Albert - why?

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Movie
Original title Albert - why?
Country of production Federal Republic of Germany
original language German / Upper Palatinate
Publishing year 1978
length 115 minutes
Age rating FSK from 12 years
Rod
Director Josef Rödl
script Josef Rödl
production University of Television and Film Munich , Josef Rödl, Peter Wohlgemuth
music Arno C. Bamberg
camera Karlheinz Gschwind
occupation
  • Fritz Binner: Albert
  • Elfriede Penciler: Eva
  • Michael Eichenseer: Albert's father
  • Georg Schiessl: Hans

Albert - why? was shot by German director Josef Rödl in 1978 as a graduation film at the university with amateur actors. It deals with the life of a mentally handicapped young man in a village in the Upper Palatinate. The film has won several awards, including the German Film Prize in 1979 and the FIPRESCI Prize of the Berlinale .

action

The disabled protagonist Albert, who is present in every scene of the film, is mocked after his return from a mental hospital and hangs himself on the bell rope of the church. In his absence, his father transferred the farm to his nephew Hans, thereby marginalizing Albert, who should have inherited the farm as the only son. During an absence from Hans for several days, Albert proves that he can very well meet the demands of the rural working world. However, he reacts subversively to the return of the heir and the associated renewed demotion: he defaces a field with the plow, lets a pig drown in the river and tree trunks roll into the water. His desire for satisfying work and affection remains unfulfilled.

The long, static shot upon arrival in the village is the starting point. The images are stylized, you only hear music, "you can still sense the distance in which Albert lived." Only when Albert reaches the reality of the village do the realistic noises come. As his protagonist's path of suffering intensifies, Rödl carefully sets melodramatic accents with close-up shots and panoramic pans : A schnapps glass indicates the change of location to the pub, close-up shots of the face reveal the increasing despair, a panorama panning through the inn reveals the emptiness there. In this way Rödl increases the suffering of his protagonist to the fateful, unreal and religiously colored end.

characters

With his slowness in speaking and his physical handicaps, the mentally alert Albert is made an outsider by the village community, disciplined, teased, humiliated and treated as a scapegoat : "His face is dull, his movements are slow and angular, he speaks sluggishly and stammered - but he reveals his feelings more clearly than the people around him; he is more prone to injury. ”He reacts to the degradation with“ stoic-melancholic equanimity ”. He only defends himself once, and here too he does not use physical force, but rather by pouring the contents of a beer glass into the aggressor's face .

Cast

Albert - why? Rödl shot only with lay people, with people from his village. The financial aspect did not play the main role, but Rödl's approach was: "We tell our own stories." And: "We are our own artists." According to Rödl, a trained actor can only imitate, while a layman can only imitate himself can represent, but there is nothing artificial about his acting. So that working with laypeople does not degenerate into peasant theater , the role and the actor have to fit together. That is why Rödl worked with people he knew personally in his early films.

Film music and noises

In Albert - why? Rödl wanted to use woodwind instruments such as flute or oboe, because in his eyes these have a close connection to the landscape shown. However, he deliberately avoided folk music in order to keep the film away from folklorism . That is why he mainly used classical, delicate flute music by Bach , Debussy , Honegger , Shostakovich and Tartini , which gives the clumsy protagonist "a peculiar greatness and frees him from the humility of his appearance." The music artfully alternates with the noises and never becomes placed under a dialog, i.e. not used as background, but has its own function.

Enjott Schneider praised Albert - why? “The good sound dramaturgy (the quality of the noises themselves, their use, their interweaving with music).” With the noises in Albert - why? alternate between realistic and excessive. Noises, according to Rödl, “must not only be a realistic repetition of what was badly recorded in the picture, but must also form a level of expression of their own.” Rödl sees an essential element of tension in his film in the interplay of cinematic realism and excessive cinematic design. In the opening scene at the train station outside the village, when Albert returns from the psychiatric clinic, people and the train move noiselessly. For 160 seconds only a solo flute sonata by Bach can be heard, which can represent Albert's sensitive interior; only then do noises set in. Through this change , the viewers leave Albert's perspective , the loneliness, and arrive with him in the reality of his home village. In the final scene Albert rings the bells violently before he ends up hanging himself on the bell rope; a storm chime , which is traditionally a cry for help to call people together about an impending danger. The audience sees a “cut to the loudly ringing bell that hangs horizontally in the air: the silence has become the sign of Albert's suicide - not metaphorically, but quite factually. As factual as the film. "

Spaces

Apart from the commercial vehicles, movement in rural areas is decoupled from modern technology: Albert goes on a long journey through the village in a wheelbarrow .

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Arnd Schirmer: The court fool 'Albert - why?' Feature film by Josef Rödl. , Der Spiegel , Heft 17, 1979, www.spiegel.de, April 23, 1979, accessed on December 6, 2015.
  2. ^ Enjott Schneider: Handbuch Filmmusik: Contributions from the University of Television and Film Munich / 1: Musical dramaturgy in the New German Film. , Ölschläger Verlag Munich, ISBN 3-88295-116-8 , p. 224.
  3. ↑ a b c Helmut Schödel: Barbed wire around the heart. In: zeit.de . June 10, 1983. Retrieved January 22, 2017 .
  4. ↑ a b Josef Rödl in conversation with Annamaria Percavassi: Che cos'è lo Heimatfilm? Conversation with Josef Rödl. In: La Capella Underground. A cura di Annamaria Percavassi, Leonardo Quaresima, Elfi Reiter: Il villaggio negato. La Baviera e il cinema tedesco degli anni ottanta. La Casa Usher Firenze 1988, p. 98 (Italian).
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Enjott Schneider: Handbuch Filmmusik: Contributions from the University of Television and Film Munich / 1: Music dramaturgy in the New German Film. , Ölschläger Verlag Munich, ISBN 3-88295-116-8 , p. 223.
  6. ^ Enjott Schneider: Handbuch Filmmusik: Contributions from the University of Television and Film Munich / 1: Musical dramaturgy in the New German Film. , Ölschläger Verlag Munich, ISBN 3-88295-116-8 , p. 224.
  7. ↑ a b Enjott Schneider: Handbuch Filmmusik: Contributions from the University of Television and Film Munich / 1: Music dramaturgy in the New German Film. , Ölschläger Verlag Munich, ISBN 3-88295-116-8 , p. 129.
  8. ^ Enjott Schneider: Handbuch Filmmusik: Contributions from the University of Television and Film Munich / 1: Musical dramaturgy in the New German Film. , Ölschläger Verlag Munich, ISBN 3-88295-116-8 , p. 230.
  9. ↑ Announcement on the award of the prize , www.fipresci.org, accessed on December 5, 2015.
  10. ↑ Notice on participation in the Chicago International Film Festival , www.imdb.com, accessed on December 5, 2015.