The reed

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Movie
Original title The reed
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1974
length 86 minutes
Rod
Director Joachim Kunert
script Joachim Kunert
production Television of the GDR
music Wolfgang Thiel
camera Jürgen Heimlich
cut Silvia Lever
occupation

The Reed is a feature film on GDR television by Joachim Kunert from 1974, based on motifs from the story of the same name by Anna Seghers from 1965.

action

In the autumn of 1944 Marta Emrich ran a nursery in a small village near Berlin . Her parents died, both brothers were drafted into the Wehrmacht , the younger of the two, her favorite brother, fell on the Eastern Front . That is why her thoughts and hopes are now even more linked to her fiancé Horst, a farmer's son from the other side of the lake who is also a soldier. Marta's ambition is to preserve the Emrichs' property as well as possible. She always raises the flag when she needs to, waiting for the war to end. Sometimes she gets a visit from Edith, her brother Karl's fiancé, and they both dream of getting married after the war .

One evening during her last patrol through the nursery, she heard noises on the property and discovered a young man who was hiding from passing vehicles. When he indicates that he is wanted because he distributed leaflets against the war, Marta is of the opinion that this is why he should be reported and asks him to quickly disappear again, which he promises. But when she opens the door to the boathouse the next day , he is still not gone, but she does not reveal him when the police search the bank for him in a boat. When he is still there in the evening and he cannot disappear because he is still being searched for, Marta hides him in the basement of her house. Kurt Steiner stayed here for the next few days and was fed by Marta until she received the news that her fiancé had died at the front . Because Kurt Steiner is against the war and hides in the cellar while her Horst had to lose his life as a soldier for Germany, she expels him from the house. But Kurt only hides in a shed on the property, where Marta finds him and brings him back into the house. Here he stays all winter until the first trees bloom again and is looked after by Marta. When the news comes that her brother Karl is missing, she is even glad that he cannot go on vacation in the current situation.

Shortly before the end of the war, soldiers search the village for deserters and Kurt Steiner is already lost. But Marta thinks of a game from her childhood, when she always hid underwater in the lake and used a reed to breathe, so Kurt is not discovered. As the Red Army gets closer and closer to the place, many residents flee, while Marta and Kurt wait for the invasion in the cellar of the house. Since he no longer has to hide, they both experience their first night together in bed because Marta has fallen in love with him. Here Kurt tells her that he wants to go to Berlin to see how his friends are doing and leaves them the next morning. He also gives her to understand that he will stay in Berlin, but wants to hear from him. In winter he visits Marta in a company car, brings her something to eat and tells her that he now works in the Berlin administration, but that he doesn't enjoy the work. But he refuses the offer to move in with her, so that Marta, disappointed, sends him away again.

In the coming summer Karl Emrich will return from captivity and marry his Edith. It doesn't take long and a refugee group arrives in the village and has reached its assigned destination. So that nobody can settle on the neighboring land that is not cultivated, which belongs to the former mayor and local farmer leader , Karl creates the impression that it is his property through plantings. Suddenly Kurt appears with his girlfriend Kate, whom he wants to show the way and whereabouts of his escape during the war. When they say goodbye, he gives Marta his address in case she ever needs help and drives back across the lake. When she wants to accept his offer to get advice, he is no longer working in administration, but back at Siemens , his old company, which is why he has given up his apartment in Prenzlauer Berg .

The fronts between Karl, his wife and his sister harden more and more, but Marta, who was infected by Kurt's communist ideas and behavior, no longer accepts the high-handed demeanor of her brother and his wife. Karl now decides on the entire gardening business alone and Marta is even no longer allowed to keep the bookkeeping, so that he can take more money from the company treasury for his restaurant visits. He is also always hostile to the resettlers and when the neighboring property is then awarded to the widower Eberhard Klein with his son, as the former mayor was expropriated, he invents a gift from him. During a gathering of the old inhabitants, together with the resettlers, Karl asked Marta for public confirmation that the donation really existed, which she denies. This is the final break between the siblings and Marta soon marries Eberhard Klein.

Production and publication

The scenario came from Hans Müncheberg and the dramaturgy was in the hands of Hans Nodolny . The film was shot in Gramzow and at Berlin Prenzlauer Allee train station .

The first broadcast of the film created on ORWO-Color took place on October 6, 1974 in the first program of the East German television . From November 7, 1975, this television film was also shown in GDR cinemas.

criticism

In the Berliner Zeitung , Dieter Krebs said:

“Kunert succeeds in a cinematic implementation that is largely adequate to Segher's narrative, a film narrative full of simplicity and great emotional charisma. Jürgen Heimlich's camera work is of particular importance. "

In the Neue Zeit, Mimosa Künzel only finds words of praise for all those involved in this film and ends her criticism with the conclusion:

"Thanks to the great commitment, the episodic story became a lasting experience."

In New Germany , Klaus Schüler wrote:

“An anonymous narrator at the beginning and end of the film quotes the beginning and end of the story by Anna Seghers. Again and again the rhythm of the picture sequences with its often hard cuts reminds of the laconic diction of the writer. This is how a film with strong poetic charisma was created under the direction of Joachim Kunert. "

The lexicon of international films writes that the strip produced by GDR television is a masterful film adaptation of the Seghers story, which was neither intrusive in the argument nor moralizing in the evaluation.

Awards

  • 1975: XII. International TV Festival Prague : Honorable Recognition

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of October 8, 1974, p. 7
  2. ↑ Neue Zeit of October 9, 1974, p. 5
  3. ^ New Germany of October 11, 1974, p. 4
  4. ↑ The reed. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed September 16, 2019 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  5. ↑ Neues Deutschland from June 19, 1975, p. 4