The confirmation

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Confirmation is a 22-minute short film (615 m) by Karl Valentin from 1934. The text template was created in 1922. The title sequence also reads: "A great grotesque to laugh and think by Karl Valentin and Liesl Karlstadt " .

action

A drunk, older father and his son, who has just been confirmed, enter a posh wine bar . You control a two-person table and twist the table with everything on and around it. When they have restored order, the waiter comes and hands out the menu and wine list. The boy, called Pepperl, would like an Emmental cheese , but his father only discovers an “ Affentaler ” on the menu and orders it on the assumption that it is a cheese. The father's conversation with the waiter is characterized by misunderstandings, which amuses Pepperl, whereupon he gets a slap in the face. Instead of cheese, the father orders macaroni and ham at his son's request . A quibble about the number and size of the portions ignites. Father and son sing "The days of youth are beautiful". The father drinks schnapps in between and is violent against his son when he is annoyed by the repetition of the song. He now tells the arriving guests, the waiter and loudly to himself, how he got the confirmation suit. He insists on the detail that the suit his war comrade gave him fit his Pepperl, although the war comrade did not even know his boy. Obviously drunk, he repeats this banal fact over and over again. Pepperl soon gets sick because he was given a cigar to smoke to celebrate the day, and so does his father because of the alcohol consumption. Again the table and chairs, but also the father himself, go to the floor. The boy tries in vain to put his father on a chair. The waiter comes with the order and reminds them of their behavior. The father defends himself and no longer recognizes Pepperl. The waiter puts the macaroni plate on the table and demands a quick finish, but the father knocks the table over again. Pepperl hangs macaroni out of his mouth, while his father tucked macaroni under his hat and in his trouser pockets. Pepperl dragged his father behind him as he left the wine tavern, and in the process they tore up other furniture.

Emergence

The basic idea comes from Liesl Karlstadt, who in the spring of 1922 had witnessed a report in a Munich cigar shop about an "amazingly" suitable used confirmation suit. The elaborated piece, of which there are typescripts with minor changes under the title “The fateful Confirmation Day”, was premiered on December 9, 1922 in Munich in the Germania-Brettl. The film was made in 1934 under an unknown director as a production by Arya Film GmbH, Munich. In addition to Valentin and Karlstadt, Josef Eichheim played the waiter. A sound recording of 14 minutes in length based on the film version ( shortened by the silent slapstick moments) can be heard in the entire sound recording of Trikont Verlag .

reception

The film scholar Georg Seeßlen certifies Valentin and Karlstadt as having "good powers of observation". This enabled the two of them to make the progress of the initial situation, in which a simply knitted, tipsy man stumbles into a bar that is not intended for people like his own, to make imaginable . Michael Schulte also states in his Rowohlt monograph that the depiction of the drunk is "copied from reality down to the smallest gesture, perfectly naturalistic ". He goes on to say that the work is characterized by a decidedly sociological moment, because as the father's drunkenness increases, his sovereignty also decreases, in contrast to the initially giggling son who ends up taking his father away. Finally, Schulte notes: “What is atypical of this one-act play for Valentin is that the social place of the people is of primary importance, that the play is less about Valentin's unmistakable dialogue, which makes the actual role secondary, than about knowledge of human nature, the gift of observation and lifelike realization is based. "

In the booklet of the complete recording of Ton , which was released in 2002, it says: "Valentins and Karlstadt's ingenious one-act act about a father and his confirmation boy Pepperl, who get together in a 'fine wine restaurant' on Confirmation Day , is - along with the film The Inheritance - rightly one of the worst and defiant short films against foreign bourgeois rules and about the tragedy of petty bourgeois life . ”Valentin biographer Wolfgang Till certified Karlstadt that he had almost never played here, on a par with her partner, and also praised the clear, straightforward and“ completely in tune with the rhythm of the two Actors given [e] “directorial work. Herbert Achternbusch ennobled the confirming person as the “best German film” and Seeßlen stated that he always enjoys watching the film.

The underlying piece

Some reviewers in the 1960s characterized the piece as " clowning ". Piero Rismondo said in the Viennese newspaper Die Presse that it begins with the overturned chairs and tables and ends with the spaghetti dinner. In the Kleiner Volksblatt there was a “Dr. J. ”reviewer drawing the piece as not very tasteful and“ more inclined to clowning ”. “Tasty”, that is, appetizing, “you really couldn't call this Oktoberfest- Klamauk”. Lothar Sträter also saw the scenes in the Hamburger Abendblatt as clowneries, but thought that they should be.

Axel von Ambesser wrote in the program for his confirmation staging that anyone who has a “sense of irony and linguistic brilliance”, who appreciates “ playing with the word and joke from the word” will “not be satisfied with Valentine's pieces”. “But Valentin's naive , absurd brooding has a poetic-comic power that cannot be compared with anything else in German stage poetry.” In the Wiener Zeitung , Edwin Rollett said that Valentin used “very economical motifs ” that “did not come from Area of ​​the imagination, but from the reality of everyday life ”. He had "always achieved the greatest effects, especially in his own account, through the bitter struggle his types wage with the banal realities of life." Kurt Kahl was, as he wrote in a newspaper called Heute , sure that the play would “live on” because the father figure that was created leaves room for design and interpretation. In his biography, which was written for Hoffmann and Campe , Michael Schulte described the confirmation person as "one of the highlights in Valentin's repertoire ".

