German fever
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | German fever |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1992 |
| length | 122 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Niklaus Schilling |
| script | Niklaus Schilling, Oskar Roehler |
| production | Elke Haltaufderheide |
| music |
Christian Graupner , VOOV |
| camera | Frank Grunert |
| cut | Niklaus Schilling |
| occupation | |
| |
Deutschfieber is a German feature film from 1992 . It is the unplanned sequel to The Willi Busch Report from 1979.
action
On November 9, 1989, the world was upside down. Not only does the Berlin Wall fall, the German-German border in the Werra Valley is also being rolled down. A state of emergency that seems to make everything possible. And Willi Busch almost slept through the historic moment. As a former reporter for the lost “Werra-Post”, he had meanwhile made himself comfortable at the “end of the western world”. Since his last attempt to increase the circulation of the newspaper again under nerve-wracking circumstances with invented sensations, time has almost stood still. Nothing happens anymore. Willi is still on cure, so to speak, as his job almost ruined his health.
It is his daughter Sascha from the GDR who wakes him out of this sleep. Not only does she want to take a test drive with his messerschmitt cabin scooter rotting away . She wants a lot more. As a result of a special kind of German-German encounter that took place 15 years ago, she can at least expect this from her western “raven father”. Since she also has so many verses by the famous father Wilhelm Busch on her lips, a mix-up is impossible. As at the fair, she pulls Willi into the frenzy of historical events. Willi looks downright reanimated.
He is ready for quite a few expeditions to the east. Get to know an Olympic silver medalist swimming for days, get very close to a laboratory assistant in the mysterious “House of the Body”, meet “Goliath” the “recultivation animal” and observe GDR border guards in the crisis of meaning during yoga classes. He himself takes part in a dubious “German-German market test”. The hectic activities of the Stasi also do not go unnoticed, even if tons of bananas should distract from them. Unexpectedly, he suddenly became involved in the founding of the “Werra-Post”. With the help of his sister Adelheid, the former editor and Willi's former lover Helga, the first new edition is already appearing. With great success and corresponding consequences. A second peaceful revolution is looming in the reunified Werra Valley. One wants to use the unique opportunity of the moment to found a new independent “Werra Republic”. And Willi Busch is to be elected its first president.
Reviews
“The wall is going up. Prince Messerschmitt Willi Busch (Tilo Prückner) is kissed awake by an extraterrestrial, his daughter (Christiane Paul) from over there, who fell from the socialist paradise of Burgstadt to the western sky of Friedheim. From then on, Niklaus Schillings told 'German fever' as if the Brothers Grimm had teamed up with cyberpunk. The German-German unification madness, seen by Niklaus Schilling, the 'Campe' among the directors of his generation, continues the Willi Busch Report from 1979 here. Is that possible? Fairies, lucky Hanses, male unlucky mariees and invincible brothers turn up, transform themselves in the cauldron in the heart of Germany into neurotic mayors, advertising experts, media representatives and Kauf-Mich bosses. The fairytale-collecting brothers (Schilling and co-author Roehler) are hallucinating: In the restricted area near the border, GDR Frankensteins experimented with a plastic carnivore that devoured the broken garbage environment: Goliath. Willi's resolute sister Adelheid (Dorothea Moritz - with her he once published and wrote the legendary Werra Post) doesn't get the chaos in order either.
So give up trying to sort out the threads that got out of hand from the start. The film completely corresponds to the conditions that it describes visually and which acoustically infernal hits us: Euphoria, confusion and a destroyed utopia, what remains is disillusionment. "
“A farce about the recent German past that only partially works; otherwise the film suffers from its hectic pace, from weaknesses in dialogue and from too much situational comedy. "
background
The film is the unplanned sequel to the 1979 Willi Busch Report . With the fall of the wall and the entire German-German border, the Werra valley suddenly moved back to the center of Germany. As early as the historic November days of 1989, many residents in West and East were calling for a second to follow up on the first Willi Busch Report. It was not easy to secure the preservation of the superfluous border installations until the summer of 1991, as many facilities and installations were destroyed by souvenir hunters and vandals in the period after the opening of the border. With signs at the remaining border installations, Niklaus Schilling asked to keep the structures for the shooting. Even if a girl predicted German reunification in one scene at the time, nobody could seriously believe that this would really happen in the foreseeable future. The final sequence shows the protagonist Willi Busch right in front of the insurmountable German-German border, with his nerves at the end and with the absurd threat of fleeing to the GDR. A crossing was created on November 12, 1989, exactly at this point of the border fortifications. It reunited the two small towns of Wanfried and Treffurt , called Friedheim and Burgstadt in the film.
Deutschfieber premiered in the program of the Hof International Film Festival on October 29, 1992. Hof (Saale) is also located on the edge of the zone . The Willi Busch Report premiered there 13 years earlier .