Request concert (1940)

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Movie
Original title Request concert
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1940
length 103 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Eduard von Borsody
script Felix Lützkendorf ,
Eduard von Borsody
production Cine-Allianz Tonfilm Produktion GmbH , on behalf of Ufa , Manufacturing and Production Manager: Felix Pfitzner
music Werner Bochmann
camera Franz Weihmayr ,
Günther Anders ,
Carl Drews
cut Elisabeth Neumann
occupation

Request concert is a German propaganda - feature film by Eduard von Borsody from the year 1940th

action

During the 1936 Summer Olympics , the young Inge Wagner and the pilot's officer Herbert Koch met. After a few days they fall in love with each other. They make plans for a future together. But before they can get married, Herbert is assigned to the Condor Legion in Spain. Since the mission is subject to the strictest secrecy, which includes a ban on correspondence with the home country, he has to leave without giving Inge an explanation and being able to contact him afterwards. When the operation ended several months later and Herbert recovered from a serious wound, he wrote to Inge. However, this has now moved. Discouraged, he lets further research remain.

Inge, for her part, cannot forget Herbert and is ready to wait for him. Three years go by. When the war began in 1939, the men from Inge's surroundings left in good spirits for the front. Among them is Inge's childhood friend Helmut Winkler, who asked for her hand in vain, but continues to hope. Helmut is assigned to Herbert's squadron and is subordinate to him, who has meanwhile advanced to become a captain. The two become friends. At first they do not know that they love the same girl.

Since the beginning of the war, a large music event has been held in Berlin every week, which is broadcast on the radio as a “ request concert for the Wehrmacht ” and which serves to convey greetings between the front and home. When Herbert, in memory of the beautiful days with Inge, wistfully wished for the Olympic fans, Inge, who, like everyone else, was sitting in front of the radio, noticed it. She takes the unexpected and unplanned sign of Herbert's life as an opportunity to find him. She regains hope to see him again. An exchange of letters takes place, they arrange a meeting in Hamburg.

Herbert and Helmut are sent to a reconnaissance flight over the Atlantic at the last second before they meet again (“service is service”), during which they are shot down on the open sea. A German submarine picks them up. Meanwhile Inge waits again in vain. Helmut is taken to the hospital wounded. All three meet in his hospital room. After clarifying the confused situation - Herbert thinks Inge and Helmut are engaged - the two lovers find each other again.

Musical interludes

The following artists performed in the request concert part, which was moderated by Heinz Goedecke :

Nazi propaganda

"Wunschkonzert" received from the film testing the predicates "State politically valuable", "artistic value", "Folk valuable" and "Youth value". Already by Nazi standards this brings him close to a film like Karl Ritter's " Stukas " (1941). The Allied Control Council , which in 1945 subjected all German films in circulation to an ideological examination, banned the film from showing. In the FRG he later obtained an FSK approval.

The love story was insignificant, especially due to the unconvincing play of the two male leading actors, and was only intended to strengthen morale in the homeland, especially the women . With this film, her eleventh, Ilse Werner strengthened her stardom and added the facet of "perseverance" to her image. Although she had initially turned down the role, her involvement in this film after 1945 earned her a temporary ban from appearing.

The film owes its actual political explosiveness to other image and action elements than can be reproduced in a brief synopsis. The film historians Francis Courtade and Pierre Cadars quote in their “History of Film in the Third Reich” an unknown author who sums up the plot as follows: “This 'harmless folk' film contains in a pleasing form just about everything that is worth and dearly to the regime was, with the exception of anti-Semitism ”. Also Friedemann Beyer confirmed him "a model for the Nazi cinema". The mixture of distracting, escapist entertainment on the one hand and open propaganda on the other hand makes the film "Wunschkonzert" one of the most significant products of National Socialist film policy .

In the first section, the background of which is the opening of the Olympic Games, the film offers documentary images of Hitler and the cheering crowds that are reminiscent of Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda films , and not just by chance ; Excerpts from Riefenstahl's Olympic film were actually used in the Olympic scenes . Original newsreel footage was used later in the war scenes . The film is also openly propagandistic in the scenes in which the men go to war: on the one hand in selfless willingness to make sacrifices, on the other hand singing happily and inexperienced, as if it were about an interesting adventure. “Genuine German sentiment” is celebrated in a scene in which a young pianist plays Beethoven to the house community as a farewell . Later the same young musician dies an operatic heroic death. The actual main theme of the film, however, is the German " Volksgemeinschaft ", the intimate bond between home and the front. The request concert - as a bridge between home and the front - and also the love story between the civilian and the soldier are ultimately only symbols for the bigger picture. Consequently, the film does not end in pictures of a love idyll, but with warships, bomb squadrons, swastika flags and the song “Because we are driving against Engelland”.

