Life Goes On (Documentary)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Life goes on - the last propaganda film of the Third Reich |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2002 |
| length | 86 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Mark Cairns |
| script |
Hans-Christoph Blumenberg Mark Cairns Carl Schmitt |
| production | Carl Schmitt |
| music |
Moritz Denis Eike Hosenfeld |
| camera | Stefan Grandinetti |
| cut | Dietmar Kraus |
| occupation | |
| |
Life goes on is a docu-drama from 2002, which is based on the book documentation Life goes on - the last film of the Third Reich by director and film historian Hans-Christoph Blumenberg , published in 1993 . Directed by the Englishman Mark Cairns ; The film commissioned by Arte was produced by Carl Schmitt .
The theme is the unfinished German propaganda film Life Goes On , which was shot during the last year of the war, 1944–45. The footage has been missing until now, however, the docudrama tried on the basis of scripts, production documents and eyewitness statements to reconstruct the film, the history, and its important role within the of Joseph Goebbels steered propaganda strategy of the declining Third Reich represent.
The docu-drama won the 2003 International Emmy Award for best documentary.
content
With Dieter Moor as omnipresent, satirical laconic narrator, the docu-drama highlights the increasingly absurd circumstances in which in the closing stages of the Second World War, the Goebbels commissioned propaganda film Life Goes On was: Unlike other UFA productions from During the Nazi era, the depiction of the German war ruins was not to be avoided here, but rather to be exploited for propaganda purposes for the so-called " final victory ". But what then led to bitter parallels between the planned content of the film and its actual shooting conditions. When it became impossible to work in the Babelsberg studios by March 1945 at the latest , the director Wolfgang Liebeneiner fled with his film team to an air base near Lüneburg in order to supposedly finish the shooting there.
The docu-drama is a mixture of relatively few eyewitness interviews, from some of the script excerpts or production documents read by Dieter Moor, and above all from rather symbolically re-enacted scenes by actors and extras that allow the moor, which strides through all the scenes, to understand the production conditions of the To comment ironically on the film and the course of the war. Animations and special effects that are deliberately executed in rudimentary form are also used to distort the partly amateurish, partly disturbing story of how it came about. The last quarter of the docu-drama deals with the mysterious whereabouts of the missing film material to this day.
Emergence
“We are interested in the genesis of the film. The attempt to produce a film for which the means are no longer there, neither ideologically nor materially. Life goes on was to show the German people the horror of war for the first time. In contrast to earlier propaganda films, the destroyed Berlin is to be shown in the cinema for the first time, but it will be rebuilt by the residents after the war has been won. But there was a lack of building materials, gasoline, film material, and even enough paper to print scripts for all employees. "
Since the book of the same name was published in 1993, the producer Carl Schmitt has tried to find a way to prepare the material for a documentary adaptation. Since the Ufa film made at the end of the war is considered lost, there are no longer any coherent film clips for reconstruction. In total, there are only five preserved still images from the film.
However, there were still the production diaries that Blumenberg had already used for the book, other documents and contemporary witnesses , but the number of them continued to decline. In 1998 Schmitt began to prepare the shooting with the English director Mark Cairns. At the beginning of 2000, the Hessischer Rundfunk and the Arte editorial team finally came on board, so that the film could finally be produced. On October 24, 2002 it was shown for the first time as part of a themed evening called “Propaganda” on Arte . After that, the docu-drama toured American festivals and received several awards in the United States, culminating in the 2003 International Emmy .
criticism
"... The ninety-minute documentary is the excellent reconstruction of a cinematic farce ..."
“… The jury may also have won 'Life Goes on' because it is a film about filmmaking, an homage to the genre. Although it is precisely the astray of an illusion industry that director Mark Cairns stages. 'Life goes on' tells - based on the book by Hans Christoph Blumenberg - the making of one of the last propaganda films of the 'Third Reich' ... "
Awards
- March 13, 2003: GOLD HUGO as Best Television Production at the 39th Chicago International Television Awards
- July 2003: DV Award in the USA for "Outstanding Achievement in Digital Video"
- November 2003: International Emmy Award in New York for best documentary film
literature
- Hans-Christoph Blumenberg: Life goes on . The last film of the Third Reich. 1st edition. Rowohlt-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-87134-062-6 .
- Hans-Jürgen Tast: Helmut Käutner - In those days. 1947 (= googly eyes . Volume 33). Kulleraugen, Schellerten 2007, ISBN 978-3-88842-034-4 , pp. 4–10
Web links
- Life goes on in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Official website of the film ( Memento of May 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Life goes on ( Memento of August 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) The producer's comment on the planning and development of the film. Retrieved July 10, 2011.
- ↑ The Last Film of the Nazis: Life Goes On. In: Spiegel Online photo gallery. April 16, 2015, accessed June 10, 2018 .
- ↑ Life goes on ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 29 kB), online version of the FAZ article from October 24, 2002, No. 247, page 40. Accessed July 10, 2011.
- ↑ Life goes on ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 745 kB), online version of the article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung from November 29, 2003. Accessed July 10, 2011.
