The strong Ferdinand
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The strong Ferdinand |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1976 |
| length | 97 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Alexander Kluge |
| script | Alexander Kluge |
| production | Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz |
| camera | Thomas Mauch |
| cut | Heidi Genée |
| occupation | |
and Dan van Husen , Rudolf Wessely , Franz Kollasch , Klaus Altmann, Wolfgang Scherer , Rudolf Bockelmann , Uwe Müntmann , Marga Wiedner , Hark Bohm , Barbara Assmann , Christoph Gerarths , Klaus Dersch , Karl-Heinz Thomas , Hans Faber | |
The strong Ferdinand is a German film satire created in 1975 by Alexander Kluge with Heinz Schubert in the title role of an overzealous factory security worker, control freak and philistine turned wild.
action
The focus of the film is Ferdinand Rieche, an energetic, little man with big goals and unshakable verve in achieving them. Rieche is employed as an officer in the criminal police, but does not believe that he is properly recognized there and does not feel challenged at all in this profession, especially since he was recently accused of "transgressive methods" in his zeal and one would like to get rid of him. Rieche then looks for a new field of activity in which he can live out his urge to order and his almost fanatical ideas of security, law and order, which he strives to enforce with merciless German zeal, and in which he can realize his being. One day he was given the opportunity to take care of the safety of a large factory as the new plant security officer. Smell is completely absorbed in his new field of activity and promptly exaggerates his urge to perfection, so that his specially developed "safety and protection measures" for the safety of the company are far more risky than any external threat to the company could ever be. Smell observed and denounced soon becomes de facto a one-man Stasi system in the smallest possible area. He studies left-wing literature because he suspects his opponents will be there too, and hopefully awaits the hour of his probation and that of his all-encompassing surveillance system.
One day she comes in the form of the harmless little cafeteria employee Gertie Kahlmann, who steals groceries from the company to save the money for her own taxi. Now, finally, Rieche can make an example, and the “strong Ferdinand” reveals an unparalleled excess of excess, which he lives out with holy earnestness and zeal. He puts the young, pretty woman in the act and puts her under pressure from now on to be of sexual service to him. There has to be order, says Ferdinand, and so the servant of his own ideals, who have gone wild, first urges the thief to bring her banal and minimal “booty” back to its place. From this actually unsavory and compulsive basic constellation, a sometimes clumsy, but also tender relationship develops between two people who are basically lonely at heart, but who come together in this way little by little. But in the end, these delicate bonds have no future in view of the control mania of Smell. Finally, Ferdinand Rieche spans the curve: after an explosion in the plant, he rushes forward relentlessly and turns the whole company into a parade ground for his fanatical ideas: with the help of the hall protection of a right-wing extremist party, he has paramilitary maneuvers organized, sets a fire, robbers and breaks - of course everything just as a dress rehearsal to be prepared for case X, the last day. He even blocks production once in the factory and, at the end of the day, also appoints his own boss because he is driving the merger of the company.
Production notes
The strong Ferdinand was premiered on April 27, 1976 in Bonn.
Bernd Eichinger took over the production management, Winfried Hennig took care of the equipment , Martin Schäfer assisted chief cameraman Thomas Mauch .
Reviews
"Alexander Kluge's new film," Der stark Ferdinand ", is a ball paradoxical and, in its determined lack of decision-making, is desperately reminiscent of a man who instinctively draws into the brothel and who then grudges his teeth and goes to an evening at an adult education center for better insight: it must be fun , but it can't do any. A head film about a gut issue, images that cannot move with intelligence. Kluge… has done the trick with "Strong Ferdinand" that you value most what you cannot see. That you want to constantly congratulate the film on its scruples, on what it renounces - but may not be really happy about the "instead of". In terms of theme, the "Strong Ferdinand" is made to fall into the ranks of German philistine satires, the Sternheim brand or "Untertan". (...) Because the film "is about" ... a German petty bourgeoisie who goes wild out of frustration ... who wants to produce security and order so fanatically, first as a detective and then as security officer, that it creates threatening idleness and explosive chaos. A controversial topic, then, how rule of law protectors in their protective mentality want to arm the rule of law to the teeth and secure it until it perishes because of its need for security. (...) The film drapes a character with ever new didactic play situations. Reality does not reveal itself in the film, but rather it is tinkered with an idea. Kluge and Heinz Schubert, who was both predestined and endangered for the role because of Alfred's disgust, avoid any folk theater-like flinging. "
“Perhaps this is the most innovative and also the most fascinating quality of Kluge's method, according to which a film is only created in the mind of the viewer: that it lets the real become fictional and makes the invented a concentrate of reality, an illuminating, precise reflection on our reality. But that's exactly what doesn't work in the new film. Kluge deliberately did not want to break, alienate, ironicize a reality that was highly precarious in itself, works security, for which there is no public "awareness of the problem"; it seemed macabre and contradictory enough to him. (...) So “The strong Ferdinand” remains undecided in the gesture of a succinctly demonstrative teaching piece. Instead of setting our imagination and reflection in motion through gaps, surprises, and transverse movements, as usual, Kluge spells out how it should be understood, scene by scene, and underlines what is shown in the comment to the point of superfluity (...) Only rarely and then only in commentary or in dialogue does the brilliance of the topic shine through; some things are downright bad, namely careless, rigid and rigidly staged. Heinz Schubert ... plays Riedle as a thoroughly contradicting figure, likable in his unruly consistency, confusing by the crooked things he takes out himself (for example he doesn't report a thief in the factory, but makes her with the sleazy robustness of a crook to his forced lover), frightening in the end, where a narrow-minded, bitter rigor reminds us of the mentality of concentration camp guards. Strangely enough, however, the film becomes exciting when Kluge moves away from the character to the technical details of the plant security, the alarm systems and disaster control, to practical training and interrogation tactics: it is actually an exotic terrain and a problem so complex that one understands Kluge's fascination. "
“Film satire in which Alexander Kluge combines his method of essayistic collage with conventional forms of narrative cinema for the first time. Shrewd and funny, full of capers and slapstick amusement, sometimes a bit lengthy. "
Web links
- The strong Ferdinand in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The strong Ferdinand at filmportal.de