The divided sky (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The separated sky |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1964 |
| length | 114 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Konrad Wolf |
| script |
Christa Wolf , Gerhard Wolf , Konrad Wolf, Willi Brückner , Kurt Barthel |
| production | DEFA , Artistic Working Group "Heinrich Greif" |
| music | Hans-Dieter Hosalla |
| camera | Werner Bergmann |
| cut | Helga Krause |
| occupation | |
| |
The divided sky is a literary film adaptation by Konrad Wolf from 1964. The DEFA film is based on the 1963 story The divided sky by Christa Wolf .
action
After a nervous shock, the young Rita returns from her place of study in Halle to her home village. She remembers the past two years.
While dancing at Christmas time, she met the chemist Manfred, ten years her senior , who is about to take his doctorate. She works in the office during the day until her boss Schwarzenbach registers her as a student at the Institute for Teacher Training in Halle. Despite initial doubts, she begins her studies in Halle, where Manfred also lives. She moves into his attic room. Manfred lives with his parents, calls the house a “life coffin” because nothing ever happens and, above all, has a tense relationship with his father. The father, an old Nazi , is now an SED member and boss in a wagon factory. Rita decides to work in the wagon factory until the beginning of the semester, even if Manfred is not enthusiastic about it.
In Waggonwerk it is the brigade assigned Ermisch and befriends soon with the old Rolf Meternagel on. He used to be a brigadier in the company, but had disloyal subordinates and Manfred's father as superiors. When the company suddenly ran out of 3,000 marks, Meteragel was made responsible and demoted. This hit him hard and so he works consistently, but in silence, on improving the workflow, keeps a record of wasted working time and advocates increasing standards. He has long since given up discussing the grievances with the officials.
Manfred has meanwhile successfully defended his doctoral thesis. He is working on an improved dyeing process that he wants to offer production for use. In Martin he has a level-headed supporter who wants to introduce the VVB to the process . At first it seems like it will be accepted; after examining the procedure, however, it is rejected without further justification. Manfred is getting more and more bitter. He begins to doubt Rita's love. When they both took part in a test drive with a newly built wagon, the news was just about to announce the first manned space flight of Yuri Alexejewitsch Gagarin - Manfred reacts cynically and predicts the next wave of propaganda . When he was sent to a congress in West Berlin a short time later, he did not return.
Rita waits for a sign from him for many months. His procedure is now used despite previous rejection. Finally she receives a letter from Manfred in which he asks her to come and see him in West Berlin. She travels to see him, but quickly feels lost in the big city. “You like a lot, but you don't really enjoy it. You are terribly alone. Worse than abroad because you can hear your own language, ”she concluded. She returns to Halle without Manfred, where she finally collapses.
In her home village she regains her strength and continues her studies. She clears her things out of Manfred's room and initially finds a new place to stay with Rolf Meteragel. He is now a brigadier again, but has overworked himself in an attempt to save the 3000 Marks that had disappeared at the time through extra work. After cardiovascular problems, he will now go to the cure.
production
The shooting of Der teilte Himmel took place from 1963 to spring 1964 in Halle and in VEB-Waggonbau Ammendorf . Konrad Wolf was able to win his childhood friend, the politician Werner Eberlein , as the “voice of Yuri Gagarin” , who worked as a Russian interpreter under Walter Ulbricht and thus became known as “ Khrushchev's voice” on GDR television. The film premiered on July 7, 1964 at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. On September 13, 1965, the film was released in Germany's cinemas and was first shown on television on August 9, 1982 on DFF 1.
After the premiere, the film was banned several times in the GDR “depending on the political weather conditions”. The reasons were different, so in the minutes of August 25, 1970 the ban on the film was justified with the fact that "a further use of the film [...] would unnecessarily raise the issue of the refugee country."
criticism
The contemporary critics judged the film largely positively: The film “ranks as a breakthrough achievement in the art of film in the GDR ...”, even if “it is critically stated that the creators did not succeed in integrating the individual dramaturgical complexes to the desired extent to bring the right proportions to each other, ”judged the New Germany .
Kurt Maetzig , then director of the German Academy for Film Art Potsdam-Babelsberg and a film official in the GDR, praised the film as “a very important step on this path into a new stage in world art in general […] I would like to say that the film 'The divided sky ', for which I am very grateful, helps to destroy a film-making based on primitive generalizations ”.
The West German film review found: "Anyone who has seen this East German film knows that West German film to be taken seriously does not exist." The film service praised Der teilte Himmel 1965:
“What the Federal Republican production had not been able to do convincingly so far, the Eastern Defa has achieved: to make a film about the problem of the division of Germany that is worthy of the discussion and also artistically significant, without falling into too many propaganda clichés. [...] What is new about this for Eastern film conditions is the effort to pay less attention to the so-called taste of the general public and instead to try to cope with a sensitive topic at a demanding level and with sophisticated nouvelle vague means. "
The divided sky is a “DEFA film with exceptional content and style” and shows a “unique reflection of the attitude to life and the new self-confidence of the Ulbricht era”, judged the film-dienst in 1990. Other critics called the film a “wall film , in which the structure does not appear and yet protrudes to infinity. "
Cinema found: “The temporarily banned drama by Konrad Wolf is one of the best works in GDR cinema. Conclusion: A look at the GDR without an ostalgia filter. ”For Frank-Burkhard Habel , The Divided Sky is “ perhaps the most important contemporary film of that time ”.
Awards
The divided sky was awarded the title “Particularly valuable”. Konrad Wolf and Eberhard Esche received the Erich Weinert Medal in 1965 . The divided sky was shown at the 1991 Berlinale as part of a retrospective.
In 1995, on the occasion of the 100th birthday of the cinema, the German Kinematheksverbund carried out a survey among experts and film critics on the 100 most important German films. Among the films chosen was Heaven Divided .
swell
- VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb (Ed.): The divided sky . Progress Film Program No. 95/64, Berlin 1964.
Web links
- Divided Heaven in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The divided sky at filmportal.de
- The divided sky at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 211 .
- ↑ See protocol on the prohibition of the film of August 25, 1970 ( online ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ).
- ^ Günter Karl in Neues Deutschland , September 5, 1964.
- ↑ Quotation from the minutes of the 2nd plenary meeting of the German Academy of the Arts on June 30, 1964, reproduced in the film program of Progress Film-Vertriebs.
- ↑ Friedrich Hitzer in Filmkritik , No. 12, 1964.
- ↑ Klaus Brühne (Ed.): Lexicon of International Films . Volume 3. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1990, p. 1318.
- ^ Alfred Holighaus: Years of the Wall . In: Tip Magazin, No. 4, 1995, p. 2; ( Online ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice .; PDF; 82 kB).
- ^ The divided sky ( Memento from March 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). For the current link, but without the cited reviews, see The Divided Sky. In: Cinema . Hubert Burda Media , accessed on August 7, 2018 .
- ↑ See film poster of the FRG premiere. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ See film-zeit.de ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ See berlinale.de
- ↑ The most important German films - Chronological overview. at filmportal.de , accessed on August 7, 2018.
