The white ribbon - a German children's story

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Movie
Original title The white ribbon - a German children's story
The white band.svg
Country of production Germany , Austria , France , Italy
original language German
Publishing year 2009
length 144 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 12
Rod
Director Michael Haneke
script Michael Haneke
production Stefan Arndt ( X-Films Creative Pool ),
Veit Heiduschka , Michael Katz ( Wega Film ),
Margaret Ménégoz (Les films du Losange), Andrea Occhipinti (Lucky Red)
camera Christian Berger
cut Monika Willi
occupation

The White Ribbon - A German Children's Story is a film by the Austrian director Michael Haneke from 2009. The plot of the black and white film is set in northern Germany in the year before the First World War and describes mysterious incidents in the fictional village of Eichwald. The film illustrates the depressing, especially traumatizing social and interpersonal climate of the time, which was characterized by oppression and contempt, mistreatment and abuse, as well as frustration and emotional distance, even in close family circles. He takes a critical look at the strict Protestantism .

Premiered experienced The White Ribbon 21 May 2009 at the 62nd International Film Festival of Cannes , where Haneke with the Palme d'Or , the top prize of the film festival, was excellent. It was released in mid-September 2009.

action

The village community of Eichwald, a fictional village in Eastern Elbe , is characterized by economic oppression and mutual humiliation. Strict relationships exist not only between the rich baron family and the peasants who depend on them, but also between parents and their children. The Protestant pastor brings up his children harshly, punishes even minor offenses with beatings and strictly pays attention to virtuous behavior. As a warning, he has his children wear a white ribbon on their clothing as a symbol of innocence.

At the time of the action, puzzling atrocities take place in the village: A wire rope stretched across the path brings down the doctor's horse, which is seriously injured. A worker dies in an unexplained work accident. The baron's oldest child is kidnapped and brutally abused. One night a building on the estate goes up in flames, a newborn child sleeps for hours unnoticed in a cold winter room and falls seriously ill, and the eyes of a young boy who is defenseless because of an intellectual disability are stabbed. There are no useful testimonies for any crime, and neither the police who were summoned nor the appeals and inquiries of the baron come to a conclusion.

Behind the facade of moral order, private tragedies are gradually revealed: the marriage of the barons has broken down, their children have no real family; the widowed doctor must first have the midwife and later his own daughter at the sexual service; the estate manager beats and kicks his sons as punishment for theft.

The young village teacher, who is not named in the film and tells the story of the film in retrospect, comes to the conclusion from various observations that the terrible acts are closely related to a group of children around the older pastor’s children - especially since an intimidated classmate of these children confided in him that she “dreamed” of two of the acts before. He confronts the pastor's children with his suspicions, but cannot break their stubborn silence. When the village teacher reports his suspicions to the pastor, the latter throws the teacher out and threatens him with serious consequences if he continues to express his thoughts.

Since the doctor and midwife have meanwhile quickly disappeared from the village, the village is content with blaming these two and their questionable relationship for everything. The question of the actual processes and causes of the acts remains unresolved in the film.

Eventually, all of these events will be pushed aside by the First World War. After the war, the teacher leaves the village forever.

Production and background

The film was made as a German- Austrian - French- Italian co-production. According to producer Stefan Arndt, the German company X-Films was responsible for "over half of the budget". Accordingly, it is "also right that the film goes into the race as a German contribution", especially since the film also depicts "a German story" that was "shot entirely in Germany" - so Arndt with regard to the question raised by some whether the film was to be considered German or Austrian. In any case, the co-production agreement between Austria and Germany stipulates that when submitting a film to a festival, the film is to be presented either as a contribution from the majority producer (here: X-Films) or from the producer who provides the director (in this case Wega Film ).

