Canaris (film)

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Movie
Original title Canaris
Canaris Logo 001.svg
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1954
length 112 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Alfred Weidenmann
script Erich Ebermayer
Herbert Reinecker
production Fama FA Mainz -Film GmbH, Hamburg
music Siegfried Franz
camera Franz Weihmayr
cut Ilse Voigt
occupation

Canaris (alternative title: A Life for Germany - Admiral Canaris ) is a German film biography from 1954. The focus is on Admiral Wilhelm Canaris , the head of the German military secret service during the Second World War .

action

Admiral Wilhelm Canaris heads the German defense in Berlin. In 1938 he plans an officers' revolt against Hitler , which is prevented by the Munich Agreement .

Through his global connections, he sees the war disaster coming, but his warnings are ignored. As a powerful man, he has some rivals; Reinhard Heydrich , head of the Reich Security Main Office , wants to put the defense under his control and has him spied on. Heydrich was then recalled to Prague and murdered there.

Canaris is plagued by other problems: he recognizes more and more the inhumanity of the Hitler dictatorship and begins to doubt it. However, the regime's military successes during the war mean that its warnings continue to be ignored. So he has to limit himself to helping those in distress as well as possible.

Finally, he made contacts with the resistance members around Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg . After the unsuccessful assassination attempt by Hitler on July 20, 1944 , Canaris was removed from office. Shortly before the end of World War II, Wilhelm Canaris was found to be connected to the assassins, and he was executed.

Production notes

The film was made in the Ufa studio in Berlin-Tempelhof, at Seeschloss Pichelsberg and in the studio of CCC-Film in Berlin-Spandau. The outdoor shots were shot in Berlin, Hamburg and Kiel. The buildings were created by Rolf Zehetbauer and Albrecht Hennings , the production management was in the hands of Emile J. Lustig and Werner Drake . It premiered on December 30, 1954, at the Theater am Aegi in Hanover .

An excerpt from the newsreel , which showed the cheering population when Hitler marched into Vienna in 1938, had to be removed due to the intervention of the FSK and the Foreign Office because of feared adverse effects when the film was presented abroad.

Reviews

“It certainly doesn't hurt if we sometimes deal with our recent history. For as beneficial as being able to forget [sic] in human coexistence can be, that forgetfulness can produce dire consequences, which pushes aside the uncomfortable, unfinished business. But who could deny that there is still a lot of unfinished business in German, that there are still certain hiding spots with regard to our political past. Who would say that all points of view have been corrected in the course of time and that there is general clarity about what was going on around us and with us in those years up to 1945? The film 'Canaris' is certainly required to do educational work in terms of historical truth. "

- Norddeutsche Zeitung of December 31, 1954

"The successful mixture of exciting agent thriller and biography of the mysterious Admiral Canaris [...] is one of the best works of German film of the 1950s."

- prisma.de

"History falsification à la 1950s"

- Filmportal.de

“Strongly idealizing, superficially staged drama with audience appeal, yet gripping thanks to excellent actors. However, the film does little to shed light on contemporary history. "

- film service

Also Claudius Seidl saw the movie very ambiguous. The good German (Canaris) was contrasted with the bad German (Heydrich), and of course Canaris was unable to achieve anything despite his noble intentions. Seidl's conclusion: "In Canaris , as foreign film critics in particular noticed, history was not only played down, history was faked."

Similarly, Thomas Kramer found in Reclam's Lexikon des Deutschen Films (1995) that the complicated mechanisms and power struggles within the Nazi espionage hierarchy were skilfully reduced to a conflict between good and evil in a way that was very suitable for film.

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alfred Bauer: German feature film Almanach. Volume 2: 1946-1955 , p. 400 f.
  2. ^ Frank-Burghard Habel: Cut films. Kiepenheuer, Leipzig 2003, pp. 23/24.
  3. ^ Tobias Temming: Resistance in German and Dutch feature films. Historical images and culture of remembrance (1943-1963) , De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston, 2016, p. 125.
  4. ↑ Canaris. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  5. ^ Claudius Seidl: The German Film of the Fifties , Heyne Filmbibliothek, 1987, p. 208.
  6. ^ Reclam's Lexicon of German Films. Edited by Thomas Kramer , Reclam, Stuttgart 1995, p. 66