In August 1931, the Catholic Church tried to raise the mood against a showcase photo and indirectly also against the play itself, because allegedly there was “an unworthy and hurtful distortion of the Holy Sacrament of Confirmation”. Although there were no complaints from the population, Valentin or the photographer removed the photo. Valentin felt the whole thing was a chicane and threatened to turn his back on Munich.

Trivia

  • The evangelical Valentin mixed the terms “ communion ” and “confirmation” , unnoticed by the director .
  • The monastery liquor that Valentin consumed in the role of father was actually black tea .
  • The film received - after it had already in 1931 given the incident with the lobby card - even in the show because of "violation of religious feeling" a Jugendverbot .
  • Wolfgang Till compared the scene in which the father is lying on the floor and repeats his sentence about the right suit in a mantra-like manner with the Chaplin scene in which a drunken painter who is no longer steadfast tries to continue painting his picture on the floor.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Booklet Disc 8 of the complete recording of sound , Trikont Verlag, Munich 2002.
  2. ↑ Comment . In: Manfred Faust, Stefan Henze, Andreas Hohenadl (eds.): Karl Valentin. The Confirmation (=  Karl Valentin. Complete works in nine volumes . Volume 5 . Pieces). Piper, Munich / Zurich 2007, ISBN 978-3-492-05045-6 , Der Firmling, p. 365–369 (special edition).
  3. ^ A b Georg Seeßlen: The Confirmation . In: Andreas Koll, Achim Bergmann (ed.): Karl Valentin. Complete output sound. 1928-1947 . Trikont, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-89898-300-5 , p. 61-65 .
  4. ↑ Michael Schulte: Karl Valentin in self-testimonials and picture documents (= Kurt Kusenberg [Hrsg.]: Rowohlts Monographien . No. 144 ). 3. Edition. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1973, ISBN 3-499-50144-9 , The actor, p. 89 f .
  5. ↑ Michael Schulte: Karl Valentin in self-testimonials and picture documents (= Kurt Kusenberg [Hrsg.]: Rowohlts Monographien . No. 144 ). 3. Edition. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1973, ISBN 3-499-50144-9 , Tingeltangel, p. 41 f .
  6. ↑ a b c d Wolfgang Till: Karl Valentin. Folk singer? DADA is ? With over 400 illustrations. Ed .: Wolfgang Till (=  Knaur biography ). Droemer Knaur, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-426-02330-X , Der Firmling, p. 344-349 .
  7. ^ Piero Rismondo: Premiere in the Akademietheater. Diridum, diridum, diridumbumbum. "Zerbinetta's Liberation" by Herzmanovsky-Orlando - "The Confirmation" by Karl Valentin . In: The press . Vienna February 15, 1961, Culture, p. 7 .
  8. ↑ Dr. J .: Zerbinetta and Ambesser (you know) . In: Das kleine Volksblatt . No. 38/1961 , February 15, 1961, pp. 11 .
  9. ↑ Lothar Sträter: Clowning in the Vienna "Burg". Zerbinetta's liberation and Herzmanovsky's rescue by Axel von Ambesser . In: Hamburger Abendblatt . February 20, 1961.
  10. ↑ Axel von Ambesser: Is Karl Valentin worthy of a burgtheater? In: Burgtheater program in the Akademietheater . Josef Glücksmann (responsible for content). Bundestheaterverwaltung , Vienna 1961, unpaginated (p. 14 f).
  11. ↑ Edwin Rollett: An evening of loners. In the Akademietheater: “Zerbinetta's Liberation” by Herzmanovsky-Orlando premiered - as an add-on: “The Confirmation” by Karl Valentin . In: Wiener Zeitung . February 15, 1961.
  12. ↑ Kurt Kahl: Irony with and without sore muscles. About the Viennese productions by two German directors . In: Today . February 25, 1961, p. 10 .
  13. ↑ a b Michael Schulte: Karl Valentin. A biography . 1st edition. Hoffmann and Campe Verlag, Hamburg 1982, ISBN 3-455-06600-3 , Filmpech und Theaterglück, p. 64-103 , here p. 99 f .
  14. ^ Wolfgang Till: Karl Valentin. Folk singer? DADA is ? With over 400 illustrations (=  Knaur biography ). Droemer Knaur, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-426-02330-X , The undesirable confirmation. Karl Valentin has to get out of the shop window, p. 350 f . (Original text from a newspaper article from August 20, 1931).
  15. ^ Wolfgang Till: Karl Valentin. Folk singer? DADA is ? With over 400 illustrations (=  Knaur biography ). Droemer Knaur, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-426-02330-X , p. 404 (“jv” means youth ban).

Web links