However, as far as submission to the Academy Awards are concerned (only in the Best Foreign Language Film category ), each country involved in the production is entitled to submit the film. Specifically, the foreign agency of the national film industry is responsible, in this case German Films Service + Marketing GmbH , which was simply the first to submit the film. The Austrian Film Commission (AFC) was initially disgruntled that the Germans had submitted the “essential functions […] Austrian” film first - but the result was to be accepted. The standard , however, reports that "tactical considerations" were behind the German submission of the film. After Austria had been nominated for the last two years, the US distributor Sony Pictures exerted pressure because the film had better chances of winning an Oscar as a German submission. The last film that had been claimed as "their own" at least by many media in both countries was Die Fälscher . This film, which won an Oscar in 2008, was a 50/50 German-Austrian production and was submitted by the Austrian AFC.

Filming location Johannstorf Castle

For the shooting, locations in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , Brandenburg and Saxony were visited from June 9th to September 4th, 2008 . The village of Eichwald represented the real locations Netzow and Michaelisbruch in Prignitz . In Netzow, the planned asphalting of the cobblestone street could be postponed shortly before filming began. More recent houses were faced with facades. The doctor's house was rebuilt for the shooting. The work accident in which a farmer's wife died took place in the Zechlinerhütte sawmill near Rheinsberg . The Mecklenburg mansion Schloss Johannstorf near Travemünde served as the baron's castle . The studio recordings took place in the Leipzig Media City Atelier (MCA) .

The film, which was released as a black and white film, was originally shot on color film. According to Berger, digital cameras had too little exposure for the strong contrast of the nocturnal indoor shots illuminated with kerosene lamps , and the film had to be shot in color due to agreements with the co-financing television companies, as it was originally planned as a multi-part TV series. The final version was only created in black and white. The recordings were digitized, converted to black and white and extensively post-processed. Among other things, it was shown that in many scenes that were shot by candlelight and kerosene light, the surroundings and faces appeared blurred. These were then digitally sharpened.

While writing the script, Haneke read "tons of books on upbringing and rural life in the 19th century". The findings from this were used in the film - in the 19th century, “the white ribbon was used for humiliating punishment because it was visible to all.” In general, Haneke paid great attention to historical accuracy. For example, he had historical rye planted, "so that it has the right height as it was at the beginning of the century." However, since the rye did not grow as expected, it had to be filmed in another field. When writing the script, which was brought to cinema length with the help of Jean-Claude Carrière , Haneke was already thinking about who should play some roles: for example Susanne Lothar as midwife or Ulrich Mühe as pastor. Since Mühe died before filming began, Haneke "casted all the German film celebrities up and down until I found Burghart Klaußner ". The casting of the children, which was carried out by Haneke's casting director Markus Schleinzer , took six months and involved over 7,000 children. "Working with children is complicated because of the legal situation in Germany, as children under six are only allowed to work two hours a day, those over six only three hours a day." The adult actors also had their difficulties - Birgit Minichmayr had just one sentence the shortest speaking role of her career, and Branko Samarovski , who plays a farmer, was dubbed for the final version.

The film, which was awarded by X-Verleih in Germany, opened in several German cinemas on September 17, 2009 and nationwide on October 15. In Austria, the film started on September 24th in the distribution of the film shop . The world distribution rights are held by Les Films du Losange. The script has been published by Berlin Verlag .

Haneke on the film

“Ideology is an absolute idea. Wherever there is oppression, humiliation, misery and suffering, the ground is prepared for any kind of ideology. That is why 'The White Ribbon' is not to be understood as a film about German fascism. It's about a social climate that enables radicalism. That is the basic idea. "

- Michael Haneke

“The real issue is, at least that was my intention, to show how people who are under pressure become receptive to ideology, that is, how they even create an ideology for themselves; how they absolutize an idea and then, with the help of this absolutized idea, punish those who have preached the idea to them but live differently than the idea demands. "

- Michael Haneke

Regarding the role of Protestantism at the time in the emergence of a German dictatorship, Haneke said that he was "always irritated [...] why fascism looked so different in Italy than in Germany." To understand the film as a general criticism of Protestantism , but would be "complete nonsense":

“Of course it [Protestantism] has a certain tendency towards elitism […]. And this ethos that I am responsible to myself is also something positive. But you can very quickly turn it into the opposite: Communism is a wonderful idea, but as soon as it finds its way into society as an ideology, it becomes a dictatorship and inhuman. The question is: how do you tip into such a system? And that in turn always has to do with upbringing. "

- Michael Haneke

On the dramaturgy of the film:

"Haneke always says: The film is the launch pad, but the audience has to want to jump off."

