The Unicorn
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The Unicorn |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1978 |
| length | 111 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Peter Patzak |
| script |
Dorothea Dhan Martin Walser based on his own novel |
| production | Harald Muller |
| music | Peter Zwetkoff |
| camera | Ulrich Burtin |
| cut | Bernd Lorbiecki |
| occupation | |
| |
Das Einhorn is a German fiction film from 1978 based on the novel of the same name by Martin Walser , who also participated in the creation of the screenplay. Directed by Peter Patzak play Peter Vogel and Gila von Weitershausen the leading roles.
action
Anselm Kristlein is 42 years old, a former copywriter who rose to become a star writer overnight with just one book. And yet he struggles with numerous uncertainties, has questions for his life, is a "unicorn", the symbol of a deeply residing unrest. One day, the Swiss publisher Melanie Sugg commissioned him to write a gaudy, garish non-fiction book with the ubiquitous title “Love”. She pays well, 2,000 marks a month, and Anselm needs the money. When confronted with this topic for the first time, he has to state that he actually knows nothing about love. And so Anselm, a rather average-looking, slim guy with a light hairline, tries to learn at least practically in order to be able to approach this topic literarily.
Kristlein's path through the beds leads him from his wife Birga via Barbara, Marie, Rosa and Melanie to Lake Constance to the very young Orli Laks. In it he discovers the true meaning of love, which makes him forget all his erotic wrong turns of the past decades and makes him young again. After these sensual adventures, Anselm, on the advice of his wife, would rather call the book “Instead of Love”, because this comes much closer to his own findings. After this enlightening amorous odyssey through the world of the eternally feminine, Anselm Kristlein returns to Birga's arms, both insightful and morally amorous, where dream and reality are united. He no longer has to write the book.
Production notes
The 34-day shooting of the film-television co-production Das Einhorn began on July 25, 1977, but was then interrupted for two months and resumed on September 26, 1977. The last day of shooting was January 3, 1978. It was filmed in Munich, Lindau on Lake Constance, Baden-Baden, Karlsruhe and Duisburg. The film was completed on February 24, 1978. The premiere took place on September 29, 1978 in three cinemas in Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt am Main.
The film structures were designed by Jörg Höhn, the costumes by Stasi Kurz . Gig Malzacher took over the editing for the SWF in Baden-Baden . Dieter Schönemann and Werner Rollauer took over the production management.
Despite numerous bad reviews (see below), the film received the rating "valuable".
For Peter Vogel, Das Einhorn was his last feature film; he committed suicide in 1978.
criticism
“After many years in the theater, Peter Vogel as Anselm Kristlein has finally got a good film role again. The actor ... proves to be the ideal cast for Walser's fictional character. (...) The Swiss Miriam Spoerri masters her role as publisher Melanie Sugg. As almost always, Christiane Rücker is allowed to show her lush charms extensively. (...) Martin Walser worked on the drafting of the script. That also benefited the film. It is very often complained that good novels turn into bad films. Authors usually distance themselves in disappointment. That doesn't necessarily have to be the case here. "
“The story was faithfully preserved - should Martin Walser's novel from 1966 have been as bleak as this sleeping pill from a film that purports to be its theatrical version? No, at least it wasn't. The novel was a book about a case of unrest in civilization, of mostly amorous unrest, read in Walser's troubled, angry, obsessed language. The film retains a few quotes from the language; his imagery is of an elegiac creeping comfort. But the film fails completely in the attempt to visualize this from sentence to sentence, from observation to observation, from affair to affair and then even from the affairs to love by Anselm Kristlein. Peter Vogel plays him as a Trantüte, a phlegmatic of degrees in which one woman after the other mysteriously falls into, so that he is reluctantly puffed from one adventure to the next. Neither his intellectual nor his erotic nervousness is to be believed in this incarnate passive voice, this changing vacancy for even a minute, and with this miscast in the center, the whole plot looks like a single absurd misunderstanding. "
"Peter Vogel in his last leading role: a sensitive mixture of sensitivity and vanity, suffering from the world and himself."
“A film adaptation of the novel of the same name about a former copywriter who is commissioned to write a non-fiction novel about love. Martin Walser's psychogram of a petty bourgeois who falls victim to the professional and sexual pressure to perform in West German post-war society proves to be a problematic film model: subtle joke becomes a literary quote; the pictures appear like illustrations. "
Individual evidence
- ^ German Institute for Film Studies (ed.): German Films 1978, compiled by Rüdiger Koschnitzki. P. 46
- ↑ The unicorn. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
Web links
- The Unicorn in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The unicorn at filmportal.de