Bella Germania
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Bella Germania |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German , Italian |
| Publishing year | 2018 |
| length | approx. 270 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Gregor Schnitzler |
| script | Daniel Speck , edited by Robert Krause and Florian Puchert |
| production | Ronald Mühlfellner for Bavaria Fiction GmbH, Cologne |
| music | Dominik Giesriegl |
| camera | Florian Aichholzer |
| cut | Georg Soering |
| occupation | |
| |
Bella Germania is a three-part family chronicle by Gregor Schnitzler , commissioned by the German television broadcaster ZDF . The fate of several members of a German-Italian family from 1954 to 2019 is told in flashbacks over three generations. The two main roles in the first two parts are played by the Moldovan-born Silvia Busuioc (as the Italian Giulietta) and Christoph Letkowski (as the German Alexander). At the center of the third part is Julia, who is looking for her family roots, played by Natalia Belitski , who was sporadically seen in the first two parts as a link between the present and the past. The author of the novel of the same name, Daniel Speck , also wrote the script.
action
Part 1: L'amore - love
Munich 2013. Julia Becker is a budding fashion designer who will present her first own collection in the presence of Nathalie Bronet, a key figure in the industry. It was precisely at this most important moment in her young life that the fashion designer had a blackout and screwed up the presentation by running away from the showroom. While she is trying to collect herself in the lobby of the building, an old man approaches Julia and wants to speak to her on a private matter. He says his name is Alexander Schlewitz and that he would like to speak to her father, Vincenzo Marconi. Julia is confused, her father has long been dead, she explains to the old man. At least that was what her mother Tanja had always said. Julia wants to leave the lobby, irritated, when the old man collapses. Schlewitz was transported away by an ambulance a little later. Julia then goes to see her mother, a highly committed journalist and writer of political contributions for television. She continues to insist that Julia's father Vincenzo has been dead since Julia was eight years old. Julia has doubts about her mother's statement and finds out where that Alexander Schlewitz lives. In the meantime, he has recovered from his slight attack of weakness and asks her into his house. Little does Julia know that from now on her life will be completely turned upside down, because the old man says he is her grandfather and is now starting to unravel the confused family history.
Munich 1954. The young engineer Alexander Schlewitz works under the BMW manager Fritz Maier, whose company is on the verge of the abyss. The expensive bodies hardly sell. Schlewitz suggests Maier to conclude a license agreement for the Iso Isetta with the Italian Isetta manufacturer in Turin in order to be able to offer the consumer in the young Federal Republic a small, inexpensive vehicle. Maier then sent the research engineer to Milan . Schlewitz met the Iso boss there and spoke to him in German, which he didn't understand. Nearby is the very young Sicilian Giulietta Marconi, who is studying German and who offers herself as an interpreter. For both it is sympathy at first sight. During a test drive with the Isetta, Alexander discovered a design flaw: the vehicle began to lurch badly in bends and even threatened to tip over. Schlewitz lets Giulietta translate his concerns and promises his Italian negotiating partner to solve the problem within two days. In fact, Alexander managed to make the Isetta safer to drive with a few modifications. In the following days, Alexander and Giulietta get closer. Alexander also recognizes that the Italian, who is very good at drawing, has a talent for fashion design. Out of his affection for her, Alexander Giulietta buys a pair of elegant, red shoes that the young woman likes very much.
Giulietta and Alexander spend a short but very nice time together. Back at home, Giulietta quickly falls back down to earth. She is pregnant. Car mechanic Enzo, who like Giulietta and her brother Giovanni, works at Iso and who was promised Giulietta many years ago, assumes that only he can be the father. Giulietta's mother is horrified; an illegitimate pregnancy was a huge scandal in Italy in the 1950s, which immediately ended in marriage. The mother demands that Giulietta marry her fiancé immediately. For the young woman, her life now seems predetermined. She will have to marry Enzo. He has all the attributes of a southern Italian: He is very macho, sometimes overly temperamental and naturally believes that “his” wife is also his property. And he behaves accordingly. Giulietta informs Alexander of her decision that there can be no future between the two of them. Schlewitz travels back to Munich and Giulietta has a son the following year. She calls him Vincenzo.
Again in 2013. Old Alexander asked Julia to visit her great-uncle Giovanni. He, Alexander, wanted to re-establish contact with Vincenzo, Juliet's father, and only Giovanni knew where Vincenzo was today. Julia is very angry with her mother for claiming that her father, Vincenzo, is dead. There is a brief argument between mother and daughter. Julia's desire to find her father and finally to get to know him grows every day. She decides to follow Alexander's request and visit her uncle, who runs a vegetable shop in Munich. There she is given a family album that shows Giulietta with her husband Enzo and the baby. Only Giulietta knows that the child is Alexander.
Milan 1955. Giulietta settled down in her married life with Enzo and the child. But she feels that she is missing something. The cramped everyday life of a small family and the red shoes, the only thing left from her time with Alexander, remind her that there could be another, a more fulfilling life. One day Giovanni informs his sister that he is going to Germany because they are looking for workers there and this work is also paid better. Giovanni uses the contact address that Giulietta had given him and visits Alexander. He should help him find a job. Meanwhile, Enzo's jealousy is getting worse and worse at home. Nine years have passed when Giovanni returned to Milan from Germany in 1964. He brought Giulietta a sewing machine, 'German workmanship', as he proudly proclaims. During this time, Alexander also reoriented himself and married a blonde local named Marianne. Alexander will soon have to go back to Milan. There he sees Giulietta and Vincenzo at work. Alexander instinctively suspects that the boy who loves everything German must be his son. Alexander asks Giulietta to come to Munich with him, but again she cannot decide for him: "My life is here". But when she realizes the emptiness in her life, Giulietta remembers her passion and starts sewing with the new sewing machine.
Back in Munich 2013. To say goodbye to Uncle Giovanni, Julia gives the red dress tailored by Giulietta that Julia's grandmother wore to Giovanni's wedding. Julia begins to take a close look at the dress and, as a talented fashion designer, incorporates Giulietta's design into her new design. Then she returns to Giovanni again and has his wife give her Vincenzo's address in Turin. Julia finally wants to get to know her father there. 1968. At her brother's wedding party, Enzo had another attack of jealousy. Giulietta then travels to Germany with Giovanni and Vincenzo to make a fresh start.
Part 2: Il destino - the fate
In the present, Julia decides to travel to Italy to meet Vincenzo. Her great uncle Giovanni accompanies her there. In 1968 Giulietta settled in Munich. As soon as she arrived she drove to Alexander's house. She hopes to see you again. But in front of the driveway she sees a pregnant, blonde woman step out of the house and greet Alexander, who is standing by the car, with a kiss. Obviously Alexander is no longer free and Giulietta continues without Alexander noticing her. Giovanni makes it clear to his sister Giulietta, who believes that everyone in Germany can easily achieve prosperity, that they have to work hard here too and that he has hardly achieved anything so far. But Giulietta believes in her ability and is looking for a business space where Giovanni can set up a greengrocer, while Giulietta does the bookkeeping for him and sews clothes in her free time. Suddenly her mother and husband Enzo are at the door. Her mother is beside herself that Giulietta had left Italy for Germany at night and in the fog. Enzo is ready to split up, but demands that his son come back to Italy with him. But he would rather stay with his mother. In the meantime, Vincenzos senses the rejection of German children in his new adopted home; he is pejoratively called a “guest worker child”. Nevertheless, Giulietta and Vincenzo settle in Germany.
Turin 2013. Julia finally wants to get to know her father and form her own picture of her father. The adult Vincenzo is not very enthusiastic to see his daughter. Too much has happened, and he doesn't want to meet his father Alexander, as he wished. In 1968 Giulietta and Alexander meet again in the hospital, where Giovanni's heavily pregnant wife was admitted for delivery. Alexander's wife Marianne is also giving birth and he is going to have a daughter. Completely surprisingly, Giulietta receives a phone call from Alexander a little later. He tells her that he cannot forget her. One day Enzo is at the door again. He wants to go back to his wife, but Giulietta has developed further, she can no longer imagine a life with her husband in Italy. And so Enzo decides to stay in Germany as well. In the following years Enzo and Vincenzo get closer to each other again. Giulietta sees that Enzo is doing Vincenzo well and she likes that her husband is obviously ready to change. For a while, Alexander seems to have been forgotten.
