The Red Baron (film)

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Movie
German title The Red Baron
Original title The Red Baron
Country of production Germany
original language English
Publishing year 2008
length 120 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 10
Rod
Director Nikolai Müllerschön
script Nikolai Müllerschön
production Dan Maag ,
Roland Pellegrino ,
Thomas Reisser
music Stefan Hansen ,
Dirk Reichardt
camera Klaus Merkel
cut Olivia Retzer
occupation

Der Rote Baron is a German film production by director Nikolai Müllerschön about the last phase of Manfred von Richthofen's life . It opened in theaters on April 10, 2008.

The main role of the "Red Baron" is occupied by Matthias Schweighöfer . Til Schweiger as Richthofen's flying comrade Werner Voss , Lena Headey as the nurse Käte, his fictional lover, and Joseph Fiennes as Richthofen's allied fighter pilot and arch rival, Arthur Roy Brown, can also be seen in other roles . The German rock band Reamonn contributed the title song Open Skies .

action

A replica of the red Fokker Dr.I , which gave Richthofen the nickname "Red Baron".

The film is set on the Western Front in 1917/1918. As ace and celebrated hero of the German air force, Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen , like his comrades, sees aerial combat as a sporting and technical challenge. Not directly affected by the action far down on the battlefield, Richthofen, supported by his comrades Voss , Wolff , Sternberg and Lehmann, quickly achieved fame due to his high number of kills.

The Supreme Army Command soon recognized Richthofen's propaganda value and stylized his person as the idol and hope of a whole generation. Abused in this way, Richthofen soon has to admit, not least because of his love for the attractive and emancipated nurse Käte, that the reality of war has nothing in common with the honorable air duels . Torn between his love for Käte and his devotion to aviation, in the end he cannot break free from the fighting and continues to risk his life with every start. The film ends with Richthofen saying goodbye to Kate and the start of his (last) flight. A little later, Kate visits his fresh grave.

In the credits, Richthofen's kills, but also his squadron and other people are shown again with the further course of life.

Production background

The Red Baron is a German film production in English. With an estimated budget of 18 million euros, it is one of the most expensive German film productions. The film premiered on March 31, 2008 in Germany and was released in German cinemas a week later. The film had around 250,000 viewers in German cinemas.

Reviews

Reviews of the German press

“We didn't necessarily wait for it,” said the Cinema , and the Berliner Zeitung could easily endorse the message that war is bad, but it is difficult to like the film. A new film about Manfred von Richthofen would have offered the chance to relativize the image of a fair, noble martial artist, which was influenced by English-language films, and to incorporate more recent historical findings that von Richthofen claimed to have been a manhunt. This chance to build up an appropriate relationship between the German audience and von Richthofen and to present him historically truthful had been wasted, the production pursued an "unbroken hero worship". Even though "the first German film in ages that celebrates a warlord as a national hero," it did not preach militarism, the world found .

The Tagesspiegel put the von Richthofen depicted here in a row with the German historical figures who had been purified to a certain extent by loneliness and which the cinema had offered in recent years, such as Hitler in Fall or the Stasi eavesdropper in The Lives of Others . Other critics also found that the film stylized von Richthofen into an honorable hero and portrayed him and his entourage in a sympathetic manner. The strip understood aerial battles and crashes like a chivalrous, sporting competition, a game or sports festival in which the Allies were not enemies, but opponents in a fair fight, and the war a "dignified garden party". Contrary to historical facts, von Richthofen is made a pacifist, whereby the morality seems completely artificial, like a “pacifist smear theater” , and the main character appears as a victim of the circumstances. Death is not shown, "out of piety or perhaps for reasons of cost." The highlighting of Jewish combatants for the German Reich and those scenes that are supposed to reveal the cruelty of the war appeared like alibis and self-justifications. Spiegel Online saw the idol cult of the German Reich revived and judged: “So where should this reactionary adventure monster go ? Best of all to the trash. Flyer, say hello to the bin! "

A nurse is now almost part of the genre, and the love story was perceived as "pennäler-like" or involuntarily funny. Von Richthofen's short life would not provide enough material for an interesting film. He appears like a pop star from a boy band . Schweighöfer is a bad cast for this role because he looks “as if he couldn't harm any plane.” “Lena Headey seems far too mature for the milk boy Schweighöfer, and he seems too preoccupied with his narcissism for himself could still fall in love with someone else. ” Schweighöfer was also not accepted at the end of the film by the brokenness or declared that he was overwhelmed.

The star spoke of wooden dialogues and a bumpy direction , of a wooden staging of the Tagesspiegel . The world objected to the indecisive direction of a lurid epic, which of course was "big popcorn cinema" , which is seldom achieved in Germany. The aerial combat scenes, which are convincing, daring, the main attraction, and good but rare, received some praise. The aerial combat, staged visually like a computer game, was superimposed on the war-skeptical messages, but epd Film stated that the film showed that these images had been generated on the computer. The Berliner Zeitung called the musical underlining "awful" .

Assessments of a historian

The Richthofen biographer Joachim Castan noted that this film makes Richthofen "a romantic war hero who at the end doubts what he did." In his eyes, however, the historical Richthofen was in large parts completely different - he sees his "enormous cold-bloodedness" as an essential characteristic. He described the feature film as “great cinema with great emotions. The historic Richthofen was in large parts completely different, wants to make us believe as the film. " .

literature

conversations

With Matthias Schweighöfer in Die Welt on April 10, 2008: "You can certainly get something in your face for this film"

Review mirror

Rather negative

  • Cinema , No. 4/2008, p. 61, by Karl-Heinz Schäfer
  • epd Film No. 4/2008, p. 50, by Claudia Lenssen: The Red Baron
  • Die Welt , April 9, 2008, p. 27, by Peter Zander: The war is still clean in the sky

negative

The film evaluation agency Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of release for The Red Baron . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2008 (PDF; test number: 113 577 K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for The Red Baron . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Karl-Heinz Schäfer: The red baron . In: Cinema , No. 4/2008, p. 61
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Anke Westphal: Kiss me, Kate! In: Berliner Zeitung , April 9, 2008, p. 25
  5. ↑ a b c Claudia Lenssen: The red baron . In: epd Film No. 4/2008, p. 50
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g Jan Schulz-Ojala: Order for the egoshooter In: Der Tagesspiegel , April 9, 2008, p. 21
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g Peter Zander: In the sky the war is still clean In: Die Welt , April 9, 2008, p. 27
  8. ↑ a b c d e Jörg Gerle: The red baron . In: film-dienst No. 9/2008, fd 38680, pp. 20–21
  9. ↑ a b c d Christian Buß: Dandy with machine gun. In: Spiegel Online , April 8, 2008
  10. ↑ a b c Stern, April 10, 2008, p. 173: The Red Baron
  11. ↑ Joachim Castan: The end of a legend - the birth of a myth. In: SpiegelOnline , April 20, 2008. Article online

Web links