Following the sun

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Following the sun
Original title Человек идёт за солнцем
Country of production USSR ( Moldovan SSR )
original language Russian
Publishing year 1962
length 72 minutes
Rod
Director Mikhail Kalik
script Valeriu Gagiu ,
Mikhail Kalik
production Moldova film
music Mikael Tariwerdiev
camera Vadim Derbenev
cut Ksenia Blinova ,
N. Tschajka
occupation

After the sun , also towards the sun (original title: Человек идёт за солнцем , Tschelowek idjot sa solnzem ) is a Soviet feature film directed by Mikhail Kalik from 1962 .

action

While several children are looking at the sun through colorful shards of glass, a boy who is already going to school tells that he knows from his teacher that you only have to follow the sun to go around the earth. You then come back to the same place, which six-year-old Sandu wants to try right away.

On his way, Sandu meets a lot of interesting people, the first of whom is a ticket seller who is lucky enough to sell for 30 kopecks . After a scientist working on a telescope , he meets a youngster who is using a magnifying glass to burn his and his girlfriend's name on a wooden bench. The next acquaintance is a young man who is sitting in front of a maternity hospital and really wants to know whether he has already become a father. Since he himself is not allowed in, he sends Sandu, who is supposed to claim that his family name is Urugianu and wants to find out about his mother. So the young man learns that he has become the father of a boy and Sandu has earned such an ice cream. Now he is running after a young woman who is carrying three balloons . But not only Sandu is interested in the woman, but also a man her age who is now chasing after her. But at the exact moment when he wants to speak to her, she gets on a scooter , kisses the driver and the two drive off.

At a weekly market he meets a boy of the same age who is delivering watermelons for sale with his father . While the father is getting a pair of scales, the boys eat a melon and attend a performance in which an artist drives his motorcycle up a steep wall . But then Sandu has to keep chasing the sun. He does not notice that he is running in front of a large truck, the driver of which has to brake. When he scolds Sandu for this, he explains that he can only follow the sun on this path and that he is already very short on time. Since the driver has the same route, he takes him for a while. Suddenly the driver brakes again, but this time because he has seen his sister with her boyfriend, which provokes his objection. He takes her under his arm, puts her in the truck and drives off with her. Sandu stays behind and has to go on alone again.

His path now leads him to a construction site where he spends his break with the local construction workers. Next, a police officer tries to stop him from walking around the world and wants to bring him home with long lectures. Fortunately, he meets his girlfriend, a gardener, with whom he has some problems to clear up. Suddenly the gardener's superior appears and breaks off a sunflower because it has no business in a park. The punishment for this is immediately given by Sandu, who soaks him completely with a water hose. On the escape that now follows, he kicks a nail into his shoe, which he tries to knock over with a stone, but does not succeed. By chance he runs into a shoe shiner who is arguing with a hairdresser about the last football game he saw. But both of them only do that because they have fun arguing, with a passing fisherman interfering. In the meantime, the shoeshine boy removes the nail from Sandu's shoe and he sees in his helper for the first time a person who has lost both legs in the war.

When he wants to continue on his way, the sun has disappeared behind a thick cloud cover, which makes him very sad. He becomes even more thoughtful when a funeral company of the taxi company comes down the street with a coffin and wreaths. However, none of the mourners wants to answer his questions and it is only by chance that he learns that a person is being buried here. But then suddenly the sun comes out again and he can set off again on the path that leads him to the large, empty stadium of the Chișinău soccer team . Suddenly there is music from the loudspeakers and three girls are dancing in the middle of the lawn with a large ball that remains when the girls are picked up in a helicopter . Now Sandu has new play equipment, which he keeps busy until he notices that the sun is slowly disappearing and runs after it until it sets on the horizon .

Now he walks through the night and looks at the moon until he falls asleep at a monument. In the dream all the experiences of the previous day appear again to him. So the next morning a military musician finds him who brings him home when the sun comes up again.

Production and publication

The color film had its world premiere in February 1962 in Kishinev , the capital of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic . The premiere for the rest of the Soviet Union took place on July 9, 1962 in Moscow. In the USSR, the film had about 9 million viewers.

In the GDR , the film premiered on January 22nd, 1965 under the title Der Sonne gegen das Sonne .

criticism

Tamara Tarassowa reports in Neues Deutschland about the premiere in Moscow:

“One can argue about which of the little novels that make up the film is better and which is weaker. But one cannot deny that the modern world is shown in a new way in this film, through the prism of poetry. The director doesn't just show us the world, he reveals it to us, as it were, through the young hero, and the freshness of the discovery is above all what makes this attractive film so attractive. "

The lexicon of international films writes that this is a film with poetic approaches, but that it is not a children's film with the power of real enchantment.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Neues Deutschland from July 15, 1962, p. 4
  2. ↑ Following the sun. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 19, 2019 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used