The captain

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Movie
Original title The captain
Country of production Germany , France , Poland
original language German
Publishing year 2017
length 119 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Robert Schwentke
script Robert Schwentke
production Frieder Schlaich ,
Irene von Alberti
music Martin Todsharow
camera Florian Ballhaus
cut Michał Czarnecki
occupation

Der Hauptmann is a German-Polish-French biography by Robert Schwentke . The historical film , shot in black and white, tells of the atrocities committed by war criminal Willi Herold in the final phase of the Second World War . The film celebrated its world premiere on September 7, 2017 at the Toronto International Film Festival . The film was released in German cinemas on March 15, 2018. A theatrical release in the USA took place on July 27, 2018.

action

Two weeks before the end of the war, the German private Willi Herold is chased across a field by a group of military officers under Captain Junker. He manages to escape his pursuers in a piece of forest. Hungry, inadequately dressed and in constant fear of being picked up as a deserter , he wanders around behind the front.

Herold meets another stranger with whom he breaks into a barn at night to get food. However, they are discovered and Herold's companion is slain by the farmer couple Görner. Herold escapes and a little later discovers an abandoned Wehrmacht off-road vehicle in which he finds the uniform of a captain of the Luftwaffe . In this uniform he is surprised by the scattered Private Freytag, who thinks Herold is a real captain whose vehicle breaks down. Freytag offers his help as a driver and asks to be allowed to submit to the supposed officer, which Herold accepts.

In an economy, Herold pretends to be the official reporter and promises the residents compensation for the property stolen by looters. At night the peasants force him to shoot a soldier who was caught stealing. Together with Freytag he returns to the farm Görner the next morning, where they meet three other soldiers, including Private Kipinski, who are harassing the farm owners. They too join Herold. When he realized the possibilities the uniform would open up for him, he founded the "Kampfgruppe Herold" and gathered more scattered German soldiers around him, including a gun crew with an anti-aircraft cannon .

When the group is picked up by a patrol of the Feldgendarmerie, the fake Captain Herold succeeds in impersonating a Special Operations Leader who is supposed to report to Adolf Hitler personally about the situation behind the front. Junker, who does not recognize him at first, introduces him to SA leader Schütte, who commands the guards in Emsland Camp II , where deserters, among others, are imprisoned. Because of the overcrowding of the camp, Schütte wants a military court martial that will try several deserters and other inmates who cannot be pardoned. The resistance of the bureaucratic and corrupt camp manager Hansen, who reports to the civil judicial authorities, can be overcome with the help of heralds alleged powers of attorney. With their men, among whom the brutal Kipinski and Schütte's deputy Brockhoff stand out, Schütte and Herold organize a massacre among the prisoners in which, among other things, the anti-aircraft cannon is used. To celebrate their “success”, Herold gives a “colorful evening” for those involved, where he gets to know Schütte's wife Gerda and the captured actor Roger, who then also take part in murders.

Freytag, who resisted the shootings, now realizes that the officer's uniform cannot belong to Herold. Nevertheless, he protects him from being discovered and stays with the troop, now known as the “Herald Life Guard”, who take control of the camp in the absence of Schütte and Hansen and murder numerous other inmates.

After the camp was destroyed by British artillery and planes, Herold's group moves to a neighboring town under the self-designation "Schnellgericht Herold" and kills the mayor who had hung up a white cloth with the words "Welcome" on it. Then the men rob passers-by and move to the best hotel in town, where they get girls and have an orgy. Out of jealousy because of Irmgard being courted by both men and in order to avenge himself for repeated insubordination , Herold has his rival Kipinski, who had understood from the beginning that he was an impostor, tortured and shot by his people.

The next morning, the military police storm the hotel and arrest the marauders. Herold is brought before a German military court, but not convicted on the intercession of Feldgendarmeriehauptmann Junker and the military prosecutor. The stay of the trial gives him the opportunity to abseil out of a window in the courthouse and escape.

In the last scene you can see him disappearing through a clearing in the forest littered with skeletons. In the end credits, the viewer learns that Willi Herold was arrested by the Royal Navy in May 1945 and executed with six accomplices after a trial in November 1946. In a trailer you can see Herold and six of his men roaming the modern city center of Görlitz with rifles, controlling and robbing passers-by.

Biographical

The plot is based on the biography of the German war criminal Willi Herold, whose deeds the film retells in broad outline and with numerous deviations and embellishments. The then 19-year-old was separated from his unit on April 3, 1945 and found a captain's uniform between the towns of Gronau and Bad Bentheim . Disguised as an officer, he gathered other scattered soldiers around him, including Private Reinhard Freitag, and crossed the Emsland with his troops of up to 30 men .

The area of ​​the Emsland camp Aschendorfermoor today

When the group reached the Emsland camp Aschendorfermoor on April 11, 1945 , Herold took command of the prisoner camp with the words "The Führer personally gave me unlimited powers" and set up a regiment of terror. Within eight days, more than 100 prisoners were killed on his orders, some of which he personally murdered. Herold's people then combed the area and hunted down deserters. On April 18 and 19, 1945, the camp was destroyed by an incendiary attack by the British Air Force , which killed another 23 prisoners and managed to escape other inmates. In total, Herold had at least 162 people killed in Camp II and the surrounding area, the exact number of victims is unknown. Therefore Herold is also called "the executioner of the Emsland".

Herold withdrew from the front with his group and had other people murdered for allegedly undermining military strength or espionage. His deception was exposed before the war was over. However, a German military court let Herold go.

After the end of the war, by accident, it went online by the British military government . In August 1946 the trial of Herold and 13 other accused began in Oldenburg . On November 14, 1946, he was executed in Wolfenbüttel prison along with five accomplices.

production

Staff and funding

Directed by Robert Schwentke . When asked how he got this film, Schwentke said in an interview with Deutsche Welle that he was looking for a story that could tell something about the third, fourth, and fifth row of perpetrators: “Remarkably, there is one in Germany only two films that are actually told from the perpetrator's perspective. ”One of them is From a German Life with Götz George from 1977, a fictional biography by Rudolf Höß . In German literature, apart from a very early Heinrich Böll novel and a work by Hubert Fichte, there is nothing from the perpetrator's perspective, says Schwentke: “It is striking that we are the only culture that has not told anything from the perpetrator's perspective . "

The aim was to make a modern film that was clearly shot today and that looks back into the past with our prejudices and our filters, said Schwentke. Therefore it is very abstract in many ways. Schwentke continued that the film was specifically set in World War II or 1945, but it was also generally a film about a state of the world. About the role his protagonist assumes in the film, Schwentke said, “It helped that it was the last two weeks of the war when there was need and all kinds of people were promoted, but of course it also has something to do with the uniform itself to do. The uniform gives him security, he can hide behind it. "

After Schwentke had done a lot of research into perpetrator profiles and violent processes in preparation for the film, he realized that seeing Herold as a sociopath or a psychopath was not useful for the purpose of the film , since he was not to blame alone, but the entire system: “We wanted to make a film about violence that has no back door. It should disturb, not reconcile. There is no purification, there is no moral identification variable. Every viewer has to ask himself: How would I have acted? We all wish that we would have bravely stood up and said: This is wrong! It is much more important to me that people discuss the film than that they like it. "

Schwentke had decided to shoot the film in black and white , referring to Michael Powell , who advised Martin Scorsese, before shooting his boxer drama Like a Wild Bull : "You can't shoot a film with so much blood in color." According to Christian Schröder in Tagesspiegel , there is hardly any blood to be seen in Der Hauptmann , the camera never shows the victims of the massacre, but the perpetrators who work hard and sweaty on their killing machines , and so the horror is captured on the soundtrack on which it is Alternate shots, screams and impacts. In addition, black and white help with the exaggeration, according to Schwentke, and believed that stylization could tell things more clearly. According to Bernd Haasis of the Stuttgarter Zeitung, the fact that the film was shot in black and white gives the cleverly exaggerated maliciousness depth of field.

The film was produced by Frieder Schlaich from Filmgalerie 451, Paulo Branco from Alfama Films and Piotr Dzięcioł and Ewa Puszczyńska from Opus Film. The film received production funding of 100,000 euros and development funding of 40,000 euros from the German-Polish Film Fund. Eurimages contributed 400,000 euros. On the German side, the film project received script funding from the Filmförderungsanstalt and production funding from the German Filmförderfonds in the amount of around 723,000 euros, the BKM in the amount of 450,000 euros, the Filmförderungsanstalt in the amount of around 349,000 euros and from the Medien- und Filmgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg in the amount from 160,000 euros. In addition, the Central German Media Fund granted 350,000 euros. The film was also funded by the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg with 100,000 euros. The total budget of the film was 5.8 million euros.

Filming and film music

A half-timbered house in Großschönau

Filming began on February 10, 2017. They took place until April 10, 2017 in the Polish cities of Zgorzelec and Wroclaw and at the Mirosławiec airfield near Sobótka, and for a few days they also shot in Görlitz and the surrounding area, such as in Schöpstal and on the Königshain castle grounds, where the base camp is located found. In February 2017, recordings were made in Großschönau , there in an old half-timbered house , and later in the vicinity of the Damask and Terrycloth Museum. Filming was finished in mid-April 2017. The film was shot chronologically. Florian Ballhaus acted as cameraman . One of the main locations, the labor camp with the barracks, was built in Poland especially for the film and blown up in real time to simulate the Allied bombing as realistically as possible. The special effects were produced by Mackevision, a company specializing in computer-generated imagery and visual effects.

The film music was composed by Martin Todsharow . The musical design of the film combines industrial sounds with hits from the time of the Third Reich. At the beginning of April 2018, Königskinder released the soundtrack for the film, which includes 18 pieces of music.

publication

The film celebrated its world premiere on September 7, 2017 at the Toronto International Film Festival . In September 2017, the film was presented at the San Sebastián International Film Festival , where it competed in the main competition for the Golden Shell. In December 2017 the film was shown in the official competition at the Festival de cinéma européen des Arcs. A first trailer was presented in January 2018. On January 22, 2018, Der Hauptmann celebrated its German premiere as the opening film of the 39th Max Ophüls Prize Film Festival and was subsequently shown at the film festival. The film was released in German cinemas on March 15, 2018. A theatrical release in the USA took place on July 27, 2018.

reception

Age rating

In Germany the film is FSK 16 . The statement of reasons for release states: “The film has an emotionally intense atmosphere and depicts numerous cruel war crimes . The perpetrators are in the foreground and there is no significant resistance to the sadistic acts. Due to their psychosocial level of development, young people from the age of 16 are able to place the events in the historical context and to maintain an appropriate emotional distance. The depiction of the acts of violence is also within a framework that does not permanently burden young people from the age of 16. The chamber play-like staging and the black and white images offer additional opportunities to distance yourself. "

Reviews

So far, the film has received approval from 86 percent of Rotten Tomatoes critics and achieved an average rating of 7.6 out of a possible 10 points.

Screen Daily 's Wendy Ide thinks The Captain is a film that is neither thematically nor stylistically reserved. The repeated use of overhead shots gives the viewer a kind of "eye of God" with which he can look down at the scuffling ball of people, for example; on the other hand, close-up shots from a frog's perspective emphasize the shabby ugliness of the frightened men who hastily fulfill the captain's wishes. Ide also emphasizes the film music, which sounds more like an industrial accident to her, but which is quite effective. However, she criticizes the fade-in of a color shot about 15 minutes before the end of the film, which shows the current state of the place where the camp was where Herold committed his worst crimes, which distracts the viewer at the moment when the film focus on his conclusion and concentrate the concentration.

Tina Hassannia from RogerEbert.com feels reminded of the Milgram experiment by the film plot and focuses her criticism on the psychology of the protagonist. His transformation from a dirty, scared and harried vagabond into a cold and self-assured Nazi who succeeds in the course of the plot to deceive and win over practically everyone he meets becomes sharp and "not without a pinch of wonderfully black German humor" traced. She also finds the portrayal of the passive submission of the victims, marked by paralyzing fear, and the description of the debauchery of the soldiers and guards, escalating into outbursts of violence, successful and psychologically plausible.

