The House by the River (1986)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The house on the river |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1986 |
| length | 89 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Roland Graef |
| script | Roland Graef |
| production | DEFA , KAG "Red Circle" |
| music | Günther Fischer |
| camera | Roland Dressel |
| cut | Monika Schindler |
| occupation | |
| |
Das Haus am Fluß is a German feature film from the DEFA studio for feature films by Roland Gräf from 1986 based on the novella Der Russenpelz from 1942 by Friedrich Wolf .
action
The story is about a hard-working German fisher woman who lives by a large river with her family, her two daughters Agnes and Lisbeth, daughter-in-law Emmi and son-in-law Jupp. It is the year 1942 and her son Paul Voss, who was deployed by the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, now and then writes a letter, usually no more than a sign of life.
It starts with the fact that in the plant where Jupp Eckert works as a crane operator , of all things, his crane breaks down due to a defective gearbox . The nature of the damage suggests sabotage and Jupp is one of the suspects. But he received a good report from his junior boss Heinz Hüsgen, because he had an eye on his wife Agnes, who works as a cleaner in the same company. In the evening there is a reason to celebrate in the house by the river. Piter Drießen, a friend from the front of Paul who is on convalescence leave , brings greetings from him and a Ukrainian peasant blouse as a present for Emmi.
The crane operator Jupp is now drafted into the Wehrmacht and sent to the Eastern Front, but has to promise Agnes to bring her a Russian fur on her next vacation. Before that, however, she already receives one from the junior boss, who does everything to sleep with her. This also includes a gift chain and the transfer to the canteen as an operator. Here he succeeds at a party in getting her around with the help of his fiancée Lena Brinken. After that, Agnes doesn't want to be reminded of it, because she has a bad conscience. Heinz Hüsgen and Lena meanwhile have completely different worries. You have just before entry into the war the Americans their scale there money to a Swiss bank transfers , which is prohibited under German law. In order to avoid the threat of persecution, they donate the money to the Winter Relief Organization of the German People . When the senior boss finds out, because it is also about his money and he knew nothing about the transaction, he kills himself.
Piter Drießen visits the house on the river again. But this time he brings the news to Mother Voss and Emmi that their son and husband died at the front. Emmi first loses her mind and then hangs herself in the attic. The war has entered the house and it continues like this. One day Jupp is standing by the wall when Agnes comes home from work. Her joy is so great that she doesn't even notice he's missing a leg and hand. But she definitely wants to nurse him well, but has to find out that he is to be transferred to a convalescent hospital in France . Agnes asks her junior boss to protect him with his relationships. Therefore, he should come to the fisherman's house for a conversation, but they shouldn't be on a duel. Heinz Hüsgen doesn't think about it, gets drunk and tells everything that her husband shouldn't know. When he discovers the fur coat that Paul has brought with him, he also brings up the Russian vest that he has given. As the dispute continues, Paul tells various experiences that are related to the atrocities of the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union , which is why Hüsgen draws his weapon and aims at Paul. That is the reason for Agnes to kill him.
Mother Voss and her daughter Lisbeth dispose of the body with the fishing boat and the Russian fur at the same time. Agnes takes her husband a few more meters on the way to the convalescent hospital and goes back to the house.
production
The house on the river was filmed by the artistic work group “Red Circle” under the working title Russenfurz on ORWO color and had its world premiere on January 16, 1986 at the Berlin Kino International . The film was shown for the first time on 25 August 1987 in the second program on GDR television .
The dramaturgy was in the hands of Christel Gräf.
criticism
Helmut Ullrich expressed himself as follows in the Neue Zeit :
“ The house on the river is a film of great complexity. He stands in the DEFA tradition of dealing with fascism, and he adds new aspects to it. It shows the spiritual devastation and devastation that fascism caused among the Germans. He gives the psychology of a time, as concrete as it is general as a model. "
Horst Knietzsch wrote in Neues Deutschland :
“The fascination of realistic art emanates from this film. It makes a piece of one's own history transparent for the present. Emotionally and rationally people are presented who lived, loved, suffered and fought in Germany at a time that went down in history as the tyranny of the most reactionary, aggressive forces of German monopoly capital. "
The lexicon of international films writes about the film that it is played superbly and that it is emphatically designed to be generalizable due to the romantically exaggerated narrative style. However, the film suffers a little from its wooden script. "
Awards
- 1986: IV National Feature Film Festival of the GDR Karl-Marx-Stadt: Prize for a film as a complete work (ex aequo)
- 1986: IV. National Feature Film Festival of the GDR Karl-Marx-Stadt: Prize for Cinematography ( Roland Dressel )
- 1986: IV. National Feature Film Festival of the GDR Karl-Marx-Stadt: Prize for Music ( Günther Fischer )
- 1986: IV. National Feature Film Festival of the GDR Karl-Marx-Stadt: Prize for Editing ( Monika Schindler )
- 1987: Critics' award “The big flap” of the theory and criticism section of the Association of Film and TV Makers in the GDR: Best Actress 1986 ( Das Haus am Fluss , Der Traum vom Elch ) for Katrin Sass
literature
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 236 to 237 .
- Das Haus am Fluß In: Ingrid Poss / Peter Warneke (eds.): Trace of films Christoph Links Verlag, 2006, ISBN 978-3-86153-401-3 , pp. 420 to 422.
Web links
- The house on the river in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The house on the river at filmportal.de
- The house on the river at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ↑ Neue Zeit of January 17, 1986, p. 4.
- ↑ Neues Deutschland, January 23, 1986, p. 6.
- ↑ The house on the river. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed June 29, 2017 .