The beaver fur (1949)

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Movie
Original title The beaver fur
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1949
length 97 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Erich Engel
script Robert Adolf Stemmle
production DEFA
music Ernst Roters
camera Bruno Mondi
cut Lilian Seng
occupation

The Biberpelz is a German DEFA film by Erich Engel from 1949 based on the play of the same name by Gerhart Hauptmann from 1893.

action

In a suburb of Berlin around 1880, the reindeer and house owner Wilhelm Krüger lives with his wife. The tenants in his house are the work-shy Mr. Motes with his wife and Dr. Fleischer, a writer who rented a place to relax for a few weeks. One day, late in the evening, Krüger received a delivery of firewood he had ordered, which was unloaded in front of the property. But the maid, Leontine Wolff, refuses to bring the wood into the cellar, pointing out that she is off in the evening. When Krügers tried to transport the wood on his own, he fell down the cellar stairs, breaking the lamp he had taken with him and the kerosene running over the coat with the beaver fur collar. To get rid of the stench, he hangs his coat on the balcony to ventilate.

Leontine wants to meet Gendarme Schulz, whom she loves, but who pretends to have little time because his interest in her has already died out. She decides to stop working for the Kruger and goes to her parents' home. Here she's just in time to help gutting a deer poached by her father. In an interview, she tells her mother that she is only being used by the Krüger family and gives the example of the wood that was delivered, which should still be brought into the house. Here Mother Wolffen pricks up her ears and decides to take it with her on the way back from the skipper Wulkow, to whom she wants to sell the deer, but for whom it is too expensive. Wulkow also told of his rheumatism, which has plagued him for a long time and which he would spend a lot of money on a fur. When the wood is stolen, Mrs. Wolff sees the coat hanging on the balcony, but is not yet worried.

The next morning Auguste Wolff is expected to do the laundry at the head of the Wehrhahn's family. Wilhelm Krüger also appears here to report the theft of his wood. Since Friedrich von Wehrhahn prefers to keep his watchful eye on the politically suspect Dr. Fleischer judges, he has no ear for such bagatelles and sends Kruger home again, also so that he no longer has the coat that smells of petroleum around him. The reference to Dr. He received Fleischer from Mr. Motes, who uses every opportunity to blacken other people and to make himself dear to the authorities. Since Mrs. Wolff is also in the house, she hears everything that is going on. In the evening she learns from Leontine that she is pregnant from Schulz. But Mother Wolffen has important plans again. She makes her way to the Kruger house to steal the beaver fur coat from the balcony and sell it to the skipper Wulkow. With this money she wants to pay off a large part of her debts.

The next day the birthday party of Wehrhahn's wife Regine is on and Mrs. Wolff is asked for support in the kitchen. This introduces itself positively, because it can get a roast venison from the other side of the river, which the chief forester was not able to do. In this way she also got rid of the poached deer. In the morning hours, the writer Dr. Fleischer arrested for possession of anti-subversive writings. In this situation the reindeer Krüger comes to the bailiff Wehrhahn to report the theft of his beaver fur. He is very upset that the bailiff arrests his quiet tenant but doesn't bother about the thefts. As a result, he can go to the prison cell with Dr. Butcher share. The evidence accumulates that all traces lead to the Wolff family, only the bailiff does not want to hear about it. But since his celebration was so successful, he releases the two prisoners with a touch of generosity.

production

The beaver fur was shot in black and white by the Herbert Uhlig production group in the Berlin-Johannisthal studio. The outdoor shots were taken on the outdoor area of Studio Babelsberg and in Potsdam and the surrounding area. It had a double premiere on October 21, 1949 in the Babylon cinema in Berlin and in the DEFA film theater in Berlin on Kastanienallee . The film was also shown in the film exchange in the western sectors of Berlin , from November 29, 1949 in the Metro-Palast (Neukölln) and in the cinema on Lietzensee (Charlottenburg), then it was shown in the cinemas of the Federal Republic. From the television center of the GDR, the film was first broadcast on September 20 1,953th

Awards

The voluntary self-regulation of the film industry in Wiesbaden gave the film the title "artistically valuable".

criticism

The lexicon of international films described the film as the literarily exact DEFA film adaptation of the satire on Wilhelmine Germany, which emphatically emphasizes the socially critical element. Direction and representation are on an above-average level.

Herbert Ihering wrote in the Berliner Zeitung that there was already a “beaver fur” film with Ida Wüst and Heinrich George that made the captain unbearably coarse. But those were the years when everything was grossed out. The new film, however much it deviates from the plot of the original, never violates the meaning of the subject. He complements the figures, but that does not contradict their dramaturgical function, since it is not a photographed theater, but a film.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alfred Bauer: German feature film Almanach. Volume 2: 1946-1955 , p. 42 f.
  2. ↑ The beaver fur. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of October 25, 1949