Christian Schröder from Tagesspiegel remarks why many German soldiers fought for the final victory in a long-lost war even after Hitler's suicide is a question that has not yet been answered convincingly: “ The captain shows why men like Willi Herold murdered : because they could. "

Christian Horn writes in PC Games what could be an easy Köpenickiade , designed Robert Schwentke as a dark war drama about the power and abysses of being human. Herold is becoming a sadist who instigates arbitrary killings and a massacre in a prison camp, according to Horn, and the fact that this was possible speaks for the functionality of the German chain of command, but also shows the sadistic indoctrination of the regime. Horn sums up: "The captivating and challenging war crime film stands out clearly from tame historical dramas."

Kaspar Heinrich von Zeit Online explains how, like all films about the Second World War, Der Hauptmann must also ask himself how explicitly he portrays the horrors of this time. Florian Ballhaus ' camera avoids looking into the mortuary pit, which the prisoners had to dig for themselves, and does not show any close-up of the dead, Heinrich continues, but apart from that, the film does not save on drama and spends agonizingly long minutes shooting prisoners : “The scene in which a British aerial bomb shreds the SA leader in a targeted and effective manner would certainly be in good hands in a trash spectacle. In a historical drama that claims to be serious, it seems out of place. ”Also Schwentke's attempt to create topicality with the credits, in which the“ Herold Life Guard ”patrols through today's Görlitz in their uniforms and checks passers-by IDs, underlaid with cheerful Thirties rhythms turn out to be too clumsy, says Heinrich: “Regardless of whether it is meant satirically or as an indication that the power of uniform and respect for authorities still apply: In any case, Schwentke ravages itself tremendously with this trick. "

In his criticism, Tim Evers of MDR Kultur recalls the phrase clothes make people and in the film the uniform exposes the abyss of a person: “In the sober black and white of this outstanding film, the mechanisms that turn people into murderers stand out all the more . The captain is more than a parable about how it works in a war of extermination. It's about what happens when there is nothing to stop a person. No morals, no rules, no one else. Director Schwentke is just as interested in the present as in the past. "

From the German Film and Media Review was the captain with the predicate particularly valuable provided. In the press release it says about the film: “Basically it legitimizes itself through its cruelty. In the chaos he remains the only authority and so the soldiers commit the most brutal mass executions, arbitrary killings and sadistic acts of violence on his orders. Schwentke tells this with a remarkable artistic radicalism in black and white pictures. He is particularly successful in portraying a casino evening that ends in an orgy of violence and in which two prisoners from the camp act as actors to entertain the troops with obscene, anti-Jewish skits and songs. "

Awards

Bavarian Film Award 2018

German Film Award 2018

German Audio Film Award 2019

  • Nomination in the cinema category

German Acting Award 2018

Festival de cinéma européen des Arcs 2017

  • Awarded the 20 Minutes of Audacity Prize ( Robert Schwentke )
  • Awarded the Press Prize - Special Mention (Robert Schwentke)
  • Awarded the Young Jury Prize (Robert Schwentke)
  • Nomination for best feature film for the Crystal Arrow (Robert Schwentke)

European Film Award 2018

  • Award for the best sound

San Sebastián International Film Festival 2017

  • Nomination for Best Film for the Golden Shell (Robert Schwentke)
  • Awarded the jury prize for the best camera ( Florian Ballhaus )

