Eisenhans (1988)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The Eisenhans |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1988 |
| length | 85 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Karl Heinz Lotz |
| script | Katrin Lange |
| production | DEFA , KAG "Berlin" |
| music | Andreas Aigmüller |
| camera | Michael Göthe |
| cut | Helga Gentz |
| occupation | |
| |
The Eisenhans is a DEFA fairy tale film by Karl Heinz Lotz from 1988. It is based on motifs from the fairy tale Der Eisenhans by the Brothers Grimm .
action
Once upon a time, humans and nature lived together peacefully. The animals and forests were guarded by Eisenhans, but two kingdoms weakened nature. In one of them lives a wild king who regularly hunts with his entourage, sets fires in the forest and cuts trees. Only the 17-year-old Prince Joachim wants to be different from his father.
The wild king receives a visit from the black hunter, who advises him to catch the iron man so that he can increase his prey from the forest. The king agrees and the black hunter brings him Eisenhans. Since Eisenhans was captured by human hands, only a human can set him free. Therefore, anyone who tries faces death. Joachim frees Eisenhans anyway and flees after him into the woods. He wants to stay with Eisenhans and Eisenhans allows him to complete a trial period. He should make sure that the source in the forest remains pure and nothing falls into it. If he passes the test, he can stay. Joachim falls asleep at the spring, sinks to one side and a strand of hair touches the water - it now has a golden shimmer. Eisenhans refers the Prince of the Forest, who can still hope for his help in emergency situations.
Joachim wanders through the forest, is attacked by robbers who steal his clothes, and finally ends up in front of a strange castle, where he is found by servant Jacob and taken into the workers' room. He is now allowed to work as a temporary worker in the kitchen. The castle belongs to a mild king who only eats sweets all day. He, too, has exploited nature because he has stolen all natural resources from it and has become a rich king. Only the Princess Ulrike can withstand wealth and sweets. She wants something really beautiful. One day when Joachim slipped his cap, she saw the golden glow of his hair. Prince and princess get closer, although she only suspects him to be a kitchen boy and would therefore never marry him.
Meanwhile, the wild king is poor. The black hunter proposes to him to marry the princess of the rich, mild king and the wild king agrees. However, the courtship of the black hunter is sabotaged by Joachim and so the wild king declares war on the mild one. The mild king's castle is bombed and the servant Jacob, who had once taken the prince into the castle, dies. Joachim now challenges the black hunter to a duel that will be fought in the empire of Iron Man. The prince asks Eisenhans for help several times during the fight and Eisenhans repeatedly saves Joachim's life by gradually conjuring up golden armor on his body. When the black hunter threatens the prince's life once more, he is turned to stone by a beam. Now the wedding between Joachim and Ulrike takes place in the realm of Eisenhans, to which both courts are invited. And nature is slowly recovering.
production
The Eisenhans was filmed at Kriebstein Castle near Waldheim and in Memleben . Other scenes were created in DEFA's Babelsberg studio. The costumes for the film were created by Regina Viertel , who also modeled the character of both kingdoms in the style of clothing: “I dressed the one [kingdom], the warlike one, in brass and leather. The other king […] is about gold, money and food. Everyone is very fat. […] In terms of color, everything there is doughy and pulpy. ”The film premiered on September 25, 1988 in the Berlin Colosseum . In 2003 it appeared on DVD as part of the series Die Welt der Märchen on Icestorm.
The Eisenhans was the first fairy tale film by director Karl Heinz Lotz . He only adhered to the motifs of Grimm's fairy tale and instead placed the “universal poetic parable about the relationship between man and nature” in the foreground. In addition, he presented parallels between the relationships in nature and those in society, which “opens up a wide horizon of conceivable generalizations to the original fairy tale”, so the Eisenhans stands as a moral element between the two kingdoms, which is caused by aggressiveness or inattention plunge their people into misery. Social reality is touched on with state doctrine and work, but "immediately negated in the fairytale exaggeration of its concrete features".
Some elements run counter to the typical fairy tale, such as the princess's refusal to marry a kitchen boy. Prince Joachim appears to be a typical, sensitive “fairytale prince”, but Princess Ulrike is markedly more independent and rebellious than usual in the fairy tale genre. In Der Eisenhans , Lotz not only created "a limbo between real and social characterization and fairytale stylization" in the film, but also an attempt to "supplement traditional narrative styles of Grimm's fairy tales with a modern version of poetic realism." Some critics, for example, summed up the representation of the two kingdoms as a hidden representation of both German states and saw the real appeal of the film in the reference of the film to the present. Other critics saw the departure from the "usual appearance of DEFA children's films" in Der Eisenhans as one of the "most idiosyncratic productions for children that DEFA has made in the last few years."
criticism
The contemporary criticism found that “in Karl Heinz Lotz's staging, the simple logic of the plot is sometimes lost in the excessive turbulence of the crowd”. This makes the conceptual connection more difficult, especially for viewers in childhood. Other critics described the Eisenhans as "of the same imaginative, poetry-rich shape" as The Cold Heart or The Story of Little Muck . "Director Lotz relies on an almost overflowing wealth of ideas, on the poetic suggestive power of a thoroughly fairytale event."
The figure drawing in the film was criticized, so "the royal children with the emotional world of our time [...] faced the courtiers, excessively greedy and stupid, also raw and wild or disgustingly effeminate. In general, the negative forces require a lot of effort ”. On the other hand, the figure of Eisenhans - "only present in the film as an overprojection of a human face with nature shots" - is almost impossible to grasp and leaves children with the impression of an evil, overpowering spirit.
The film service called Eisenhans “an adaptation in which the eerily beautiful atmosphere of the fairy tale is lost and which instead offers folly and banalities. Tension and fairy tale mood hardly arise, but educational and didactic comments weigh down the flow of the story. A children's film with no momentum, located between tradition and modernity, in which only the camera knows how to convince in certain sequences. " Cinema said briefly:" DEFA interprets the Grimms: stylized and stinky. "
Award
At the children's film festival Goldener Spatz , Der Eisenhans was awarded an honorary diploma in 1989.
literature
- Eisenhans . In: Eberhard Berger, Joachim Gliese (Ed.): 77 fairy tale films. A movie guide for young and old . Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-362-00447-4 , pp. 131-135.
- The Eisenhans . In: DEFA Foundation (ed.): The DEFA fairy tale films . Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-00-032589-2 , pp. 224-229.
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 136 .
- The Eisenhans . In: Ingelore König, Dieter Wiedemann, Lothar Wolf (eds.): Between Marx and Muck. DEFA films for children . Henschel, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-89487-234-9 , pp. 379-381.
Web links
- Iron John in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Eisenhans in the online film database
- The Eisenhans at filmportal.de
- Eisenhans at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ↑ Regina Viertel: The incredible Eisenhans . In: Filmspiegel , No. 1, 1988.
- ↑ The Eisenhans . In: Eberhard Berger, Joachim Gliese (Ed.): 77 fairy tale films. A movie guide for young and old . Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1990, p. 134.
- ↑ a b c d The Eisenhans . In: Eberhard Berger, Joachim Gliese (Ed.): 77 fairy tale films. A movie guide for young and old . Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1990, p. 135.
- ↑ F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 136 .
- ↑ a b The Eisenhans . In: Ingelore König, Dieter Wiedemann, Lothar Wolf (eds.): Between Marx and Muck. DEFA films for children . Henschel, Berlin 1996, p. 381.
- ↑ a b E. O .: Once upon a time… . In: Neue Zeit , October 21, 1988.
- ↑ Hans-Dieter Tok: The Prince in the rustling woods . In: Wochenpost , No. 39, September 30, 1988.
- ↑ The Eisenhans. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ See cinema.de
- ↑ The Eisenhans . In: F.-B. Habel: The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, p. 136.