Berlinger (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Berlinger |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1975 |
| length | 115 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Alf Brustellin Bernhard Sinkel |
| script | Alf Brustellin Bernhard Sinkel Monika Grube |
| production |
Heinz Angermeyer Alf Brustellin Bernhard Sinkel |
| music | Joe Haider |
| camera | Dietrich Lohmann |
| cut | Heidi Genée |
| occupation | |
| |
Berlinger is a German feature film from 1975 with Martin Benrath in the main and title role and Peter Ehrlich as his adversary Roeder. Based on the two fundamentally different characters Lukas Berlinger and Johannes Roeder, the story of a friendship that ends in deep opposition is told on several time levels and not chronologically. The film is conceived as a didactic piece about resistance and adaptation, about individuality and careerism, as a parable of possible behaviors and life paths in troubled Germany of the 20th century: in the dictatorship of the Third Reich and in the post-war period .
action
The jack-of-all-trades and adventurer Lukas Berlinger, a cheerful factory owner's son, and his friend from shared boarding and academic years, Johannes Roeder, are two completely different types. The working-class Roeder wants to "achieve something" in his life, to escape the dirt and poverty and because of this goal in life has become an opportunist and slippery careerist who adapts to every situation, every requirement and every social system, like a chameleon, unconditionally and unconditionally. Berlinger, a dreamer and inventor with the sympathetic charm of a disorganized Luftikus' is the exact opposite: he does not want to equalize with the crowd at any price, wants to live and experience his dreams and skillfully evades all expectations and political constraints placed on him. While Roeder has become the prime example of a follower over the years, Berlinger is the prototype of the individualist. These two conflicting antagonists meet again and again in the course of their lives and show from time to time how little these two basic behavioral patterns are compatible with one another. From former friendship and respect more and more discrepancies and rejection grows, in the end even pure hostility and opposition.
The first scenes of the film begin furiously, including on an airfield from the war year 1942, optically based on the final scene of the most famous film of 1942: Casablanca . Two Nazi thugs lead Berlinger away, but Berlinger breaks away from them. A lighted match snatched away from him lands in a pool of gasoline, which ignites. Suddenly explosions illuminate the night airfield. The Nazi thugs shoot at the fleeing man, but Berlinger can reach a ready-to-go air force plane, prevent the pilot from getting into the cockpit, climb into it and escape.
Lukas Berlinger was enthusiastic about aviation from an early age and finally got his license. His childhood was financially protected, the son of wealthy parents didn't have to worry about his future. The prerequisites of his childhood friend Johannes Roeder were quite different. Roeder lacks everything that he secretly envies about the free spirit Berlinger: He is shy and introverted, insecure and weak of character. Nevertheless, the two spend a carefree youth on the spacious Berlinger estate. It quickly becomes clear what Roeder Berlinger envy: his eloquence and carelessness, his carefree jokes and pranks. Roeder wants to escape his social mediocrity. And so he adapts whenever it seems opportune and career-enhancing: He becomes a member of the NSDAP and from 1933 tries to advance and make a career through unconditional obedience and docility. Berlinger, on the other hand, is able to escape a lot through his cleverness: he does not curry favor with the Nazi regime, he avoids being co-opted by it, and during the war the ingenious inventor and inventor was exempted from military service as a scientist essential to the war effort. But the boundaries of his free spirit are being drawn ever closer.
Roeder, who climbed the career ladder as head of the factory that once belonged to Berlinger's father, cannot convince his former friend to “join in”, to submit to the regime, to adapt. When Berlinger flees on the plane, this even has consequences for the parade careerist Roeder: He is expelled from the party. From the lost friendship of the children Lukas and Johannes a deep enmity grows between both adult men. Roeder must now regard his constant attempts to make Berlinger what he is himself as having finally failed. Whenever he tried to pull his former friend down to his level, that of a system-adapted participant, the avowed individualist Berlinger withdrew. Nothing about that should change in the post-war period. But the downsides in Berlinger's life are becoming more and more apparent. His ruthlessly enforced independence, his sometimes eccentric acting loneliness also marks victims - not only Roeder himself, but also people who feel connected and close to him, such as his wife Marlit. As a result of Berlinger's flight abroad, the Gestapo arrested her, whereupon the young woman committed suicide.
Germany in the post-war period. The year is 1968, and Berlinger, who is essentially apolitical, erratic and always a “conservative anarchist”, still does not want to give up his free-spirited life. His dreams are more important to him than his obligations and the expectations placed on him. He is not interested in rebuilding his father's factory. His plans, his inventions can also be realized in a ruin. The first thing he does is build his own airship. Roeder, in turn, with his willingness to adapt, also survived the feared career kink in 1945 well. He even made it to the senator and builder. Meanwhile there is a new woman in Berlinger's life: Maria. She is a teacher and idealist and, in a milder form, has Berlinger's traits. And above all: She is very similar to his first wife Marlit. Roeder, meanwhile, is planning a huge, large-scale construction project cast in concrete, for which he absolutely needs Berlinger's former factory site. He sees Roeder's intention again as a renewed declaration of war by his old adversary. Once again, it seems to him, Roeder wants to show that his principle of unconditional submission to state systems and requirements triumphs over individualism and free spirit of Berlinger. But he is not ready to give in and starts to fight.
