The bike
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The bike |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1982 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Evelyn Schmidt |
| script | Evelyn Schmidt |
| production | DEFA , KAG "Babelsberg" |
| music | Peter Rabenalt |
| camera | Roland Dressel |
| cut | Helga Emmrich |
| occupation | |
| |
Das Fahrrad is a German film drama by DEFA by Evelyn Schmidt based on a scenario by Ernst Wenig (who also wrote the novel shortly afterwards) from 1982 . It is one of the most important realistic DEFA films of the 1980s and one of the few women ’s films made in the GDR.
action
Single mother Susanne, who works on a punching machine in a factory , meets mechanical engineer Thomas Marlow in a disco. He is currently in the same building at a company party in his honor, as he has just been appointed head of technology and production for his company. Thomas gives Susanne a drink and they both get closer, but Thomas is called back to his party.
Winter is coming and Susanne has financial worries. She is in arrears with paying for childcare for her daughter Jenny and regularly pays for an insurance policy that she would like to cancel. Her monotonous work on the machine depresses her and so one day she gives up everything. She quits. By chance she meets Thomas again the following day and tells him about her resignation. She tries to find a new job for the next few days, but as an unskilled worker without a high school diploma, it is difficult for her. Various positions are out of the question for Susanne due to night work and inadequate childcare. However, she seems to get a chance at a tourist information office and is supposed to register with the company. During the night Jenny falls ill and Susanne has other worries. Her money is insufficient, her ex-husband refuses to advance her child support for the next month, so she has to borrow money from her boyfriend Kalle. At the disco, her drunken friend suggests that she simply report her bike as stolen and collect the money from the insurance company. The drunk Susanne is matched by a strange man at the disco and wakes up the next morning in his apartment. She has bruises on her arms and runs horrified to her apartment, where her daughter is waiting for her with her neighbor, Ms. Puschkat, who lives across the corridor. Susanne breaks down crying.
Susanne wants to change her life. She hides the bike, reports it to the insurance company as stolen and receives 450 marks. She used the money to treat herself to a little luxury, including a can of pineapples for 12.50 marks, and bought new clothes for work in the tourist office, but was turned away there. Since she had not registered, the position has already been given to another applicant. She is now starting with the bottle inspection in a brewery. Thomas had previously offered her a job in his company, which she refused. However, their relationship is getting closer.
Spring is coming and Susanne goes on a bike excursion with her daughter. On the way back she is stopped by a police officer because she has hung all kinds of plants on her handlebars. The ABV recognizes her and her bike and is astonished that Susanne did not report the discovery of the bike, as the police have of course started investigations against the thief. Susanne pretends to have forgotten. She is summoned to the police, where she is told that there will be a fraud trial against her. Susanne hides everything from Thomas, who takes her into his business. Here she is to be trained in Lotti's brigade. At Thomas' suggestion, Susanne moves into his apartment with Jenny, but collapses after a nightmare. She confesses to him about the bicycle process and Thomas reacts irritably, since his position in the company is now in jeopardy, since he brought Susanne to the brigade. There is a first break between Susanne and Thomas. However, he wants to help her and have the court handed the case over to the company's conflict committee. More and more often there is a dispute with Thomas, who also has problems in the company because of his progressive methods. When he accuses her of being ungrateful for doing everything for her and she asks what she ever did, she replies that she raised Jenny. His reaction that Jenny will only steal later on anyway makes Susanne end the relationship. She moves out of Thomas' apartment and back to her old building. Ms. Puschkat's apartment is orphaned.
Thomas and Susanne greet each other at the company, but treat each other as colleagues. One day Thomas sees Susanne and Jenny: Susanne lets the kindergarten child Jenny ride her big ladies bike and is thrilled when Jenny manages the seemingly impossible.
production
The bicycle was the second film Evelyn Schmidt made for DEFA after the affair . It is one of the women’s films in the GDR, in which “the subject of self-discovery and the emancipation of women in the society of real socialism appears fairly frankly”. At first, the film was considered successful within the DEFA studio for feature films, but in the approval process it was increasingly devalued by the (male) decision-makers. The leading actress Heidemarie Schneider was considered by the officials as "not beautiful enough, the self-assertion of the approximately thirty-year-old Susanne [as] too feminist".
The film premiered on July 22, 1982 in Berlin's Colosseum and was shown in GDR cinemas the following day. The critics of the GDR panned the film almost unanimously, among other things Susanne's attitude to everyday work was criticized. As a bad film, it was not allowed to be shown abroad, including at festivals in Vienna and London. Nevertheless, it was exported to the Federal Republic. On July 2, 1985, Das Fahrrad ran for the first time in the series Films by Women on ZDF on German television and was shown on January 23, 1990 on DFF 1 on East German television. The positive West German criticism also led to a reassessment of the film in the GDR. At the fifth congress of film and television workers in the GDR in 1988, it was now described as "one of the most consistent works by the young generation".
In retrospect, Frank-Burkhard Habel called the film one of “the most important realistic [DEFA] films of the eighties”. The bicycle was one of the eleven DEFA feature films that were shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 2005 as part of the Rebels with a cause series .
criticism
The contemporary criticism of the GDR stated that Evelyn Schmidt's second film had shortcomings, which were mainly due to the script. For example, the film has “too few starting points for generalization. With the statement: That's how it is! he doesn't want to be fired at all. There is not enough impetus to think further, ”said Margit Voss in her review. “We need to think about the means by which 'adversities in life' are expressed in the film: a pot with boiling laundry can turn into a disaster, a punch in the factory an unreasonable bondage. Normal work is the cause of the heroine's outbursts of desperation. For how many viewers is everyday life an unacceptable burden in this way, ”asked Voss. In 1982, Renate Holland-Moritz criticized that the background to Susanne's social situation remained in the dark. Susanne is "an inwardly torn, broken guy" and a "bent [s], immature [s] creature". Like her background, the message of the film is also unclear. For Holland-Moritz, Das Fahrrad was "nothing but a tired articulation of grouchy discomfort in society."
The West German critics called the film "a plea for seemingly marginal figures in society, [the film] puts the quality of human relationships above pure performance thinking". For the film service , Das Fahrrad was “a sensitive portrait of a woman, its cinematic narrative style tart and its social criticism reminiscent of the Polish 'cinema of moral unrest'. Noteworthy is the sympathetic portrayal of an 'unwilling to work' outsider and the uncompromisingly unadorned description of everyday life in the GDR. "
literature
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 157-158 .
- Evelyn Schmidt: Film time - lifetime. Development and reception history of the DEFA film »Das Fahrrad«. Series of publications by the DEFA Foundation , Bertz + Fischer Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86505-401-2 .
Web links
- The bike in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The bike at filmportal.de
- The bicycle at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ↑ Elke Schieber: Beginning of the End or Continuity of Suspicion 1980 to 1989 . In: Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 267.
- ↑ a b Elke Schieber: Beginning of the end or continuity of suspicion 1980 to 1989 . In: Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 270.
- ↑ On TV this week . In: Der Spiegel , No. 27, 1985, p. 166.
- ↑ Quoted from: Elke Schieber: Beginning of the End or Continuity of Suspicion 1980 to 1989 . In: Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 269.
- ↑ F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 158 .
- ^ Margit Voss: A second attempt . In: Film und Fernsehen , No. 8, 1982.
- ^ Renate Holland-Moritz: The bicycle . In: Renate Holland-Moritz: The owl in the cinema. New movie reviews . Eulenspiegel Verlag, Berlin 1994, p. 50.
- ↑ Heinz Kersten in: Frankfurter Rundschau , November 16, 1982.
- ↑ The bicycle. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .