Germany, pale mother
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Germany, pale mother |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1980 |
| length | Theatrical version: 123 minutes Director's Cut: 152 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Helma Sanders-Brahms |
| script | Helma Sanders-Brahms |
| production |
Walter Höllerer Helma Sanders-Brahms |
| music | Jürgen Knieper |
| camera | Jürgen Juerges |
| cut |
Uta Periginelli Elfie Tillack |
| occupation | |
| |
Germany, pale mother is a German feature film directed by Helma Sanders-Brahms from 1980.
action
The love story of Lene and Hans begins in the summer of 1939. The relationship between the two develops extremely quickly. They get married at the end of summer. When war broke out with the attack by the Germans on Poland on September 1, 1939 , Hans was drafted into the Wehrmacht . The married life of the two had not really started yet, by then they are already separated by force. From now on they only see each other irregularly when Hans is on leave at home. The young couple remains strangers to each other. Daughter Anna is born on one night of bombing, and Lene loses her home on another night of bombing. Lene is now struggling homeless with her little daughter through the chaos of war. The young inexperienced girl Lene gradually becomes a self-confident, powerful young woman who fights for survival for herself and her daughter. After the war, Hans returned to a world that was now strange to him. He feels cheated for his life and has to watch as the old Nazis get into the top positions again. Lene, too, no longer corresponds to the conservative image he has of a wife. The marriage begins to run into turmoil. Lene falls ill with depression. When she wants to commit suicide, she is rescued by daughter Anna.
Movie title
The film title comes from the poem Deutschland by Bertolt Brecht , written in 1933, who emigrated from National Socialist Germany in 1933 and described his homeland with these words:
O Germany, pale mother!
How did your sons
prepare you, That you sit among the peoples
A mockery or a fear!
In Berlin there is a second cast of the sculpture O Germany, pale mother , which Fritz Cremer made for the Mauthausen Memorial in 1964/65 and which is inspired by Brecht's poem Germany . It depicts an oversized woman sitting on a piece of wall in pain, shame and indignation. It is wrapped in a cloth that is reminiscent of barbed wire or constricting ropes.
Reviews
“In the beginning a personal confrontation between the director and her mother, the film tries to reach general statements about women's emancipation and patriarchy beyond the private level. Extreme subjectivism and meaningful symbolism (the mother as suffering Germania) do not always combine convincingly: The dialectic of private life and politics, one of the themes of the film, finds its way directly into the form as a stylistic break between private navel gazing and documentary time image. "
Awards
The film premiered at the 1980 Berlinale . It was shown within the competition, but received nothing in the award ceremony. The reviews were very negative, so it was decided to cut the film for the cinema. This version celebrated a great success in some countries and the film became a cult film. The film was forgotten in Germany.
Helma Sanders-Brahms presented the film in 1980 at the Women's Film Festival in Créteil , France . Here the film won the main prize.
The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.
literature
- Helma Sanders-Brahms: Germany, pale mother: film narrative. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1981, ISBN 3-499-14453-0 .
DVD / Blu-ray publications
- Germany pale mother. A film by Helma Sanders-Brahms. Studiocanal (Arthaus), Leipzig 2010. (DVD, contains the cinema version)
- Germany pale mother (Two Thousand One Edition German Film 4/1979). Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2013. (DVD, contains the cinema version)
- Germany, Pale Mother. British Film Institute, London 2015. (DVD or Blu-ray, each contain the Director's Cut (152 min.) And also the film Hermann mein Vater (Helma Sanders-Brahms, 1987, 54 min.); Blu-ray also contains the cinema version; all films in the original language with optional English subtitles).
Web links
- Germany, Pale Mother in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Germany, pale mother at filmportal.de
- Bettina Henzler: "When I was born, I fell on a battlefield ..." Figure, perspective and acting of the child in Germany, pale mother . Published on December 17, 2017.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Germany, pale mother. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed September 8, 2017 .
- ↑ Germany pale mother. In: FBW. Retrieved August 25, 2019 .
- ↑ Germany, Pale Mother (Blu-ray). In: BFI Shop. British Film Institute , accessed August 25, 2019 .