When Roeder's business partner found out that Roeder was planning to build on a site that did not belong to him, they put the senator under pressure. Roeder is now trying again to move Berlinger to hand over the property. It will be a battle of principles, attitudes, and basic attitudes towards life. Berlinger looks back and begins to destroy the Roeder'sche once and for all, by razing his own as well. To Berlinger's great misfortune, his completed airship was struck by flames when lightning strikes. Then the ruined factory collapses. Berlinger can only win if he does not appear to sign the contract that would seal the assignment of the property. And so he gets into his old airplane and evades a decision until the crash pilot crashes into a tree with a crash. Senator Roeder is waiting in vain for Berlinger and his signature. His bills are off, he's ruined.
production
The film had its world premiere on November 6, 1975. With a production cost of DM 1.7 million, Berlinger was the most expensive product of the New German Cinema .
Nikos Perakis was responsible for both the equipment and the costumes. The special effects come from Karl Baumgartner . Bernd Heinl assisted cameraman Dietrich Lohmann .
Evelyn Künneke sings the song Roter Mohn .
criticism
Wolf Donner praised Berlinger in the time of 7 November 1975 and predicted under the heading "An intelligent commercial film. The new German cinema has grown up ”:“ The structure of Sinkel / Brustellin's "Berlinger" will make film history and can at best be compared to Orson Welles' technique, for example in his "F for Fake": a fragile, artistic structure that does not run linearly, but in spirals and ellipses, in large arcs of plot that converge, chains of motifs that close. It never becomes a mere brilliant formal gimmick because the flow of the narrative maintains a completely natural, psychological rhythm; You watch levels of consciousness, see how dreams and memories work. ”A little later it can be read:“ It remains the secret of the two directors (who worked on the book for two years and in between realized the hit film "Lina Braake") and their staff Dietrich Lohmann (camera) and Nicos Perakis (equipment), how they were able to make a film of such power and density despite this complex structure of the "Berlinger" and such a fragmented chronology, full of cinematic characters, plump scenes, sympathetic craziness, full of fantasy and naive pleasure. In terms of film politics, "Berlinger" creates new realities. After Herzog, Fassbinder, Wenders, "Ludwig" and "Katharina Blum" and many others, a professional level has established itself in the new German cinema, in spite of all superfluous fanfare and cries of Finally! That compares fearfully with the hapless Oberhausener Movement from 1962 no longer justifies. ”Donner's summary:“ “Berlinger” has the chance to gain approval from everyone, from the public, the industry and the critics. "Berlinger" or the harmony of the incompatible: a movie about a romantic capitalist, a sensitive careerist, a dumb and eloquent beautiful woman, a couple of pragmatic dreamers; an intelligent commercial film. "
In the Frankfurter Rundschau , Wolfram Schütte also praised especially Brustellin's and Sinkel's ability with Berlinger to get the New German Film out of the corner of the pure intellectual cinema and to have made a smart and multi-layered entertainment film at the same time. Under the heading “New terrain gained” it says: “Brustellin and Sinkel do not tell this material [...] chronologically. Just as the film introduces two people - or rather two sides of a conservative type - it repeatedly nests the past (childhood and Nazi era) in the few days during which the two dinosaurs carry out their "final battle". Not always happy, not always conclusive. The fact that the two directors also had to shorten the broader subject matter occasionally leads to gaps, broken motifs, of which they had brought in too many, perhaps too many, here. The theses-like moment inherent in the story (and reminiscent of Kluge's stories in his penultimate book "Learning Processes with a Deadly Outcome") is then very nicely resolved into a multitude of episodes and incidents, into narrative flesh and sensualities that last two hours Make film bulging like the balloon of an airship. ”Schuette's conclusion:“ A film of abundance, if not also of abundance, spectacular and with a very astonishing human gesture: narrative cinema, as the boys dream of [...]. A romantic subject on earthy ground. The young West German film has conquered new territory with "Berlinger". "
Kay Wenigers The large personal dictionary of the film called the film an "intelligent outsider biography" and put Berlinger in the biography of Bernhard Sinkels in a context to Brustellins / Sinkels predecessor film Lina Braake : "The thematically much more serious film had the merits that already" Lina Braake “. It was the largely successful attempt by representatives of the filmmaker generation to create intelligent and at the same time entertaining cinema beyond the cerebral auteur film. In “Berlinger”, too, an outsider was in the foreground, an individualist and lateral thinker who opposed follow-through and adaptive behavior in the 3rd Reich. Once again, Sinkel conveyed a bulky, rather unsuitable topic for the masses in a framework designed for a large audience (moral courage and adherence to principles in difficult times that require strength of character). "
The lexicon of the international film judged: “An attempt by the young filmmakers Sinkel / Brustellin (“ Lina Braake ”) to analyze problematic German traits and their socio-political breeding grounds using a dazzling, complex heroic figure. Popular narrative and adventure cinema with a time-sensitive approach. "
Berlinger called the Cinema's online presence “A Masterpiece of New German Film” for short.
Web links
- Berlinger in bernhardsinkel.com
- Berlinger in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Berlinger at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Berlinger in Die Zeit
- ↑ Berlinger in Frankfurt Rundschau ( 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.
- ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 1: A - C. Erik Aaes - Jack Carson. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 590.
- ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 7: R - T. Robert Ryan - Lily Tomlin. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 339.
- ↑ Klaus Brüne (Red.): Lexikon des Films Volume 1, p. 309. Reinbek near Hamburg 1987.
- ↑ Berlinger in cinema.de