- Producer Stefan Arndt in conversation with the Jüdischen Allgemeine

“Because my visual memory, as far as this time is concerned, is connoted with black and white. I can't imagine any other way. "

- Michael Haneke on the reason why 'The White Ribbon' is a black and white film.

Reviews

Dominik Kamalzadeh said in his review for the Austrian Standard that Michael Haneke staged “with a grave severity, he finds images in which figures act as if behind glass, often in ghostly silence. Stylistically, the film follows on from a tradition of literary film adaptation (the book is by Michael Haneke himself, however), as if the aim was to radicalize this form again. With all the precision and sophistication, that often has a somewhat museum-like effect. "

Daniel Kothenschulte ironically called the film in the Frankfurter Rundschau a didactic piece that “reveals itself early on” (“Two decades later, these bad kids would be adult Nazis”); he criticizes the woodcut style of the few figures, but still speaks of a “fascinating two and a half hours”. Tobias Kniebe ( Süddeutsche Zeitung ) criticized similar things, hoping that the “many bad miniatures” would condense into a “compelling topic”. But the end does not manage to "put together the individual parts, which also fluctuate wildly in tonality between pre-war pathos, Bierbichler grumbling and relapses into the psychodrama of the present". Also Hanns-Georg Rodek of the world sees flaws, but they had "hardly seen the authoritarian thinking as an explanation for the First (and Second) World War II (...) ever so broken down to the smallest units of village and family community." The taz showed on the other hand, is impressed by the "Images of Resistance."

The French trade press was overwhelmingly impressed by The White Ribbon. Le Monde called it an “impressive and unforgiving film” and drew parallels with Joseph Losey's They Are Damned (1963) and (due to the “ominous” portrayal of the preacher) with The Hunter's Night (1955) as well as with Clouzot and Bergman . According to Jean-Luc Douin, the film represents the “awakening of abuse” “which is inflicted by a society of well-known, puritanical , morally strict adults, their wives, their children and their businessmen. It is the inventory of whims and punishments that are perpetrated by the lunatic of the authorities , those who are insane , the censors . ”The Liberation compared Christian Berger's camera work with the works of August Sanders , the plot with Eduard von Keyserling's novels . The white ribbon is a “strong film”, “bigger than its autochthonous subject”, and Gérard Lefort saw it as a parable that can still be carried over to the present day - “What kind of fascism are we capable of in the here and now ? ” Before the official award announcement, Le Figaro awarded Hanekes Film and Jacques Audiard's A Prophet the second most important award of the film festival, the Grand Jury Prize , behind Jane Campion's Bright Star and Xavier Giannolis À l'origine, who received the Golden Palm let.

The Milanese Corriere della Sera counted the film in the run-up to the favorites for a price. The critic Giuseppina Manin writes of a film immersed in “wonderful black and white” with “extraordinary, but little-known actors” and an “atmosphere of gloomy Lutheranism like Bergman's ”. The film shows a rural microcosm where there are “social and moral rules of iron intransigence”, but behind which “secret cruelties are brooding”. Children would grow up there “according to pedagogical principles that include chastisements, humiliations and even hands tied to the bed to prevent touching their own body.”

The Swedish Sydsvenskan describes the film as a "devilish work of art". It is “difficult to find a film that is as consistent and of one piece as this one.” Svenska Dagbladet finds the film “fantastically well played, incredibly beautiful and dizzyingly hideous at the same time.” Haneke succeeds, “a complicated story is both simple as well as profound ”.

The Danish newspaper Politiken sees the film as a "return to Haneke's roots of the German language and cultural tradition." The white ribbon is "an arch-German film about German."

