The miracle of Malachia

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Movie
Original title The miracle of Malachia
The miracle of Malachias.jpg
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1961
length Original version:
122 minutes
Shortened version:
88 minutes
Rod
Director Bernhard Wicki
script Heinz Pauck , Bernhard Wicki
production Otto Meissner
music Hans-Martin Majewski
camera Klaus von Rautenfeld ,
Gerd von Bonin (finished)
cut Carl Otto Bartning
occupation

The Miracle of Malachia is a black and white film by the German director Bernhard Wicki . It was partly shot in Gelsenkirchen and Düsseldorf and premiered on July 3, 1961 in Berlin . The film is based on the novel The Miracle of Malachias (original title: Father Malachy's Miracle ) by Bruce Marshall . The miracle of Malachia was nowhere near as great a success as Wicki's film The Bridge and is now almost forgotten. The film draws a pointed moral picture of modern society and in particular the advertising and market economy. Naive belief in miracles on the one hand and unscrupulous profiteering are demonstrated with sometimes black humor puns.

action

Next to a church in a thriving industrial city is the Eden Bar, an entertainment establishment where amusement ladies come and go. The unworldly monk Father Malachias sees a den of sin in the restaurant and prays to God that he should take away the Eden bar. The latter answered him promptly and moved the building, including the bar and the people inside, to an island in the North Sea . This obvious “miracle” soon attracts more and more attention. In the media, various people from politics and science try to explain, but ultimately cannot deny the inexplicability of what has happened. Everything indicates that God did indeed take the building away. The Catholic Church is critical of this interpretation, as it fears a massive loss of control over questions of faith or even embarrassment if the whole thing should turn out to be a fake.

Meanwhile, believers from all over the world make a pilgrimage to the former location of the bar. A fairground is gradually emerging around the miracle site, where many citizens of the city use the opportunity imaginatively to earn money, for example by selling supposed miracle water, Malachian Stollen and models of the Edenbar. At the same time, business and advertising people begin marketing the "miracle" in a general manner. The story is cannibalized in the media and exploited commercially. A young woman who was in the bar on the night in question becomes a star overnight.

Father Malachias is helpless in the face of the growing hype about the miracle and his person. Crowds of journalists press him with interview requests, the church is besieged by believers in miracles who hope for a blessing or contact from the Father. The unworldly man, who lived in the monastery for a long time, cannot cope with these excesses of modern, decadent society and soon regrets having asked God for the miracle.
Resourceful investors buy the island on which the Eden Bar now stands and build a modern casino around the building for the rich and beautiful. During a lavish party, Father Malachias also drives to the island and desperately asks for another miracle on the beach to finally put an end to the rampant hustle and bustle. In fact, God is moving the Eden Bar back to its old location.

production

The film was shot from October 10, 1960 to the end of January 1961 in the Berlin-Tempelhof and Göttingen studios. The locations of the exterior shots were Kiel, Hamburg, Bremerhaven, Gelsenkirchen, Düsseldorf, Chemische Werke Hüls and Sylt.

The film has a special place in Gelsenkirchen, where many central scenes were shot. In addition, many Gelsenkirchen residents worked as extras. The church in the film is the Protestant old town church. The property of the Eden bar was one of the last ruins in the city, on which the bar was only built as a backdrop. For the modern casino on the North Sea island, the nearby and then just opened music theater in the Revier was used , which, with its unusual architecture by Werner Ruhnau and the wall work by Yves Klein, provided the ideal backdrop. The Hans-Sachs-Haus , another defining building in Gelsenkirchen city center, can also be seen in the film. In addition, there are various photos from Gelsenkirchen industrial plants (factory hall of Rheinstahl Eisenwerke Gelsenkirchen, hydrogenation plant of Gelsenberg Petrol AG, central coking plant from Mannesmann) and street photos.

The film is shown at regular intervals in Gelsenkirchen, where the last remaining 35 mm copy of the film is kept.

The recordings in Düsseldorf took place around and in the Phoenix-Rheinrohr high-rise (later Thyssenhaus, since 2010 Dreischeibenhaus), the writing "Phoenix-Rheinrohr" can be seen in one shot.

Reviews

  • Friedrich Luft wrote for Die Welt on July 5, 1961: The film was a thunderstorm. He wanted to prepare a place for the silence - and didn't know the silence himself. He wanted to teach breathing - and was constantly out of breath himself. Out of sheer zeal, he stood in his own way in the final consummation. In the end, he tragically took over himself.
  • Lexicon of international film : "After his sensational cinema debut" Die Brücke "in 1959, Bernhard Wicki tried his hand at the genre of social satire with only limited success. The novel is staged as a tumultuous spectacle that contains many swipes at profiteering, Phariseeism and hypocritical economic miracle mentality, the cinematic Dramaturgy overwhelmed by the wealth of ideas and punch lines.

Awards

literature

  • Bruce Marshall : The Miracle of Malachia. Roman (original title: Father Malachyas' Miracle ). German by Jakob Hegner . Unabridged paperback edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, 231 pages, ISBN 3-596-25941-X

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ CineGraph - Lexicon for German-language film : Bernhard Wicki
  2. ↑ Digitization costs 10,000 euros . derwesten.de from April 17, 2013
  3. ↑ Film review: The miracle of Malachias . ( Memento of the original from March 24, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. filmkritik.de, accessed on March 15, 2016  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.filmmag.de
  4. ↑ German Vita . Der Spiegel, June 12, 1961
  5. ↑ "The miracle of Malachi" Film parity in the Community Cinema . ( Memento of the original from July 30, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. gelsenkirchen.de, May 26, 2015. Accessed March 15, 2016 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gelsenkirchen.de
  6. ↑ The miracle of Malachias. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 7, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used