The postmaster

This article deals with the German feature film from 1940. For the short film of the same name by Satyajit Ray from 1961, see Drei Töchter .

Movie
Original title	The postmaster
Country of production	Germany
original language	German
Publishing year	1940
length	95 minutes
Age rating	FSK 16
Rod
Director	Gustav Ucicky
script	Gerhard Menzel
production	Karl Hartl for Wien-Film GmbH
music	Willy Schmidt-Gentner
camera	Hans Schneeberger
cut	Rudolf Schaad
occupation
Heinrich George : Postmaster Hilde Krahl : Dunja Siegfried Breuer : Rittmeister Minskij Hans Holt : Ensign Mitja Ruth Hellberg : Elisawetha Margit Symo : Masha Frida Richard : Old woman in the train compartment Alfred Neugebauer : landowner Franz Pfaudler : Servant Pjotr Leo Peukert : Colonel Erik Frey : Sergei Reinhold Häussermann : Tailor Auguste Pünkösdy : Wirobowa Oskar Wegrostek : House servant at the Rittmeister Hugo Gottschlich : Servant of the Rittmeister Anton Pointner : Cavalier at the Neva Bridge Karl Ehmann : Old resident Sascha Mimi Stelzer : Katja, the Rittmeister's cook Edwin Juergensen : Secretary Franz Boheim : Bernhard Wicki

Der Postmeister is a German feature film from 1940. The film was based very loosely on the story Der Postmeister (original title: Станционный смотритель / Stanzionny smotritel ) by Alexander Pushkin .

action

The film is set in the Russian provinces at the beginning of the 19th century. Mitja and his comrade, two members of the army , stop at a post office to change their horses . The postmaster there laments the death of his daughter Dunja and Mitja recognizes in her his former lover. As he drove on, he remembers a story proposed to him.

Rittmeister Minskij also stopped at the post office and made the acquaintance of Dunja. He convinced her to come with him to Saint Petersburg as his bride .

Mitja continues to tell his comrade that Dunja quickly separated from the Rittmeister in Saint Petersburg and became a mistress of the nobles.

Mitja tells how he got to know Dunja himself, how he wanted to quit his job and move to the country with her. In the meantime, however, rumors of his daughter's easy life were brought up to her father and, full of disappointment, he wanted to kill Rittmeister Minskij first, then his daughter and finally himself. When Dunja found out about it, she returned to Rittmeister Minskij and they both played their father's wedding. Mitja, who was invited to the wedding by a friend, was shocked by Dunja's lies and wanted to tell her father the truth, so that Dunja had her "husband" throw him out.

The wedding convinced the postmaster of the wellbeing of his daughter and he left calm and satisfied, but Mitja saw the trust in Dunja destroyed and ended the relationship. Rittmeister Minskij saw a future with Dunja, but, disappointed in her own existence, Dunja took her own life. Before she died, she asked the Rittmeister to write to her father that she had died of an illness.

In the present day Mitja tells his comrade that the Rittmeister complied with this request, volunteered for the battle of Sevastopol and died there, while he, Mitja, had to go on living with his guilt.

background

The film was made in Vienna in 1939/1940 , including at the Klein-Schwechat train station (now Kaiserebersdorf ). The premiere took place on April 25, 1940. After the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, the film was no longer shown in cinemas because it showed the Goebbels Propaganda Ministry too sympathetic a picture of the Russian people, who were now considered enemies.

Reviews

• Lexicon of international film : superbly photographed and staged - with Heinrich George as postmaster in what is probably his best film role.
• Theater director Jürgen Fehling on Heinrich George's portrayal of the postmaster: ... in the postmaster he danced like a (...) Mozart elephant (...) a granite block from which diamond tears fall (...) with a degree of imagination that God only given away to actors a few times in a hundred years.

Awards

The film won the Mussolini Cup as best foreign film at the Venice International Film Festival in 1940.

Remake

In 1955 a remake was made in color under the title Dunja , which is closely based on the black and white film from 1940.

See also

• List of German feature films premiered in the German Reich during the Nazi era

literature

• Alexander Pushkin : The postmaster (original title: Станционный смотритель / Stanzionny smotritel ). (Russian and German). Translated and edited by Marianne Wiebe . Reclam, Stuttgart 1997, 54 pp., ISBN 3-15-007468-1 .

Web links

• The postmaster in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• The postmaster at Filmportal.de
• The Postmaster Complete Film at the Deutsche Filmothek

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The postmaster. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 27, 2017 .