The Other Life (1948)

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Movie
Original title The other life
Country of production Austria
original language German
Publishing year 1948
length 109 minutes
Rod
Director Rudolf Steinboeck
script Alfred Ibach
production Rudolf Steinboeck for the film studio of the theater in der Josefstadt
music Franz Salmhofer
camera Willi Sohm
occupation

The other life is an Austrian film drama from 1948 by Rudolf Steinboeck with Aglaja Schmid , Robert Lindner and Vilma Degischer in the leading roles. The template was the novella July 20 by Alexander Lernet-Holenia .

action

Germany in World War II. Elisabeth Josselin is the wife of the conscientious Wehrmacht officer Walter Josselin. The young Jew Suzette Alberti, who in fact has to live underground, becomes her friend over time. When Suzette had to go to a hospital because of an abortion, the need was great. Because as a “non-Aryan” she is excluded from treatment. And so Elisabeth takes a great risk when she gives Suzette her documents, which she can use to register at the hospital. But then it comes to a catastrophe: Suzette does not survive the operation, and a death certificate is issued for the deceased, officially now Elisabeth Josselin. The real Elizabeth no longer exists and from then on she has to lead the life of a Jewish woman who has gone underground, the other life, as the film title suggests.

Meanwhile, Elisabeth's husband, who was only briefly informed about the exchange maneuver by Elisabeth and shows little understanding for it, gets caught up in the whirlpool of the anti-Hitler resistance that ultimately leads to the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944. Major Josselin established contacts with the relevant circles through his superior General Rissius. The coup went wrong, and Josselin, who was already on the Gestapo's wanted list, had to go underground. At first he succeeds in doing this with false papers. Meanwhile, his wife Elisabeth is planning to flee abroad with the help of the secret service man Bukowsky. Bukowsky, a cultivated albeit slick type, has his eye on Elisabeth and doesn't want her husband to get in his way. Without further ado, Bukowsky has Major Josselin arrested. The couple seems to be doomed.

Production notes

The other life was created at the beginning of 1948 on behalf of the Theater in der Josefstadt in the atelier of Vienna-Sievering and was premiered on May 4th of the same year in Vienna. In Germany, the film ran on May 6, 1949 in Munich, the Berlin premiere was on November 11, 1949. On October 27, 1962, the film was shown for the first time on German television ( ARD ).

Viktor von Struve and Erich Winterstein took over the production management. Herbert Ploberger , Walter Zollin and Anton Schmid designed the film buildings.

Director Steinboeck, who made his film debut here, was at the time the director of the Theater in der Josefstadt producing this film . The 1950s Heimatfilm star Gerhard Riedmann also made his debut here in front of the camera.

Reviews

“In connection with THE OTHER LIFE, one reads again and again that in the immediate post-war period, both the thematization of the Holocaust and the resistance against Nazi rule were almost a taboo. Well, in view of the newsreels, one must clearly add: in feature films, that is to say, to involve the general public in the most costly form of addressing them, to potentially confront them with their involvement in the crimes, but perhaps also to exculpate them in a hurry. Rudolf Steinboeck's feature film debut (the only significant Austria up to Edwin Zbonek's AM GALGEN HÄNGT DIE LIEBE, 1960) finds an (almost perfidious) plot construction in a novella by Alexander Lernet-Holenias in the form of an identity exchange, which suggests that the Jews too Those who were not racially persecuted died. "

The ORF , which had rendered outstanding services to the rescue and restoration of films believed to be lost in the early post-war years, found: “At first sight,“ Das Another Leben ”is an exciting game with identity, but overall astonishing evidence of Alexander Lernet-Holenia's moral courage had taken up the subject of the persecution of the Jews, which was still strictly taboo at the time, in literary form shortly after the war. The ambitious film studio of the theater in der Josefstadt, which did not last long, picked up the material and filmed it with outstanding actors from the house. "The other life" is one of the very rare testimonies of the artistic examination of the resistance in the years immediately after the Second World War. "

The Lexicon of International Films ruled: "Resistance and racial problems in a superficial film drama."

Falter.at found the film to be one of the “rare great moments” of Austrian post-war cinema.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Criticism on filmarchiv.at
  2. ↑ The other life on fernsehserien.de
  3. ↑ The other life. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed July 1, 2020 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  4. ↑ Brief review

Web links