The found friend (film)

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Movie
German title The found friend
Original title Great Britain: Reunion
France: L'ami retrouvé
Country of production Great Britain ,
France , Germany
original language English
Publishing year 1989
length 110 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Jerry Schatzberg
script Harold Pinter
production Anne François
music Philippe Sarde
camera Bruno de Keyzer
cut Martine Barraqué
occupation

The found friend (English original title: Reunion , French original title: L'ami retrouvé ) is a British-French-German film drama from 1989 by Jerry Schatzberg . The screenplay comes from Harold Pinter and is based on the story of the same name by Fred Uhlman , which is set mainly around 1933 at the time of the so-called " seizure of power " in Germany . Jason Robards , Christien Anholt and Samuel West star in this tale of a friendship that was doomed to an abrupt end .

action

Five decades after his emigration, US lawyer Henry Strauss is returning to his native Stuttgart for the first time. Hans, as he was then called, has a lot in common with this city, where he spent his childhood and part of his youth and where his father was a doctor. The fact that the family was Jewish was also fatal for Hans from 1933 onwards. Nostalgia rises in him as his thoughts go back to his friendship with his classmate Konrad von Lohenburg. Both were sixteen years old when the impending disaster for Jewish families in Germany announced itself. Konrad came from a traditional noble family.

In many flashbacks we experience the years 1932/1933 and the deep and intimate friendship of the two boys from different parental homes. Both rave about the poet Hölderlin , discuss Shakespeare and Freud , go on excursions into the Stuttgart area and are finally overwhelmed by the political events of 1933. The underlying conflict begins when Hans notices that Konrad only invites him to his home when his parents are not there. Then during a visit to the opera there is a scandal. Konrad, accompanied by his parents, denies the friend. Hans is deeply hurt. Konrad apologizes to him and tells him the reason for his behavior. His parents take an anti-Semitic stance and reject his friendship with a Jewish boy. Konrad himself is enthusiastic about Hitler and dreams of a renewed Germany.

Hans Vater, who fought in World War I and is proud of being awarded an Iron Cross , sees no problem in the fact that the family is Jewish for the time being. “We go to the synagogue on Yom Kippur , but we sing Silent Night, Holy Night for Christmas .” He still believes that the German people will not fall for this nonsense that is being spread about the Jews, after all it is that Land of Goethe , Schiller and Beethoven . After Hitler came to power, however, the situation changed almost daily and became more and more threatening, so that the Strauss and Hans were sent to relatives in America because of the anti-Semitism that was now clearly emerging in Germany. The parents stay behind and later choose suicide.

In Stuttgart today, Henry Strauss learns from the school director what happened to Konrad during a tour of his old grammar school: he was involved in the 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler and was executed as a resistance fighter .

production

Production notes

The film is a joint production by Ariane-Film (Paris), FR3 Films Production (Paris), NEF Filmproduktion und Vertriebs GmbH (Munich) and CLG Films (Twickenham), in collaboration with TAC Ltd. (London), Arbo Film GmbH (Munich), Maran Film GmbH & Co. KG (Munich-Geiselgasteig). The first rental took place through NEF 2 Filmverleih GmbH (Munich).

Director Jerry Schatzberg was not familiar with the novel The Recovered Friend by Fred Uhlman , which was widely read in Europe , but was only made aware of it by the French film producer Anne François. Then the famous British playwright Harold Pinter , who had read and liked the book on his mother's recommendation, was brought in to work on the film. Schatzberg cast the most important roles with English-speaking actors because he believed that he could only convincingly direct the film in his own language, English. He cast the British in the main roles of the students, as they could play convincing Europeans in contrast to American actors. In terms of film technology, the former photographer Schatzberg staged a few short scenes using the autochrome process to convey the epoch of that time.

