The passenger - Welcome to Germany
The Passenger - Welcome to Germany is a German feature film from 1988 with Tony Curtis in the leading role. It is the fourth and final feature film directed by the playwright Thomas Brasch .
action
Mr. Cornfield, a film director from Hollywood , arrives in Berlin to make a film about an episode from the Holocaust that is set in a Berlin film studio:
In 1942, the Ministry of Propaganda gave a director by the name of Körner permission to choose thirteen Jewish prisoners from a concentration camp for his anti-Semitic film , who would be employed as small actors, would be housed on the studio premises and were allowed to emigrate to Switzerland after filming was finished. A rabbi will help him make the selection (on a roll call at night ) . Among other things, the two young men Janko and Baruch are selected; When the camp commandant demands one of them back because he is a criminal, the second also wants to resign. But the director insists on taking both with him. During the shooting, there is debate among young performers because of possible escape attempts and tensions with the SS - guards . When it turns out at an ensemble party that the director has been fired and the promised emigration is highly dubious, one of the two boys decides to flee with the help of a makeup artist. But the attempt ends fatally. The future of the remaining twelve remains uncertain.
It turns out that Cornfield, the director of this story, was one of these thirteen prisoners and is trying to cope with his own biography with the film to be made. Another supposed survivor who introduces himself for one of the roles of the small actor turns out to be a cheat. Finally, the make-up artist at the time also appears during the shooting and reveals that the story did not play out as heroically as Cornfield portrays it in his film and reveals to the film team the true end of the events.
Reviews
- Lexicon of International Films : A psychologically well thought-out, but in its artful interleaving, slightly mannered study on the problem of self-deception in dealing with guilt and the difficulty of being able to cope with the past through art.
background
It was considered remarkable that Brasch managed to win the American world star Tony Curtis for the lead role. Curtis was not dubbed, but also speaks the German text itself.
Awards
The German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) in Wiesbaden awarded the film the title “particularly valuable”.
The film took part in the competition at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1988 , but did not receive any awards.
Web links
- The passenger - Welcome to Germany in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Passenger - Welcome to Germany at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Passenger - Welcome to Germany. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .