The life begins
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The life begins |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1960 |
| length | 119 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Heiner Carow |
| script |
Jeanne Stern Kurt Stern |
| production | DEFA |
| music | Kurt Schwaen |
| camera | Goetz Neumann |
| cut | Use Peters |
| occupation | |
| |
Life begins is a DEFA German feature film by Heiner Carow from 1960 based on a film narration by Kurt and Jeanne Stern from 1959.
action
Erika Schenk and Rolf Gruber are high school students in an Abitur class in a city about two hours by train from Berlin. They both feel they belong together and are the first real lovers in the class. But of course they also feel the mockery of their classmates. After class is over, they both go for a walk in the meadows on the outskirts of the city in order to pursue their other interests afterwards. Erika leads a group of Young Pioneers with whom she spends the rest of the afternoon. Later, she wants to make work with children her job. Rolf is more interested in medicine and therefore has an appointment with Erika's father, who works as a doctor in a hospital, to have him explain various things in laboratory medicine to him.
Dr. As a surgeon, Schenk owned a private clinic in Tilsit , which he had to leave at the end of the Second World War , and is therefore not satisfied with his current position as a senior physician in a hospital. He is opposed to the socialist mass health system and he still dreams of becoming an independent doctor with private patients. That is why he has had the idea of leaving the GDR for a long time. Since he always speaks openly with Erika about everything and she can make all the decisions herself, he tells her about it. Out of consideration for her father, she agrees to go with them, but tells Rolf about it. This gives her the promise not to tell any more about what he keeps. Only Dr. Schenk is now restless and accelerates his escape to his sister in West Berlin . Once there, Erika writes a letter to Rolf, as she no longer had time to say goodbye to him and asks for his visit.
Rolf visits her in West Berlin, but cannot persuade her to return. When his father, a trained bricklayer who was thrown into a concentration camp by the National Socialists and who is now the director of the high school where Rolf is a student, learns of the visit, he demands that he meet in front of the assembly for this behavior Students apologize. Although Rolf first agrees, he then decides to leave school and start working as a laborer in a construction company.
Erika is slowly taking a liking to the beautiful, colorful world in the west. Only her father cannot find a job as a doctor. In order to earn any money at all, he works as a pharmacy representative and visits pharmacies, which depresses him very much. He then finds a job in the Bundeswehr as a doctor, a job that he hadn't had in mind at all. When Erika's cousin Benno Brenner, a journalist, returns from a long trip, she falls in love with him and forgets to think about Rolf. Only when she becomes pregnant by Benno and he demands that she abort the child does she recognize his true character. Although it turned out that she is not pregnant, she breaks up with him. When she lived in a furnished room without her father and lost her job as a kindergarten teacher, she was very unhappy and wrote a letter to Rolf. He gives it to his father to read and then, with his permission, drives to Erika in West Berlin. He can only find this in the hospital, where she has just been rescued from a suicide attempt. The common life of Erika and Rolf in the GDR seems to be secure again.
production
Life begins was filmed in black and white and had its world premiere on April 8, 1960 in the Babylon cinema in Berlin . It was first broadcast on television on October 28, 1960 in the DFF . The outdoor shots were taken in Berlin a. a. in the Ostbahnhof , at Potsdamer Platz , Brandenburger Tor and at Marx-Engels-Platz with pan to the Berlin Cathedral , the Marstall and the Red City Hall .
The film was shot under the working title Problems of Young People and the dramaturgy was in the hands of Konrad Schwalbe .
criticism
Horst Knietzsch began his review in Neues Deutschland with the remark that all GDR citizens had been waiting for this film for a long time because the conflicts shown here play a major role in their lives. This DEFA masterpiece neither speaks nor lectures, it is a powerful commitment to socialist life and encourages the citizens of the GDR to live in a country with a future.
Günter Sobe stated in the Berliner Zeitung that Heiner Carow typically cast the roles and instructed the actors in extraordinarily haunting acting. He can work cinematically and knows how to use the means of film effectively. He is particularly interested in integrating important trivialities.
The lexicon of international films finds the film striking in places. However, he succeeds in reflecting critically both on the cold emotions in West German society and on constraints and narrow-mindedness in the GDR. That is why it is an artistically ambitious and above-average attempt within several DEFA productions on East-West conflicts.
literature
- Life begins In: F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 344-345.
Web links
- Life begins at the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Life begins at filmportal.de
- Life begins at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ^ New Germany of April 10, 1960, p. 5
- ↑ Berliner Zeitung of April 12, 1960, p. 6
- ↑ Life begins. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .