Don't you think I'm crying
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Don't you think I'm crying |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1965 / 1990 |
| length | 91 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Frank Vogel |
| script |
Manfred Friday , Joachim Nestler |
| production | DEFA |
| music | Hans-Dieter Hosalla |
| camera | Günter Ost |
| cut | Helga Krause |
| occupation | |
| |
Don't think, I'm crying is a film drama by director Frank Vogel from 1965, produced by the DEFA studio for feature films. The film was banned in the GDR until 1990 because it deals critically with socialism .
action
Peter Naumann tells his sick father that he does not want to sign the apprenticeship contract offered to him after he has been kicked out of school. This is the reason for him to think out loud about his life so far while his wife has to provide him with alcohol. What bothers him most is that, as an old communist, he was expelled from the SED , which prompted him to take a sweeping attack on its leading role in the GDR . But it also comes up that he burned his KPD membership book in 1933 because he did not want to go to a concentration camp . He says: "The most important thing in life is life". When he opens his cash box and leaves the money in it to his son, he collapses and dies.
Two weeks later, Peter wants to use the money he has inherited to buy a motorcycle , which he can only pick up the next day because it has to be fetched from a warehouse. To pass his time, he goes to his former school in Weimar . On his way to the director Röhle, he meets the student Anne in the hallway and makes an appointment with her. The director is not present, so Peter speaks to the secretary again about one of his essays in which he claimed that he does not need the republic, which has brought him a lot of trouble again. Anne appears punctually at the Goethe-Schiller memorial and receives a large box of chocolates from Peter with the comment that he will kiss her after five chocolates. After visiting the Goethe Museum, they go to a park and there he kisses Anne, as he promised. He says he's a tough guy by profession. After more kisses, they go to a clothing store, look for an expensive dress for her, which Peter also pays for, which Anne does not want to accept. In the evening he meets up with his friends at the Hotel Elephant , the first house in town, first in the restaurant and then in the bar, and in both of them they try to harass the other guests. The next day he visits his mother at the company to borrow money from her, because his expenses on the previous day mean that the inheritance is no longer enough for a motorcycle.
At the train station in Weimar, Peter meets his former girlfriend Uschi Röhle, the daughter of his former school director. She is on her way to Jena , where she is studying and he follows her. In the laboratory where she works, she asks him why he went with her back then, even though she is two years older, and gives the answer herself right away: Just to wipe her father off. Since she is still arguing with her current boyfriend, a young man with a doctorate, she and Peter go to a lecture in the planetarium that evening . Back at home, he looks at the documents and pictures deposited on his father's desk. He is a document which proves that he by his parents adopted was. His mother tries to explain to him how he was found in a ruin, half starved, after the war and how , in their eyes, he was always her own child. But even her offer to give him the rest of the money for the motorcycle cannot endorse him. He goes out of the house.
While Peter is walking through the streets, completely confused, he meets Anne, who is on her way to school. She realizes his problem and wants to help him with a job with her father, who is the head of an MTS . However, he refuses, although his tractor drivers are giving notice and want to join the LPG . Anne leads Peter into a half-ruined shepherd's building on the former estate that once belonged to a baron . Here he should find accommodation for the near future. Here he wants to study for his Abitur , for which he gets all the support from Anne. But he doesn't want to think about a love for her, he's still in love with Uschi. But Anne brings him something to eat every day, new textbooks, and queries him. To relax, they regularly go for walks on the grounds of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp Memorial on the Ettersberg , which means that they slowly get closer.
Her father also realizes how well he can use Peter in the MTS, as the tractor drivers prefer to switch to LPG and so he is used to drive the tractor and for repair work. But that is not possible without discussions in which the comrade MTS chairman tries to convince Peter of the good side of the GDR, which he does not succeed. In the meantime, Anne convinces the FDJ group at her school to allow Peter Naumann to attend classes again. Therefore, he visits the headmaster Röhle to apply for a return to school. But the director sticks to his deadlocked opinion of the opponent of the republic and rejects the application. Together with his friends, Peter decides to give the director a lesson , which he should receive in a ruin of the hall of the national community . But the planned punishment gets out of hand, so that Peter has to come to the aid of his former director. For this he is now being beaten up by his friends. This leads to a discussion between the two of them and since Peter has learned something today, he also goes to his mother to reconcile with her. Then he goes to the village mug, from which he knows that Anne and her father are attending an event there. Since her father doesn't want to talk to him, he goes on stage to explain his request. He wants to live with Anne, which the father does not understand, but Anne agrees.
Production and publication
Just don't think, I howl was under the working titles On the way to the stars and Just don't think I howl was shot as a black and white film by the artistic work group "Heinrich Greif" and had its world premiere on February 5, 1990 in the Berlin Academy of the Arts of the GDR . The film was first broadcast on television on November 3, 1990 on N3 .
The dramaturgy was in the hands of Dieter Scharfenberg . The outdoor shots were shot in Weimar , Jena and on the grounds of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp Memorial on Ettersberg .
background
The finishing of Just Do not Think I cry was in March 1965. Then began a months-long discussion about his state loss. The ending had to be rotated twice. The film is one of the several films (" basement films " or "rabbit films "), which are part of the XI. Plenary sessions of the Central Committee of the SED were banned in 1965. These films include a: I'm the rabbit from Kurt Maetzig , around the corner from Gerhard Klein in Berlin , or from Jürgen Böttcher's year 45 . The best known is undoubtedly Spur der Steine with Manfred Krug by Frank Beyer . All these films ( New GDR film) were made in connection with a brief liberalization of the cultural scene after the VI. SED party congress 1963.
Reviews
In New Germany , Birgit Galle remarked:
“This film with Peter Reusse in the leading role posed uncomfortable questions, presented a hero that was not wanted, an extreme situation. Predicate: Particularly harmful. "
“A formally extraordinarily dense, excellently played film, which as critical as it is ambitious, challenges the discussion about the importance of the individual in a socialist society. His arguments for overcoming a human no-man's-land are still current and far from ideological tint: it is about respect, tolerance and the need to listen to and talk to one another. "
literature
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 109 to 111 .
- Günter Adge (Ed.): Kahlschlag. The 11th plenum of the Central Committee of the SED. Studies and documents . 2nd expanded edition. Structure paperback, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-7466-8045-X .
- Christiane Mückenberger (Ed.): Predicate: Particularly harmful. Film texts . Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-362-00478-4 .
- Ingrid Poss, Peter Warnecke (Ed.): Trace of Films. Contemporary witnesses about DEFA . Links, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-86153-401-0 , ( DEFA Foundation series ).
- Henning Wrage: The time of art. Literature, film and television in the GDR in the 1960s. Heidelberg: Winter 2009
Web links
- Do not think I cry in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Don't you think I'm crying at filmportal.de
- Don't you think I'm crying at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ↑ Neues Deutschland from January 26, 1990, p. 10
- ↑ Neues Deutschland, February 10, 1990, p. 5
- ↑ Don't you think I'm crying. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .