The stay (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The stay |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1983 |
| length | 101 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Frank Beyer |
| script | Wolfgang Kohlhaase |
| production | Herbert Ehler |
| music | Günther Fischer |
| camera | Eberhard Geick |
| cut | Rita Hiller |
| occupation | |
| |
The Residence is a German DEFA film from 1983 directed by Frank Beyer , based on the autobiographical novel of the same name by Hermann Kant .
action
October 1945. The 19-year-old German prisoner of war Mark Niebuhr arrives with other prisoners at a Warsaw train station. A Polish woman who is waiting for her train believes she recognizes the SS officer who murdered her daughter in a raid in Lublin . Niebuhr sees her talking to one of his Polish guards, but cannot understand the content of the conversation. Shortly afterwards he is taken away and locked in a solitary cell in a prison.
The former infantry grenadier does not know why he is being held. Again and again a young Polish officer asks him during interrogations to write down his résumé and tell him what his real name is. Niebuhr does not understand the harassment to which he is subjected and repeatedly asserts that he is only Mark Niebuhr.
While in custody, he experiences the hatred of a Polish inmate, and during work assignments he is assigned to the most dangerous tasks. So he has to sit unsecured on the wall of a bombed Warsaw house, remove stones and break his arm in an accident.
In the hospital he learns that he is being investigated for murder. He is moved to a new cell where other German prisoners of war are already sitting. There is a strict military order among them based on their former ranks. The spirit of the corps and fascist ideals are reflected in this microcosm, which is led by a General Eisensteck and a Major Lundenbroich. Niebuhr is the new guy who gradually gets to know the others. Everyone tells him that he is innocent. But Niebuhr slowly realizes that he is sitting in a cell with murderers, executioners and real war criminals. He begins to distance himself from them, isolates himself and is ultimately cast out by them. During the months of his imprisonment in this cell, he was persuaded that as a German soldier he was personally guilty.
While the other prisoners are being brought to execution one by one, Mark Niebuhr is ultimately believed to have his story. Although one of his former comrades refuses to identify him during a confrontation, the accusation made by the Polish woman is recognized as a mistake and he is ultimately released.
Literary template
In his book The Residence , published in 1977, the writer Hermann Kant processes his own experiences during the Polish captivity between 1945 and 1949. Kant was imprisoned in a labor camp in Warsaw. The book tells the story of Mark Niebuhr, played in the film by Sylvester Groth.
Background to the creation
Beyer returned from West Germany for the film, where he mostly worked at the time. According to his own statement, he could have stayed there, but the stay was so important to him that he came back.
He was not thanked. In Poland, the work aroused displeasure because it allegedly shows a Polish army detaining and harassing an innocent man. It was said at the time that this image would not do justice to the Polish people and stir up anti-Polish resentment. The GDR government then prevented Beyer's film from being shown at the 1983 Berlinale in West Berlin, where it had already been scheduled and where he was also given the chance to win a prize. The author of the book, Hermann Kant, protested in vain in a letter to Erich Honecker . It was also decreed that in the GDR it could only be seen in studio cinemas .
Reviews
“With this film he [Frank Beyer] is again presenting a masterpiece. He impresses with his psychological accuracy and the differentiated view of the immediate post-war period. He also has high optical qualities and shows excellent acting performances. "
"Seldom has the post-war debt set-offs been differentiated so precisely in a film as in this nightmare experience of a young prisoner-of-war German soldier who was falsely identified by a Polish woman as an SS murderer and spent eight months bunkered with concentration camp henchmen, Wehrmacht officers and SS types of all categories are treated like a guilty party. In its best passages, the film reaches the psychological pressure of a Kafka vision. Barred and exposed to the anonymous persecution, the darkness of fear ... "
“Objective, model drama about guilt and responsibility under martial law and tyranny, where time and place appear interchangeable. The chamber play-like structure of the film and its excellent actors lead to exciting density and stringency. "
Awards
Screenwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase, director Frank Beyer and leading actor Sylvester Groth received the Heinrich Greif Prize as a collective in 1984.
In 1983 the film also won the Critics' Prize of the Theory and Criticism section of the Association of Film and Television Makers as the best DEFA film. Sylvester Groth also received the award for best actor.
At the 3rd National Feature Film Festival of the GDR in 1984 in Karl-Marx-Stadt, The Stay u. a. the main prize and the foundlings prize for directing (Frank Beyer), for script (Wolfgang Kohlhaase), editing (Rita Müller), camera (Alfred Hirschmeier) and the prize for the best young actor (Sylvester Groth).
Web links
- The stay in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The stay at filmportal.de
- The stay. In: defa-stiftung.de. DEFA Foundation , accessed on September 28, 2017 .
- The stay. In: prisma.de. prisma-Verlag , accessed on September 28, 2017 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ The stay. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed September 28, 2017 .