Traverse City Film Festival 2018

  • Honored with the Stanley Kubrick Award for Bold & Innovative Filmmaking in Fiction (Robert Schwentke)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Der Hauptmann . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 173179 / K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ Peter Zander: Robert Schwentke is our man in Hollywood In: Berliner Morgenpost, March 20, 2015.
  3. ↑ Robert Schwentke in conversation with Hans Christoph von Bock and Jochen Kürten: War from the perpetrator's perspective - Robert Schwentke on the film "Der Hauptmann" In: Deutsche Welle September 15, 2017.
  4. ↑ Robert Schwentke in conversation with Susanne Burg: “The tragedy in our history did not have to take place” In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur, March 10, 2018.
  5. ↑ a b Tim Evers: "The Captain" - A uniform opens human abysses In: MDR culture. Retrieved March 16, 2018.
  6. ↑ a b c Bernd Haasis: The director Robert Schwentke: "The confrontation is part of the cinema experience" In: Stuttgarter Zeitung, March 19, 2018.
  7. ^ A b Christian Schröder: "The Captain" in the cinema: Murderer with a child's face In: March 14, 2018.
  8. ↑ a b c Der Hauptmann In: filmgalerie451.de. Retrieved March 9, 2018.
  9. ^ German "Der Hauptmann" shot in Lower Silesia In: filmcommissionpoland.pl, February 22, 2017.
  10. ↑ Funding decisions 2017. In: medienboard.de. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
  11. ↑ Zdjęcia do “Kapitana” Roberta Schwentke na Dolnym Śląsku In: wroclawfilmcommission.pl. Retrieved March 16, 2018.
  12. ^ Marek Zoellner: W Mirosławicach kręcili zdjęcia do "Kapitana" Roberta Schwentke In: Radio Wroclaw, April 4, 2017.
  13. ^ Daniela Pfeiffer: The next film shoot in Görlitz is pending In: Sächsische Zeitung, February 1, 2017.
  14. ↑ a b Umburbehaus as a film set In: Sächsische Zeitung, February 18, 2018.
  15. ^ Daniela Pfeiffer: Film off for the "Hauptmann" In: Sächsische Zeitung, March 7, 2018.
  16. ↑ “The Captain” premieres at Kino International In: Berliner Morgenpost, March 8, 2018.
  17. ↑ The captain. In: programmkino.de. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
  18. ↑ Soundtrack Album for Robert Schwentke's 'The Captain' ('Der Hauptmann') Released In: filmmusicreporter.com, April 3, 2018.
  19. ↑ Toronto International Film Festival 2017. Official Film Schedule In: tiff.net. Retrieved on August 23, 2017 (PDF; 852 KB)
  20. ↑ Offical Competition In: lesarcs-filmfest.com. Retrieved March 14, 2018.
  21. ↑ Trailer premiere. 'Der Hauptmann': How a soldier falls into a frenzy of power in World War II In: Stern Online, January 12, 2018
  22. ↑ The opening film for the Max Ophüls Prize has been set In: sr.de, December 11, 2017.
  23. ↑ Start dates Germany In: insidekino.com. Retrieved December 2, 2017.
  24. ^ Reason for release for Der Hauptmann In: Voluntary self-control of the film industry. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  25. ↑ The Captain. In: Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved December 11, 2018. Note: The Tomatometer is the percentage of Rotten Tomatoes recognized critics that gave the film a positive rating.
  26. ↑ Wendy Ide: 'The Captain': Toronto Review. In: screendaily.com, September 8, 2017.
  27. ↑ Tina Hassannia: TIFF 2017: 'The Upside', 'The Captain'. In: rogerebert.com, September 10, 2017.
  28. ↑ Christian Horn: Der Hauptmann: Review of the relentless war criminal drama. In: PC Games, March 8, 2018.
  29. ↑ Kaspar Heinrich: "The Captain": The perpetrators use the cliché. In: Zeit Online, March 14, 2018.
  30. ↑ The Captain In: fbw-filmbeval.com . German film and media rating. Retrieved November 25, 2017.
  31. ↑ Nominations for the German Film Prize 2018 In: bundesregierung.de, March 14, 2018.
  32. ↑ Nominations 2019. In: deutscher-hoerfilmpreis.de. Retrieved March 19, 2019.
  33. ↑ Le Capitaine In: lesarcs-filmfest.com. Retrieved March 14, 2018.
  34. ↑ Official Selection In: sansebastianfestival.com. Retrieved September 18, 2017.
  35. ↑ 65th San Sebastian Film Festival 2017 Awards In: sansebastianfestival.com. Retrieved October 1, 2017.
  36. ^ Gregg Kilday: Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Fest Gives Top Honors to 'Pope Francis' Doc. In: The Hollywood Reporter, August 6, 2018.