At Christmas, Alexander suddenly appears at the door. He has a letter for Giulietta, who is out with Enzo, and a present for Vincenzo. When Enzo found out about it after returning home, the old jealousy boiled up in him again. Giulietta goes outside and meets her old love. She and Alexander kiss. He asks if he is Vincenzo's father, but gets no answer. Back in the present: Giovanni presents Julia Giulietta's diary. The story is now told on the basis of the diary: The relationship between Alexander and Giulietta is gradually cooling down because she does not want to decide in favor of her son's father. He is willing to pay for Vincenzo's education, but demands that he be provided with photos of his teenage child on a regular basis. Giulietta agrees, but makes sure that Enzo, who still believes he is the father, does not hear about the deal. For a long time Giulietta allowed herself against it, but she sees that she cannot get away from Alexander any more than he does from her. In the meantime, your boy gets on the wrong track for the first time, and Vincenzo is picked up by the police with a blue light - just when Giulietta and Alexander are kissing passionately in his car. Both become witnesses of the police operation. Days later, after a decade and a half, Alexander and Giulietta spend another night of love together. More years go by ...
Munich 1973. After a serious accident at work, Enzo can hardly find work. He desperately wants to go back to Italy, while Giulietta has made a living with her sewing work. The secrecy between Giulietta and Alexander continues, both of them line up a pageantry hour after another. Since Alexander does not want to do without Giulietta, he offers his lover to want to employ Enzo elsewhere. But at the interview he immediately suspects that Schlewitz is not doing this for his sake. He gets up and leaves. Outside the door, he told his wife that he was unable to beget and that Vincenzo Alexander's child must be. Giulietta is stunned that her husband must have obviously played a charade with her for many years and knew the truth from the beginning. Enzo demands from Giulietta that she never see Alexander again. Thereupon she returns a little later to Alexander's office and tells him that she wants to divorce Enzo in order to live with him, Alexander. They both set off, and Alexander's wife seems to sense that her husband is about to leave her. The lovers' destination is Venice, as Julia takes from Giulietta's diary.
In the present, Julia finally wants to know why her father left her as a child. Her father in Italy, the grown-up Vincenzo, is curt, but then agrees to tell her the whole truth. To do this, he wanted to take Julia back to Munich across the Alps and meet his father on this occasion. He chooses the exact route that Giulietta and Alexander took from the Bavarian capital to Venice in 1973. This trip was to end in disaster. Giulietta and Alexander experience a feeling of perfect happiness on the route after a long time. They do not notice that a line with brake fluid is loose and eventually comes loose completely. The liquid rushes onto the road while Giulietta steers the red sports car along the narrow serpentine road.
Part 3: Il segreto - the secret
Soon Giulietta can no longer brake the vehicle and falls into the abyss with Alexander as co-driver. He is thrown out of the car while Giulietta dies at the scene of the accident. The suspicion quickly falls on Enzo, who most likely had a motive for the attack, especially since as a car mechanic he has perfect knowledge of cars. The police assume that he loosened the brake line and deliberately caused the fatal accident. For Vincenzo, the death of his beloved mother is an absolute catastrophe. He gives Alexander a decisive complicity, but also believes that Enzo manipulated the car. However, for lack of evidence, Enzo is acquitted. Vincenzo tries to talk to his producer and drives to his house. The young man shows only contempt for Alexander. A little later, Vincenzo met the red-haired Tanja in a student bar, who was involved on the part of the extreme left. At her side, Vincenzo, who has become completely unstable, slips into the RAF environment and into the terrorist sympathizer scene . Vincenzo uses her to crack cars for any RAF transports. After sleeping with Tanja, Vincenzo wants to show off to her and breaks into Alexander's garage. He steals one of his two cars, threatens him with a gun and almost knocks Alexander, who is standing in front of the car, on the run.
Shortly afterwards, a police task force storms the apartment where Tanja and Vincenzo are sleeping together. They can tower out the window but are now outlaws. Vincenzo remembers his old homeland again and flees to southern Italy with his lover. In Sicily he first wants to go underground and dare to start again, while Tanja is still fighting for the "world revolution" and she tries to get in touch with the Brigate Rosse . While Vincenzo can certainly imagine a life in her Italian homeland, Tanja is drawn back to Germany. She wants to remain politically active and not perish at the end of Europe with its strictly Catholic and petty-bourgeois people. She hates a bourgeois life with a home and children. One day she leaves Vincenzo again. He doesn't know that he is pregnant with her. Tanja has left and Vincenzo is thinking about how things should go on with him in Italy. He remembers his passion for fast cars and hires in a workshop. He met the Italian Carmela, but she developed a lot more passion for him than he for her. When Vincenzo learns from Uncle Giovanni that Tanja is back in Munich and also pregnant, Vincenzo also returns to Germany, although he knows that the police are looking for him. Carmela is left devastated. Vincenzo is arrested on the border with Austria while trying to escape.
