The Old One (1975)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The old |
| Original title | The old |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1975 |
| length | 95 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Rainer Wolffhardt |
| script | Whitefish grain |
| production | ZDF |
| occupation | |
| |
Der Alte is a television film that was first broadcast on ZDF in 1975 . Rainer Wolffhardt directed the film , based on a script by Renke Korn .
action
After his colliery closed, Steiger Torgler retrained to become a painter, because this enabled him to find work in a relative's company. This company goes bankrupt soon afterwards. Torgler hires out at another painter's company. The conditions here are tough: Torgler has to work in a piecework column, whose wages are based on the work performed. Torgler's poor health is increasingly troubling him. His lungs in particular, which have been attacked by decades of work underground, reduce his performance. More and more often Torgler cannot keep up with the speed of his column. Because that also depresses their wages, Torgler receives remarks from colleagues that he should leave the column.
Torgler, not only mentally battered because of his professional decline, but also because of his divorce and the death of his mother, is spending his evenings in the pub more and more often and feels left behind. Finally, a new person hires in his company, Nöll. Nöll impresses the others with his youthful efficiency and research. Torgler sees an opportunity, because Nöll is looking for an apartment, and Torgler, who has taken over his mother's 3-room apartment, offers Nöll to move in with him - also in the hope that Nöll will support him with his colleagues. Nöll accepts the offer and moves in with Torgler.
A friendly relationship develops between the two. However, Nöll cannot change the performance-oriented requirements in the company and Torgler's poor health. It happens more and more often that he feels uncomfortably harassed by Torgler's expectations and withdraws, which in turn triggers aggressive depression in Torgler. The boss takes Torgler out of the piecework column and only uses him for auxiliary work. His release is in sight.
When Nöll brings two women home with him one evening and they help themselves from Torgler's food supplies in the kitchen and then, when he protests, make fun of him for his stingy pedantry and call him a funny grandpa, Torgler becomes rabid and throws the women out of the apartment. There is a heated argument between Nöll and Torgler. Nöll insults Torgler and announces that he is moving out because no one can stand him. Then Torgler's last fuses blow: He reaches for a knife lying around and stabs Nöll from behind. While Nöll is bleeding to death on the floor, Torgler tidies up the kitchen as if in a trance.
criticism
“A carefully, quiet and precisely situated psychogram, a description of the situation that ends with a bang that was predictable: Renke Korn managed to draw the picture of a person who has lost contact with his environment through a change of job and job, but also through personal mishaps, who no longer appears to be integrable through someone else's fault or his own fault, who is "old" not because of his 55 years of age, but because he is immobile and disappointed. Herbert Stass played this type with his awkwardness, his fatherly care, his not malicious intrusiveness, his pedantry and brokenness, almost a little too cool, but honest and believable. In Claus-Theo Gärtner he found an equal partner who gave the figure of the younger, understanding and sympathetic, but naturally selfish, powerful contour. Also: a male drama, hinted at a hopeless love story because it cannot be lived out, and a remarkable thriller. One of the most convincing television games of recent times. "
Web links
- deutsches-filmhaus.de: The Old One - Director: Rainer Wolffhardt
- renke-korn.de: The old man - Screenplay: Renke Korn