The dress
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The dress |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1961 |
| length | 88 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Konrad Petzold |
| script | Egon Günther |
| production | DEFA , KAG "concrete" |
| music | Günter Hauk |
| camera | Hans Hauptmann |
| cut |
Ilse Peters (1961) Thea Richter (1991) |
| occupation | |
| |
The dress is a picaresque film by DEFA by Egon Günther , directed by Konrad Petzold , which was produced in 1961. It is based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Emperor's New Clothes . He is one of the early so-called cellar films of the GDR . The dress had its premiere in 1991, after the fall of the Wall , in a restored and revised version.
action
The cloth weavers Hans and Kumpan come on their wanderings to a city that is surrounded by a high wall. You hear that the people behind the wall are all happy and lead a fulfilling life, but they are not allowed into the city. As stowaways under a car, they finally get into the city unnoticed. It's already dark and nobody opens the door for them. The beautiful Katrin hurriedly closes the shutters when she sees the two men. After all, they spend the night under a stand that has already been set up on the market square. When they wake up the next morning, the market has already started and they realize that they have slept under the stall of the butcher who is in love with Katrin. But she always makes him fidget.
When Hans and Kumpan come out from under the table, they promptly run into the emperor's guards. Katrin helps them ask the soldiers to take them to the castle. The soldiers refuse this, however, because the emperor is already at war with his clothing minister because she only knows how to make uncreative creations. So Hans and Kumpan smuggle themselves into the food box and get into the castle.
The emperor suffers from his ministers. The interior minister has brought numerous special agents into the castle who know how to make themselves invisible but are supposed to protect the emperor. The clothing minister presents the emperor with a naval jacket as the latest invention and the food box is empty in the end because Hans and his friend were brought to the castle in it. The emperor sentenced both men to death, but the clothing minister intervened when she heard that both were cloth makers who wanted to tailor a new dress for the emperor. She hopes that both of them will finally pull off the creation that they can't. In anticipation of a sensational dress, the emperor throws all his clothes out of the window. However, since he does not give Hans and Kumpan a specification for a new dress, both are at a loss, especially since they are supposed to create the dress in a prison cell. Katrin secretly provides her with food and soon the two men are busy working on an apparently invisible dress. Only he who is not stupid and rightly carries out his office can see it, both men proclaim. When the emperor hears this, he rejoices and prophesies that his dignitaries are all incapable. He symbolically paints their heads on balloons, which he pounds with pleasure. Only the master chef admits he is probably too stupid to see the dress. The emperor announces a procession through the city for the next day.
The next morning the Minister of the Interior asks to be the first to look at the dress, since after much deliberation he has come to the conclusion that he is right in his office. He returns confused because he has not seen a dress. In the meantime, the soldiers are let in on the secret by the two cloth makers. The Foreign Minister and the Minister of Clothing appear, do not see the dress, but decide to repay the emperor for his arrogance from the previous day. They describe the dress in flowery words and the emperor must now play the game. He is dressed with a crown, gloves, sash and boots as well as underwear, trousers and a skirt made from the "wonder material". The people have meanwhile heard that the two cloth makers did not weave any fabric. But when the emperor walks naked through the streets, no one laughs. The mouth of the boy who wants to point out the nudity is closed. Only the soldiers latte and onion break the ice: They appear in underpants before the emperor, who asks them why they are half-naked. Both are indignant and claim to be wearing a beautiful skirt made from remnants of imperial clothing. The people begin to laugh and the emperor flees to his castle. The ministers are now showing themselves maliciously - the emperor has lost his power. Hans and Kumpan, in turn, say goodbye to Katrin, who would like to marry one of them, and go out into the world together.
production
The dress was shot in Totalvision in 1961 and submitted to the censors for approval on August 15, 1961. The Berlin Wall had been built two days earlier : "At that point in time, the censors were particularly careful and had the performance of the cheeky film parable, in which a city enclosed by a wall also served as the setting, forbade."
It was not until 1989 that the film was taken from the archives. Only two roles of the original sound had survived on old optical sound copies, so that almost the entire film had to be dubbed. The surviving actors (apart from Gerd E. Schäfer ) dubbed themselves, even Eva-Maria Hagen and Harry Riebauer , who lived in the FRG (who had been dubbed by Hannjo Hasse in the 1961 version ); further speakers were Detlef Gieß ( Werner Lierck ), Wolfgang Ostberg (GE Schäfer), Erik Veldre ( Günther Simon ), Werner Godemann ( Nico Turoff ), Gerd Staiger ( Hans Klering ), Wolfgang Winkler ( Harry Gillmann ) and Rolf Römer ( Kurt Rackelmann ) . The scenes were reconstructed on the basis of the script and the restored version had its premiere on February 9, 1991 in the Babylon cinema in Berlin . “[T] he spectacular success of the so-called 'plenary films' was denied to him. The media and cinema landscape had long since changed: 'The dress' came too late. "
criticism
Newspapers reported on the film while it was being shot. This is "a cheerful story, a comedy film that wants to break with the usual forms of cheerfulness without falling into the fairy-tale (which was obvious) or into the flat-naturalistic". The film should tell about "how funny, despite all the brutality and lust for power, dictators are". In return, Hans Christian Andersen is "lifted into the sphere of socialist realism".
On the occasion of the premiere in 1991, the critics found that the film "[is] at its most beautiful when, with the help of grotesque exaggerations, it shows an overly convinced, reality-blind, but omniscient court." In 1991 Frank-Burkhard Habel referred to this that the director and screenwriter in the film "rely heavily on typing"; A “special treat” are activated animation sequences, which, however, were perceived by other critics as “rather annoying”. In a later review, Habel wrote "that Konrad created an early masterpiece here ..." and other critics also found that The Dress was "probably Petzold's best film ever".
Cinema called the film a "refined political satire with a dust veil". Heinz Kersten wrote: "This fairy tale film for adults is still enjoyable today, and Andersen's parable remains valid for all authorities".
literature
- The dress . In: DEFA Foundation (ed.): The DEFA fairy tale films . Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-00-032589-2 , pp. 86-89.
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films. The complete documentation of all DEFA feature films from 1946 to 1993. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 324-325.
- The dress . In: Ingelore König, Dieter Wiedemann, Lothar Wolf (eds.): Between Marx and Muck. DEFA films for children . Henschel, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-89487-234-9 , pp. 128-130.
Web links
- The dress in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The dress at filmportal.de
- The dress at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ↑ The dress . In: DEFA Foundation (ed.): The DEFA fairy tale films . Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2010, p. 89.
- ↑ a b The dress . In: Ingelore König, Dieter Wiedemann, Lothar Wolf (eds.): Between Marx and Muck. DEFA films for children . Henschel, Berlin 1996, p. 129.
- ↑ see in: Berliner Zeitung , June 18, 1961.
- ↑ Ralf Schenk: Forbidden DEFA film from 1961 listed . In epd film , No. 12, 1991, p. 47.
- ↑ F.-B. Habel in: the other , no.21.1991.
- ↑ F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films. The complete documentation of all DEFA feature films from 1946 to 1993. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , p. 324.
- ↑ A. Mihan in: Märkische Allgemeine , April 23 1994th
- ↑ See cinema.de
- ↑ Heinz Kersten: Fairy tales of the walled city . In: Der Tagesspiegel , May 19, 1991.