A trial ensues in which Vincenzo takes all the blame on himself so that Tanja, the mother of his child, does not have to go behind bars. He is sentenced to seven years in prison. Tanja visits Vincenzo in jail and brings their daughter Julia with them. In 1982 Vincenzo was finally released. He brings a little oak tree with him into freedom that he had planted during his imprisonment. The family planted the mini oak in the Munich Olympic Park . Back in the present: Vincenzo and Tanja finally speak out. There is a solid reason for this: When visiting Tanja and Juliet, Vincenzo once completely freaked out when Bernd, the new man at Tanja's side, gave Vincenzo's daughter a warm hug. A fight broke out in which Julia was very scared. Then Tanja decided to tell her daughter that her father had died in the meantime. This declaration is a relief for Julia today, because for a long time she had believed that her father didn't want anything more to do with her and therefore didn't get in touch with her.
It is time for Vincenzo to face his last challenge: he and Julia visit his aged father in the hospital. Alexander solves the last secret: He explains that his wife Marianne, who died a few years ago, stood on his deathbed and that she manipulated the car that had led to Giulietta's death. Vincenzo then seeks out Enzo and tells him that he now knows that he was innocent and that he was sorry that he once blamed him for Giulietta's death. They embrace, and Vincenzo asks Enzo if he would like to accompany him on the return trip to Italy. Enzo happily says “yes”. Julia, however, returns to the beginning of the film in 2013: she has, however, added another dress to her collection that she proudly presents at the fashion show and that she says means a lot to her: it is the further development of Giulietta's red dress , their first draft many decades ago. And this time Julia's presentation is a complete success. 2019: Julia has her own little fashion company and celebrates the 85th birthday of her uncle Giovanni with friends. The story ends under the large oak tree in Munich's Olympic Park, where Vincenzo and his daughter Julia sat down.
Production notes
The approximately four and a half hour long television production was filmed in Germany and in Apulia (Italy) from June 24th to November 1st, 2017 and had its world premiere in Cologne on October 8th, 2018 as part of the Film Festival Cologne . The German television premiere of the three-part series took place in March 2019 on ZDF. Each episode is about 90 minutes long.
Following the first part, ZDF broadcast a background report on the development of German-Italian relations since the 1950s under the title Bella Germania - The Documentation , with a special focus on Italian labor migration to the Federal Republic . In Italy the production ran under the title Volevamo andare lontano .
Reviews
The Berliner Morgenpost saw “big cinema - with a small kitsch factor” in the ZDF production and found that Bella Germania was looking for “a broad arc over seven decades and everything that affected the family during this time.” Despite criticism of the different Handling in dealing with the Italian language - initially the corresponding dialogues between the Italians were subtitled, later dubbed in German - the morning post came to the end: "Great cinema is being tried and in some cases even achieved."
Spiegel Online called Bella Germania "a heartbreak melodrama of epic proportions" and wrote about the two main actors of the first two parts: "Christoph Letkowski and Silvia Busuioc manage to charge their characters emotionally." The "Spiegel" also dealt with the Italian Language criticizes: “As conclusively as the flashback structure is attached to the various chroniclers, other aspects of the staging are worthy of criticism: the inconsistent use of language (s), for example, which manifests itself in the fact that translation usually has to be done, but then the Italian family suddenly speaks German among himself. ”Conclusion:“ To be fair, it should be said: For what 'Bella Germania' wants to be - a mainstream melodrama - it doesn't work so badly. ”And: viewers who are on this broadcasting slot (Sunday evening at 8:15 p.m.) are usually supplied with heartbreak stories of the genus Pilcher, Lindström & Co., would with Bella Germania “above average served. "
The critic on quotenmeter.de came to a completely different assessment: Here they spoke of a “catastrophic result” and called the three-part series “clothes full of prejudices”. Conclusion: "not a shallow, but harmless and in the best case subliminally profound production of German-Italian friendship."
Audience ratings
- The first part had 4.67 million viewers, corresponding to a market share of 13 percent.
- The second part had 4.65 million viewers, corresponding to a market share of 14.8 percent.
- The third part had 4.58 million viewers, corresponding to a market share of 14.8 percent.
Individual evidence
- ^ Review in the Berliner Morgenpost , accessed on March 17, 2019
- ↑ Review on Spiegel Online , accessed on March 17, 2019
- ↑ Review on quotenmeter.de , accessed on March 17, 2019
Web links
- Bella Germania on zdf.de
- Exact crew listing
- Bella Germania in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Bella Germania at filmportal.de
- Complete cast