Didier Naert, Jacqueline Cohen and Joshua Harrison (New York) were responsible for the film construction, and Thomas Schappert for the equipment. Alexandre Trauner designed the buildings . The shooting took place in the summer of 1988 in New York as well as in Stuttgart and the surrounding area.

background

The model for the figure of Konrad von Lohenburg (in the book: Konradin von Hohenfels) is Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg , who attended the same traditional high school in Stuttgart that Fred Uhlman attended.

FSK, publication

The film was subjected to an FSK test in Germany on September 27, 1989 under the number 62735 and approved for children aged 12 and over with the note “no public holidays”.

The film premiered in May 1989 at the Cannes International Film Festival before it was released in French cinemas on May 17, 1989. It was seen in Belgium (Ghent) in October 1989, in Australia in June 1990 and in the United Kingdom on July 6, 1990. It was launched in Portugal in October 1990, in Denmark in November 1990 and in the Netherlands (Amsterdam) in January 1991. It was also published in 1991 in Japan, the USA (New York) and Turkey. In the United States, it was also released on video in June 1991. He was also seen in Bulgaria, Spain, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Poland.

In the Federal Republic of Germany it was published on October 5, 1989 under the title The Recovered Friend . It was first shown on German television on July 10, 1994 in the ARD program .

criticism

The film magazine Cinema praised: "The drama, based on a screenplay by Harold Pinter, shines with its timeliness and a clever story."

The lexicon of international film saw it a little differently and noted: "The overly rough sketch of a political film that naively interprets the emergence of fascism as a temporary victory of the bad over the good and therefore has little to contribute to illuminating the subject."

Dietrich Kuhlbrodt's criticism for epd film or filmzentrale dealt intensively with the film. There it is said that the film creates the great friendship of the sixteen-year-olds from pictures, “which are artfully kept fragmentary, whereby the question arises of itself which career Konrad had in the Third Reich. The dialogue […] be careful not to become explicit. ”From the motive why Hans had embarked on this late journey,“ the film relates a steadily intensifying tension… ”Kuhlbrodt went on to explain that the images [des Films are] "on the contrary, cleansed of everything that should otherwise force sympathy." [...] Thus, "the rooms that Alexandre Trauner ( Children of Olympus ) [have] furnished are almost empty, and the camera (Bruno de Keyzer ) show them flat monochrome ”. [...] “Charged” are the “almost static fragments” of “what seems absent: of the drama that we do not see, but that we can feel and almost grasp, - of the questions we ask people Want to direct pictures of Edward Hopper ”. In conclusion, the reviewer wrote: “I was very impressed by this surprisingly poetic Schatzberg work. It was particularly nice to see the 83-year-old from Traun in his first film role in the hundredth film of his career as a designer: as a worker. "

Janet Maslin of the New York Times thought Christien Anholt and Samuel West, who played Hans and Konrad as 16-year-olds, looked a little too mature for the daydreams that can be seen in retrospect, but their closeness to each other and their exchange with each other is understandable. The elegance of the settings and the attractiveness of the crispy schoolboys are praised, as well as the reserved and serious acting performance of Jason Robards in the role of old Hans.

TimeOut , London, spoke of a “moving reproduction” of Fred Uhlman's novel about a friendship that, under the destructive dynamics of National Socialism, would betray what Schatzberg had implemented well. Harold Pinter's script, which was “close and unobtrusive” to the novel, Trauner's “fine sense” for images, and Phillipe Sardi's “restrained but expressive” film music created a sense of professionalism on all sides.

Awards (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jerry Schatzberg in the commentary on the French DVD
  2. ^ The friend found again (1989) Emigrated Jew is looking for his childhood friend. at cinema.de (with 10 film images), accessed on May 21, 2017.
  3. ↑ The found friend. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed May 21, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  4. ↑ Dietrich Kuhlbrodt : Reunion - The friend found again adS Filmzentrale.com, accessed on May 21, 2017.
  5. ↑ Janet Maslin : Review / Film; Memories Both Painful And Pretty In 'Reunion' In: The New York Times , March 15, 1991. Retrieved May 21, 2017.
  6. ↑ Reunion at timeout.com (English). Retrieved May 21, 2017.