The bread of the early years (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The bread of the early years |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1962 |
| length | 89 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Herbert Vesely |
| script | Herbert Vesely Leo Ti |
| production | Hansjürgen Pohland for modern art film gmbh |
| music | Attila Zoller |
| camera | Wolf Wirth |
| cut | Christa Pohland |
| occupation | |
| |
The bread of the early years is a German feature film from 1962 based on the story of the same name by Heinrich Böll . With this production, director Herbert Vesely founded the New German Film .
action
It tells the unspectacular story of an average German citizen who settled down comfortably in the Federal Republic of the late Adenauer years and believes that he leads a satisfied and fulfilled life.
Walter Fendrich is an electrician and has a regular income as a fitter of washing machines. He owns his own car, which was not a matter of course at the time, and lives in a middle-class apartment. In addition, his social advancement seems to be secured since his boss's daughter, Ulla Wickweber, is his girlfriend. So far, these material things have been the guideline in the life of Walter Fendrich, who grew up in extremely poor circumstances. But one day everything will be different; he questions his previous existence and turns everything he has achieved up to now.
A reunion with his childhood friend Hedwig Muller throws him emotionally completely off track. Love hits him suddenly, so that he has to state the total pointlessness of his life so far. The standards of value that apply to him lose their meaning, and he may no longer follow socially prescribed guidelines and conventions with immediate effect. Fendrich draws the conclusions from this: he quits his job and separates from Ulla on the same day in order to start a new life with Hedwig and enjoy the new freedom.
production
The shooting took place in November and December 1961 in Berlin . The premiere took place during the Cannes International Film Festival on May 22, 1962. The German premiere took place a day later in Cologne .
On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Oberhausen Manifesto , The Bread of the Early Years was performed again on May 6, 1987.
The production costs amounted to 400,000 DM . The film was subsidized by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with 100,000 DM.
Vesely had insisted on having the film start in Cannes before the German premiere because he expected more substantial judgments from the French film critics than from the German ones. But the French critics mostly rejected the film. In Germany, too, Das Bread of the Early Years was not successful with either the critics or the public. New German Film only achieved its breakthrough in the mid-1960s with Es and Der Junge Törless .
The two supporting actors Eike Siegel and Tilo von Berlepsch were married to each other.
Awards
The bread of the early years was awarded the second prize for a full-length feature film, Filmband in Gold , on June 24, 1962 . The first prize was not awarded in 1962.
Vera Chekhova also received the gold film tape in the Best Actress category . Further gold film tapes went to the young cameraman Wolf Wirth , who presented unusually veristic , unleashed film images based on the French nouvelle vague tradition, as well as to the composer Attila Zoller and Herbert Vesely in the category of best young director.
criticism
On the occasion of the premiere, the following could be read in the Spiegel :
“In Cannes, however, you could only hear a gentle splash. Wolf Wirth's unconventional camera work, which the Berlin critic Friedrich Luft considers to be 'one of the boldest eye-catchers in our film', was also praised by the festival critics in Cannes (Le Figaro: 'Many pictures are strong'). But the optical finesse - frantic camera pans or coarse-grained close-ups, as can be seen in the cheap Magnum photo sheet - only highlighted the misconception of the film, which wants to be new in a violent way and therefore, as critics found air, 'confused, unclear, overstylized 'diffuse and tormenting in the end' remains. […] Vesely, on the other hand, deliberately destroyed the chronology of the narrative. Inspired by reading different productions of the French nouveau novel , he put together the course of action in a bizarre way from 'memories, speculations, reactions and testimonies'. First he circles the external facts through testimony. From telephone conversations, scraps of conversation, internal monologues and minutes of protocol, the picture of a day in the hero's life is put together, as in a puzzle game. [...] As frankly as Vesely experimented with the formal, he was just as shy about the metaphysical-religious touch of the literary model. With Böll, the hero has been obsessed with a 'wolfish' greed for bread since the hunger years after the war, which brings him into a latent contradiction to his civilized environment and which is ultimately the prerequisite for his 'escape from bourgeois life'. "
Günter Rohrbach wrote in the magazine Filmkritik (June 1962):
“The attempt is not praiseworthy simply because it is risky. The extraordinary requires the experiment, but it is not in itself. "
Reclam's film guide analyzed The Bread of the Early Years as follows: The film
“Has its meaning above all as a radical rejection of the then customary made-up mediocrity, which, however, he did not know how to counteract any real alternative. The bread of the early years is a kind of optical encyclopedia of cinematic possibilities - full of sophisticated picture compositions, rapid pans, daring journeys, fast-paced montages. But these details have no real function for the whole, they remain impressive, but occasionally tiring exercises in style. "
Kay Weniger's Großer Personenlexikon des Films described the film as Vesely's most important work and called the production “cool aestheticizing”. Furthermore, it is recalled that the bread of the early years "was only seen in retrospect as the initial spark for the start of the era of the 'young German film'."
The Lexicon of International Films wrote:
"The multiple interlaced production, developed from different perspectives, contains numerous extravagances and novelties, which although animated West German cinema in the early 1960s, overall did not do justice to the original."
literature
- Böll: Marriages in heaven . In: Der Spiegel . No. 22 , 1962, pp. 77 f . ( online ).
Web links
- The bread of the early years in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The bread of the early years at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Without stink . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1962, pp. 90 ( online ).
- ↑ Böll: Marriages in Heaven . In: Der Spiegel . No. 22 , 1962, pp. 77 ( online ).
- ↑ Böll: Marriages in Heaven . In: Der Spiegel . No. 22 , 1962, pp. 77 f . ( online ).
- ^ Dieter Krusche, collaboration with Jürgen Labenski: Reclams film guide. Stuttgart 1973, p. 245.
- ↑ 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 8: T - Z. David Tomlinson - Theo Zwierski. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 169.
- ↑ Klaus Brüne (Red.): Lexikon des Films, Volume 1. Reinbek bei Hamburg 1987, p. 437.