Haneke himself repeated several times how important it was to him that his film should be exemplary and not only refer to Germany, since for him “all forms of terrorism” have the same origin, the “perversion of ideals that are translated into social rules. "

In his essay Violence | Fantasy, Wolfram Bergande sees the children of the film going into the First World War in faithful obedience and the path to National Socialism mapped out for their children.

Awards

Actors and director of the film 2009 in Cannes: Michael Kranz , Rainer Bock , Burghart Klaußner , Michael Haneke , Ulrich Tukur , Christian Friedel , Maria-Victoria Dragus , Roxane Duran and Janina Fautz

The White Ribbon - A German Children's Story was nominated for more than 70 film awards, of which Haneke's directorial work won over 40. These include u. a. the Golden Palm of the Cannes International Film Festival , which was under the jury management of the French actress Isabelle Huppert (who participated in the Haneke films The Piano Player , Wolfzeit und Liebe ), the Golden Globe Award , a record number of ten German film awards and two Oscar Nominations. On August 26, 2009, the organization German Films selected The White Ribbon as the official German applicant for an Oscar nomination in the category of Best Foreign Language Film . The foreign representation of the German film industry preceded its Austrian counterpart, the Austrian Film Commission (AFC), which the following week wanted to vote on the Austrian submission to the “Oscar abroad” and originally also wanted to submit the white ribbon . The rules of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) are usually interpreted in such a way that each of the countries involved in a production has the opportunity to submit the film for their own country - but ultimately only one country is allowed to submit the film. The submission of the "Austrian [n]" film in "essential functions" by Germany therefore caused some unease on the part of the AFC, but they accepted the result.

A selection of the awards and nominations that the White Ribbon received:

Prizes won
Nominations

reception

Theater adaptation

In 2018, the Swiss director Christoph Frick developed a theater adaptation based on the script by Michael Haneke for the Staatstheater Darmstadt .

literature

  • Dietmar Regensburger, Christian Wessely (ed.): From Oedipus to Eichmann. Cultural anthropological prerequisites for violence. Film & Theologie series, 22. Schüren, Marburg 2012, ISBN 3-89472-814-0 .

