The crossing of Niagara Falls
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The crossing of Niagara Falls |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1977 |
| length | 107 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Rolf Winkelgrund (theater) Karin Hercher (film) |
| production | Television of the GDR |
| camera |
Harri Münzhardt Habbo Lolling Klaus Hesse Ina Kredewahn Frank Eckert |
| cut | Katharina Vogel |
| occupation | |
| |
The crossing of Niagara Falls is the 1977 studio recording of the GDR television of a production by Rolf Winkelgrund at the Hans Otto Theater Potsdam based on a play by Alonso Alegría from 1969.
action
The action takes place around 1870 in the city of Niagara Falls (New York) .
In a small guesthouse, the youth Carlo, an 18-year-old self-proclaimed scientist, knocks on the door of the rope artist Blondin and requests entry. Blondin thinks the boy just wants his autograph, but it's not that simple. Carlo accuses Blondin of cheating because he only fried and ate eight eggs instead of the announced twelve eggs in the middle of the rope above Niagara Falls. He could prove that because he had observed everything carefully with the binoculars. So he also saw that blonde had sweaty hands and his knees were trembling, and he wanted to tell everyone this if the artist didn't keep his promises in the future. Although Blondin was very upset by these allegations, he allowed the boy to come back the next day, somehow taking a liking to him.
But Carlo trusts the artist even more than what he has shown so far, and he tells him that the next day too. In his enthusiasm for science, he dreams that humans can just walk through the air, and who should be able to do that, if not blond? At first he thinks the young man is crazy, but is also fascinated by him, and so the two become friends. Carlo becomes Blondin's partner and the two of them work together to develop a new variant of the Niagara crossing: Blondin will cross the falls on the rope with Carlo on his shoulders.
The dialogues are about the relationship between theory and practice as well as the idea that humans can fly. They are about creative forces, about fear and overcoming it, about courage and the sense of courage, about the merging of two people into one being. This merging is shown in the last scene, in which both on the rope above Niagara Falls speak each other's texts from the previous scenes. The path to this point shows an acrobat who is used to success, who is shaken in his self-confidence and thus finds his way to even greater performance, and that of the naive, also comical young man who becomes a man by realizing his enthusiasm. Eventually the crossing of Niagara Falls will be successfully completed.
production
Blondin, actually Jean François Cravelet, was a famous French artist of the 19th century who crossed Niagara Falls several times on a wire rope 330 meters long and at a height of 48 meters . The crossing of Niagara Falls by Alonso Alegría in the translation by Wolfgang Alexander Luchting had its GDR premiere in December 1973 at the Hans Otto Theater Potsdam.
The first broadcast of the studio recording took place in the 2nd program of the television of the GDR on July 2, 1977.
criticism
The Peruvian author Alonso Alegría said after attending a performance of his play in the Hans Otto Theater Potsdam that this performance was the best he has ever seen, better than his own in Peru.
Helmut Ulrich wrote in the Neue Zeit that the dialogues are a thoughtful, poetic and sometimes humorous text.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Neues Deutschland from June 27, 1977; P. 5
- ↑ Neue Zeit from October 6, 1974; P. 4