Production and reception

The former Reichsfilmintendant Fritz Hippler characterized the film after 1945 not only as a state commissioned film, but as “ Goebbels ' dream child. He had worked on the book, wrote dialogues and also designated singers and musicians who had to present themselves in the big performances. Since he valued Ilse Werner above all as 'the likeable type of a modern woman', he was completely in love with this line-up ”.

Director Eduard von Borsody , who also specialized in adventure films, had joined the National Socialist regime by participating in the production of propaganda and adventure films such as " Dawn " (1933), "Refugees" (1933) and " Kautschuk " (1938) recommended.

The popular music event "Request concert for the Wehrmacht" really existed and was broadcast every Sunday at 3 pm on the radio from the large broadcasting hall on Berlin's Masurenallee.

Shooting began on July 16, 1940. On December 21, the finished film was presented to the film inspection agency (original version: 2,832 m, 103 min.), Which classified it as suitable for minors. The premiere took place on December 30, 1940 in Berlin's Ufa-Palast am Zoo . Universum-Film Verleih GmbH took over the distribution. On November 4, 1943, a shortened version (2,689 m, 98 min.) Of the film was again submitted to the film inspection agency and in this version was again classified as suitable for minors. In the test version, the film was titled “The Concert of Requests”, which was replaced by the more modern-sounding title of “Concert of Requests” in the cinema announcements.

The film was first shown on the television of the Federal Republic of Germany on April 28, 1974 at 8.30 p.m. on the third television program of the NDR .

In addition to the Zarah Leander film “ The Great Love ”, “Request Concert” was the most commercially successful film production of the Nazi era. By the end of the Second World War , the film had almost 26 million viewers and grossed 7.6 million Reichsmarks .

In the FSK submission on January 24, 1980 (2,720 m, 99 minutes), the film was classified as free of public holidays and suitable for those aged 16 and over (test no. 51284). After a recut (2,756 m, 101 min.), It was submitted to the FSK again on January 22, 1997 and now classified as suitable for people aged 18 and over (test no. 51284). The evaluation rights are exercised by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation .

Reviews

  • G. Schwark wrote in Film-Kurier in 1941 that the authors had brought to the fore a romance between two people who met at the Olympics, lost during the war in Spain and found them again through the radio wish concerts of the current war. Ilse Werner happily represents today's young German girl. "At the end of the premiere of this true folk film, there was rousing, enthusiastic applause."
  • The lexicon of international films judged in retrospect: "Sentimentally entertaining Nazi film for the war time composed of lying clichés, mixed with poorly sorted newsreels and excerpts from the program that was popular at the time."
  • Karsten Witte wrote in Film under National Socialism : “ Request concert is a miracle of the integration of opposites and polarities. The armed forces are reconciled with the arts, the intelligentsia with the limited, the Prussians with the Bavarians. ”The film brings the audience and the audience together inwardly. “He mobilizes a front of emotions. The homogeneity of the people is produced by the homogenization of the radio sound. If you switch on the same program of wish fulfillment from Narvik to Naples, the communication competition is also switched off with a program competition. "

See also

literature

  • Helmut Regel: On the topography of Nazi films. In: film review. Verlag Filmkritik, Munich 10.1966.1 (January), pp. 5/18. ISSN  0015-1572
  • Francis Courtade, Pierre Cadars: History of Film in the Third Reich. Heyne, Munich 1975, 1977, ISBN 3-453-00759-X , pp. 208 ff.
  • Friedemann Beyer: The Ufa Stars in the Third Reich. Women for Germany. Heyne, Munich 1991, 1992, ISBN 3-453-03013-3 , pp. 259 ff.
  • Friedemann Beyer: Swinging Nazis. The good mood films from the Cine Alliance. In: Allies for the film. Arnold Pressburger, Gregor Rabinowitsch and the Cine Alliance. Edition Text + Critique, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-88377-779-X , p. 155 ff.
  • Hans-Jörg Koch: Request concert. Popular music and propaganda on the radio of the Third Reich. Ares, Graz 2006.
  • Wolfgang Jacobsen , Anton Kaes and Hans Helmut Prinzler (Hrsg.): History of the German film. 2nd Edition. JB Metzler-Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-476-01952-7 .
  • Manfred Hobsch: love, dance and 1000 hit films. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-89602-166-4 .
  • Paul Collmann: Heinz Gödecke. Book about the teenage years from the inventor of the wish concert. Wimma-Verlag, Petting 2013, ISBN 978-3-00-040729-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Filmdienst.de and Spiegel.de .
  2. ↑ Manfred Hobsch: love, dance and 1000 hit films. P. 104.
  3. ↑ Request concert. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed August 30, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  4. ↑ Karsten Witte: Film in National Socialism. In: History of German Film. 2nd Edition. 2004, p. 145.