Web links

Wikiquote: The White Ribbon - A German Children's Story  - Quotes

Single receipts

  1. ^ Certificate of release for The White Ribbon - A German Children's Story . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2009 (PDF; test number: 119 550 K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for The White Ribbon - A German Children's Story . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ a b page no longer available , search in web archives: dasweisseband.x-verleih.de.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / dasweisseband.x-verleih.de
  4. ↑ Barbara Munker ( DPA ): Waltz has a favorite role at Oscars. ( Memento of January 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). Courier , January 19, 2010.
  5. ↑ Martin Schweighofer (head of the AFC), quoted from Dominik Kalmazadeh: Haneke reaches for gold for Germany. derStandard.at of August 27, 2009 (accessed on August 30, 2009).
  6. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: The White Ribbon. At: Achteinhalb - Kino & Kultur e. V.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / kino-achteinhalb.de
  7. ↑ X-filme.de. ( Memento from January 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ).
  8. ^ Municipality of Plattenburg - Netzow.
  9. ↑ Filming location for: DAS WEISSE BAND.
  10. ↑ a b Hollywood gets to know Netzow. ( Memento of December 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
  11. ^ Der Tagesspiegel of March 6, 2010: The Chosen.
  12. ^ Steffen Oldbod: Johannstorf. A film team torched a barn at Johannstorf Castle. ( Memento of May 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive ). Uetersener Nachrichten of August 22, 2008.
  13. ↑ Press release ( Memento of the original from October 22, 2007 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. of the Central German Media Fund of April 23, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mdm-online.de
  14. ↑ a b c d e f g h TV premiere: A color film in black and white. In: Courier. October 3, 2011, p. 31.
  15. ^ François Reumont: The White Ribbon. Interview with cinematographer Christian Berger, AAC.
  16. ↑ a b c Michael Omasta, Michael Pekler: 'I have to laugh out loud in every one of my films.' Interview with Michael Haneke. ( Memento from May 31, 2011 in the Internet Archive ). In: Falter . H. 38/2009, p. 24 f.
  17. ↑ The white ribbon. At: filminstitut.at. Austrian Film Institute (accessed August 30, 2009).
  18. ↑ The right hand of God. Alexander Kluge in conversation with Michael Haneke. ( Memento of November 9, 2009 in the Internet Archive ). youtube.com.
  19. ↑ Alexandra Belopolsky: Blockbuster. Why the German feature film "The White Ribbon" is so successful in Israel . In: Jüdische Allgemeine . April 26, 2010 (accessed January 20, 2014).
  20. ↑ Michael Haneke - love of cinema. Documentary by Yves Montmayeur, 2013, 58 min. Produced by Wild Art Film (Vienna), Crescendo Films (Paris) and Les Films du Losange (Paris) in collaboration with BR and ORF .
  21. ↑ Dominik Kamalzadeh: Page no longer available , search in web archives: wish fulfillment with "Operation Kino". In: derStandard.at of May 21, 2009.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / derstandard.at
  22. ↑ See Daniel Kothenschulte: The logic of the dream. In: Frankfurter Rundschau, May 23, 2009, p. 33.
  23. ↑ See Tobias Kniebe: On the pangs of love in old age. ( Memento from May 26, 2009 in the Internet Archive ). At: sueddeutsche.de on May 21, 2009 (accessed on May 24, 2009).
  24. ↑ Cf. Cristina Nord: Strange in the home of the psychoses. In: the daily newspaper of May 23, 2009, p. 22.
  25. ↑ See Jean-Luc Douin: Violence et boucles blondes dans l'Allemagne puritaine. In: Le Monde, May 23, 2009, p. 18.
  26. ↑ cf. Gérard Lefort: En étudiant les barbaren. In: Liberation of May 22, 2009, p. 24.
  27. ↑ See Festival de Cannes. Les choix du "Figaro" avant le palmarès. In: Le Figaro of 23 May 2009, No. 20159, UNE-FIG, p. 1.
  28. ^ Giuseppina Manin: Haneke, le radici del nazismo in un giallo su bimbi-giustizieri. In: Corriere della Sera of May 22, 2009.
  29. ↑ Ett djävulskt konstverk. Sydsvenskan from May 25, 2009.
  30. ↑ Ge Guldpalmen till Haneke. In: Svenska Dagbladet of May 25, 2009.
  31. ↑ Portræt. Cinematography alvorsmand snuppede palms. In: Politiken of May 24, 2009.
  32. ↑ Cf. Nana AT Rebhan: Film Review. ( Memento from July 19, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ). At: arte.de. Retrieved May 24, 2009.
  33. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: violence fantasy. The Visitation of the Lord in Michael Haneke's "The White Ribbon". In: Preußer (Hrsg.): Look and introduce. Controlled imagination in the cinema. Stoke 2014.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.bergande.de
  34. ↑ "The White Ribbon" is a German Oscar candidate. At: Spiegel Online from August 26, 2009.
  35. ↑ Hanns-Georg Rodek: "The White Ribbon" is a German Oscar candidate. At: Welt.de on August 26, 2009.
  36. ↑ Martin Schweighofer (head of the AFC), quoted from: Dominik Kalmazadeh: Page no longer available , search in web archives: Haneke reaches for gold for Germany. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / derstandard.atIn: derStandard.at of August 27, 2009 (accessed on August 30, 2009).
  37. ↑ Gilde Film Prize for "The White Ribbon".
  38. ^ Neaera: Forging the Eclipse. CD, Metal Blade Records 2010.
  39. ↑ The white ribbon | Darmstadt State Theater. Retrieved February 27, 2020 .
  40. ^ Echo Newspapers GmbH: Darmstädter Theater premieres "The White Ribbon" - Echo Online. Retrieved February 27, 2020 .
  41. ↑ Damaged to the core. September 18, 2018, accessed February 27, 2020 .
  42. ↑ This is The White Ribbon one of the mostly used for indo. discuss Movies.