The boy with the big black dog

Movie
Original title	The boy with the big black dog
Country of production	GDR
original language	German
Publishing year	1986
length	75 minutes
Age rating	FSK 6
Rod
Director	Hannelore Unterberg
script	Margot Beichler
production	DEFA , KAG "Johannisthal"
music	Dieter Beckert Gerhard Schöne Wolfgang Heisig
camera	Michael Göthe
cut	Helga Krause
occupation
Niels Anschütz : Ulf Miriam Knabe : Sabine Kurt Böwe : Oscar Horst Hiemer : Ulf's father Andrea Meissner : Ulf's mother Dagmar Manzel : Sabine's mother Andreas Schmidt-Schaller : Sabine's father Rita Feldmeier : Mrs. Schmiedel Marliese Mirkoff : Mrs. Tetzlaff Wolfgang Krone : Paul Peter Pauli : Mr. Schmidtchen Gerhard Schöne : Mr. Schöne Roland Kuchenbuch : Mr. Kraft Annette Richter : young pretty woman Michael Klobe : photographer Sabrina Haseloff : Ilsi Tetzlaff Jana Blunert : Bianca Janine and Jeanette Pozinski: twins

The boy with the big black dog is a German children's film of the DEFA of Hannelore Unterberg from 1986. It was created based on the eponymous book by youth Hildegard and Siegfried Schumacher .

action

A big, black Newfoundland dog runs towards the boy Ulf . At first he plays with the dog and shares his raspberry sweets with him, but tries to get rid of him on the way home because his mother already refuses hamsters as pets. In the end, the dog that Ulf calls "Nepomuk" ends up in the apartment. The mother is horrified while the father thinks about his own childhood and what he wanted a dog at the time, and Nepomuk wants to stay in the apartment for the night. Soon Nepomuk wakes up the whole neighborhood with his bark and causes strife. For the next few days, too, the dog turns the family's accustomed life upside down, throws the apartment into chaos when it is left alone during the day, and tears up the neighbour's laundry hanging in the yard. The tenants of the prefabricated building finally decide that the dog should go. The parents tell Ulf that the dog's owner has reported. However, the father secretly brings Nepomuk to the animal shelter and Ulf, suspicious that he is not allowed to be present when the dog is handed over, follows the father and frees Nepomuk , who has already been locked in the kennel . They flee together and finally end up with the cranky Oscar, who lives in a small hut with chickens and rabbits and improves his pension by selling his own cherries and flowers. Reluctantly, he agrees to take the dog in. Ulf promises to regularly take care of the dog's food and to organize alcoholic drinks for Oscar every now and then.

The daily visits to Oscar and Nepomuk and earning money for eating the dog make Ulf's school performance worse. He forgets homework or only remembers certain tasks late at night, which he then solves secretly under the covers. Even trying to do homework for Oscar doesn't go well, as Nepomuk's pranks are always a distraction. The teacher wants to get Ulf to do homework with his neighbor Sabine again, as before, but Ulf doesn't want to let anyone in on his secret about Nepomuk. His parents not because they lied to him, and Sabine not because Oscar doesn't want any more children around him and because the girl often pretends to be know-it-all. He transfers her when she wants to do homework with him and she surprises him a little later while selling flowers. Now she is initiated into everything and accompanies Ulf to Oscar and Nepomuk every day. The four of them start rehearsing a little circus act, as Oscar, according to his own story, was at the circus for a while. The children also believe his adventurous stories from India and other parts of the world, which Oscar confirms with souvenirs and costumes.

One day four people go to the fair. While Ulf and Sabine try out all the rides , Oscar gets drunk. His friends explain to the two children that Oscar was never in India. When Nepomuk disappears without a trace, Ulf reacts angrily that Oscar is just as bad as all other adults. He never wants to see him again. Both children come home at night and now have to confess everything to their excited parents. Ulf searches for Nepomuk for a long time over the next few days until he finally finds him. Sabine's mediation leads to a reconciliation with Oscar, who wants to take the dog back into his home. Together, Ulf, Sabine, Oscar and Nepomuk perform their rehearsed circus program in the courtyard of the prefabricated housing estate and all the residents and the parents of the children watch the performance enthusiastically.

production

The film was shot between 1984 and 1985. It had its premiere on June 15, 1986 in the Berlin Colosseum . In 1987 the film was shown as part of the Children's Film Festival at the Berlinale .

Songwriter Gerhard Schöne can be seen in a supporting role as a musician. He also sings the theme song War times a dog, a big one .

criticism

The contemporary critics noted that the film did not appear “round” although it was “cheerful and sad, funny and melancholy”. Above all, the portrayal of Ulf's parents was criticized as "stiff and one-layered". The director relied too heavily on Kurt Böwe's broadcast - whose appearance was praised by the critics - while the actual topic of the film, the problems of keeping animals in children, was only touched upon, so Frank-Burkhard Habel in retrospect.

Other critics found: “Since the conflict material is never really exhausted, the film only touches on its subject, remains on the surface and offers no plausible solutions. The variant that is offered at the end as a way out is a - unlikely - romantic fiction. Older children will hardly be satisfied with it. ”Hannelore Unterberg's film is characterized primarily by its unpretentiousness, wrote the Berliner Zeitung .

For the film-dienst , The Boy with the Big Black Dog was “a very honestly staged children's film that inspires little sympathy and also conveys little tension; critical tones of the material remain largely unused. "

literature

• Frank-Burkhard Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films. The complete documentation of all DEFA feature films from 1946 to 1993. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 296–297.
• The boy with the big black dog . 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. 352-354.

Web links

• The boy with the big black dog in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• The boy with the big black dog at filmportal.de
• The boy with the big black dog at the DEFA Foundation

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hans-Dieter Tok: Four-legged Nepomuk . In: Wochenpost , No. 28, 1986.
2. ^ Frank-Burkhard Habel : The large lexicon of DEFA feature films. The complete documentation of all DEFA feature films from 1946 to 1993. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , p. 297.
3. ↑ The boy with the big black dog . In: Ingelore König, Dieter Wiedemann, Lothar Wolf (eds.): Between Marx and Muck. DEFA films for children . Henschel, Berlin 1996, p. 354.
4. ^ Ehrentraud Novotny in: Berliner Zeitung , April 27, 1986.
5. ↑ The boy with the big black dog. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .