes ashore and hires a crane operator in one of Berlin's inland ports (parts of the east port in the film ), while Hendrik continues to drive loads to Rotterdam with a new cabin boy on the ship. Once he comes to the mouth of the Rhine and heads towards an overwhelming evening sky over the sea, where the camera work reveals that there could be another, happier world in the distance. This belongs in the sign language of an apparently completely apolitical Käutner film, which is not objected to by the film censors, which nevertheless clearly avoids declaring Nazi Germany to be the best of all worlds.
Meanwhile, Willy is wooing Anna. She tells him why she threw the bill off the bridge: she wanted to get rid of a bad memory. Originally from Silesia in the area around Görlitz , she felt very lonely in Berlin. To socialize, she went on a trip to Wannsee , met a painter there and fell in love with him. When he asked her to model for him, she came into his studio hoping he would reciprocate her affection. But after a session as a nude model, she only received ten marks for her effort.
Willy realizes that he is just a good friend to Anna. He senses that Anna is in love with Hendrik. So he arranges an unexpected rendezvous for the two of them. Even if it is not easy for Willy, he finally renounces the fulfillment of the agreement and in future drives with Anna and Hendrik along under the bridges with the barge, which is now called "Anna" .
interpretation
On the surface, the film is a timeless love story in which the symbol of the barge, pulled by tugs between the Oder and the North Sea , stands as a floating island "under the bridges".
background
Shooting took place at the Glienicke Bridge , in Werder (Havel) , Havelberg , Rathenow and Potsdam as well as in Berlin locations such as its inland ports , the Tiergarten , in Berlin Jannowitzbrücke station and on the bridge of the same name , a bridge over the Spree that was destroyed and rebuilt shortly after filming as well as on the Schlütersteg , a bridge between the Schiffbauerdamm and the Berlin Friedrichstrasse train station , which was also destroyed shortly afterwards, but which was not rebuilt. Especially for the locations in Berlin, the film is a document of the times for the face of the city between the first bomb hits - some houses on Schiffbauerdamm show damage in the film - and the city, which has not yet been marked by the massive devastation of the last months of the war.
The film was presented to the censors in March 1945, but was no longer shown in German cinemas . It is questionable whether film theaters were even able to continue operating in April 1945. The German premiere did not take place in Göttingen until May 15, 1950 . The film was first shown on German television on March 12, 1973 at 9 p.m. on ZDF .
effect
The special artistic qualities of this very calmly laid out, image and music cleverly used Käutner work have secured a place in film history for him. The Lexicon of German Films calls it a masterpiece in 1995 and certifies it “moments of poetic clarity [...] far removed from the heroism and perseverance slogans of its time of creation, [...] sensitive music (Bernhard Eichhorn) and actors who express optical realism in expression and habitus Congenially implemented. "
Reviews
"A little everyday story with poetry, realism, a lot of atmosphere and a dash of humor, unpretentious and precisely staged."
“The camera work, which turns the film into a single étude in light and shadow, is flawless, from the images of the opening credits, which show the journey under bridges in daring inclines towards the sky, to the scene of a great debate in a rowboat. Anna's face is only partially visible at the beginning, wrapped in the shadows of the night from which the illuminated areas stand out in an almost natural-looking artificiality. You can also call this 'poetic realism'. And Helmut Käutner with it - may I pronounce it? - definitely place next to Jean Renoir or Marcel Carné. "
“'We lived dreamily next to time and distracted ourselves from all the horror through our work,' Käutner later said and in 1944 he created this incredibly dense, atmospheric romance full of cinematic ideas and above all lightness, tenderness and poetry."
“Although the film received approval before the end of the war, the dreamy portrayal of a very private idyll, away from the inner German reality at the time, shows a certain refusal on the part of Käutner, who repeatedly understood in his career, not to put his work in the service of the Nazis - ideology. "
literature
- Christa Bandmann, Joe Hembus: Classics of the German sound film 1930–1960. Goldmann Magnum, Munich 1980, pages 151-152.
- Hans-Jürgen Tast: Helmut Käutner - Under the bridges. 1944/45. Schellerten 2007, ISBN 978-3-88842-033-7 .
Web links
- Under the bridges at filmportal.de
- Under the bridges in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- A film is deserting - moments of German film (III) in the FAZ, February 28, 2010
- Under the bridges Complete film at the Deutsche Filmothek
Individual evidence
- ^ Website filmzentrale.com operated by the film critics D. Kuhlbrodt & A. Thomas
- ↑ Film Lexicon of the Uni Kiel Film Lexicon
- ↑ Filmdienst.de (credits), and Spiegel.de, .
- ↑ Under the bridges. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Ekkehard Knörer in filmzentrale.com
- ↑ Stefan Otto in kino-zeit.de
- ↑ Under the bridges. critic.de - the film page, March 25, 2008, accessed on March 1, 2013 .