The Letter (1966)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The letter |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1966 |
| length | 82 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 0 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Vlado Kristl |
| script | Vlado Kristl |
| production | Peter Genée |
| music | Gerhard Bommersheim |
| camera | Wolf Wirth |
| cut | Eva Zeyn |
| occupation | |
| |
The letter is a German film experiment from 1966 by and with Vlado Kristl (as "mail carrier") with laypeople as actors, including directors Klaus Lemke , Franz-Josef Spieker , George Moorse and all four Schamoni brothers as pallbearers.
action
The film, which contradicts all viewing habits and has no actual plot, is designed like a staged experiment, which does not focus on any main event, but is based on incidental events of all kinds and thus contradicts all common narrative structures and image sequences. The framework shows a man named Mr. T. who finds a letter, whereupon he goes in search of the specified recipient. The arbitrarily composed scenes are repeatedly devoted to unexpected absurdities, for example when a blind gardener mows a gravel path or an urban guerrilla with a claim to the world revolution in a street fight to a stranger who asks him for directions politely gives very confusing information or when himself the visitors of a café, instead of engaging in well-kept conversation about the banalities of life, unexpectedly spit at each other. At the end, the viewer learns that Mr. T. is delivering his own death sentence, the execution, with the eponymous letter.
Production notes
The letter was shot in just two weeks and premiered in Berlin on November 25, 1966. The film was also shown on May 24, 1968 as part of the Hof Film Festival .
Hans-Jürgen Tögel assisted director Kristl, Petrus Schloemp assisted chief cameraman Wolf Wirth .
Reviews
“For enthusiastic supporters of Kristl… this is, among other things, an attempt to destroy time. But the impression of a coincidence prevails, which conveys nothing other than - coincidence. "
“A cinematic experiment that mirrors a world that is out of joint, marked by senselessness and violence, also in its artistic form by dispensing with classic dramaturgy, discontinuous camera work, etc. From today's perspective primarily interesting from a film-historical point of view. "
“An anti-avant-garde film that can ruin your eyes (and maybe your own morals). The instruction to the cameraman was: never focus on the main event, always on the incidental, incidental. So the camera is always in motion. (...) It also makes you happy (that's Kristl's ambush) that all evil can be let out completely unchecked: curses, cannonades, linguistic works of art on rabble and insults. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ These are Peter , Thomas , Ulrich and Victor. Other film colleagues who appear are Gérard Vandenberg , Eckhart Schmidt , Christian Rischert , Horst Manfred Adloff as well as the composer Hans Posegga and the film critic Karsten Peters .
- ↑ Spiegel article from December 25, 1967
- ^ The letter on filmdienst.de
- ↑ The letter on newfilmkritik.de