The Lude

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Movie
Original title The Lude
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1984
length 93 minutes
Rod
Director Horst E. Brandt
script Horst E. Brandt
production DEFA , KAG "Berlin"
music Walter Kubiczeck
camera Hans-Jürgen Kruse
cut Karin Kusche
occupation

Der Lude is a DEFA German feature film directed by Horst E. Brandt in 1984.

action

The story is told by Wilhelm Knaupe in 1930, called by everyone just Bello, a young unemployed person, and his girlfriend Frieda, who goes on the streets to finance their living together. Since Bello often drinks his beer in a corner pub in Berlin, which the Communist Party of Germany uses as a meeting place, he is recruited as an informer by a police commissioner . With this he buys the peace and quiet in front of the moral police , because Frieda will only come of age in 3 ½ years, at 21.

Ali Höhler is also a pimp and also lives with his girlfriend. He gets himself a pistol from an organ grinder for no current reason. While trying to hide it under his bed, he discovers his girlfriend Erna Jänichen's wallet, in which she hid money that he knew nothing about. He is so excited about it that he beats her in the street. This is the reason for Erna not to return to Ali. She finds a new protector in Horst Wessel , a failed student and SA storm leader . When Ali finds out who his former girlfriend is now living with, he shoots Horst Wessel, who therefore dies days later. For the National Socialists this is not a jealous murder among pimps, but a political murder by the communists. However, this cannot be proven in a process.

After the Reichstag fire , the Nazis try to eliminate all left-wing forces in Germany. So they storm the Communist Party restaurant, whose waiter Sally Epstein can temporarily find shelter at Bello, but is then arrested anyway. In 1934 a new trial was initiated to build up the image of Horst Wessel as a martyr. Again Bello is supposed to testify as a witness, but he believes that he can no longer be blackmailed now that Frieda is now of legal age. But since he still refuses to testify in the interests of the Nazis, he is arrested himself. When it is noticed that the reasons for his detention are insufficient, he is released. A group of SA men is waiting in front of the prison gate and takes him to the sewage fields in front of the city, beats him up and then lets the field fill up with sewage.

production

The Lude was filmed on ORWO color by the artistic work group “Berlin” and had its festive premiere on December 6, 1984 in the Berliner Kino International . The first broadcast on the 2nd program of the GDR television took place on July 15, 1986.

The scenario by Wera and Claus Küchenmeister was worked on by them and was published as a novel in May 1987 by the military publishing house of the German Democratic Republic . The dramaturgy was in the hands of Anne Pfeuffer .

criticism

According to Helmut Ullrich in the Neue Zeit , it is an undecided film. Unfortunately, it does not contain enough information on the Horst Wessel case and, on the other hand, the story does not want to fit together. The sometimes atmospherically dense, but far more superficial staging style, which makes many scenes appear more posed than designed, gives the actors too little room for differentiated characteristics.

Günter Sobe found in the Berliner Zeitung that the story is not very convincing. One relied more on the description of the milieu than on the political drama.

The Lexicon of International Films states that this is an artistically utterly unsuccessful opus that offers only a questionable torso of the originally planned, much larger draft of a Horst Wessel film.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Neues Deutschland, May 30, 1987, p. 14
  2. ↑ Neue Zeit of December 11, 1984, p. 4
  3. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of December 15, 1984, p. 7
  4. ↑ The Lude. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used