The Bridge (1959)

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Movie
Original title The bridge
The bridge 1959 Logo 001.svg
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1959
length 102.5 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Bernhard Wicki
script Bernhard Wicki,
Michael Mansfeld ,
Karl-Wilhelm Vivier
production Hermann Schwerin
music Hans-Martin Majewski
camera Gerd von Bonin
cut Carl Otto Bartning
occupation
Movie poster by illustrator Helmuth Ellgaard

The film Die Brücke is a German anti-war film by Bernhard Wicki from 1959. It is based on the autobiographical novel of the same name by Gregor Dorfmeister (published under the pseudonym Manfred Gregor), who, according to his own statement, processed his personal war experiences with this novel and published. The world premiere took place on October 22, 1959 in the Alster-Lichtspiele in Mannheim .

In 1960 Die Brücke was awarded the German Film Prize in five categories. Internationally, it received the Golden Globe Award for best foreign film and an Oscar nomination in the same category.

action

April 1945 - the last days of the war. In a small German town, seven friends, around 16 years old, are about to be drafted into the Wehrmacht . Walter is the son of the local group leader and is ashamed of his father, who cheats on his wife and then brings himself to safety. Jürgen volunteered as a scion of an old family of officers to become an officer himself. Karl lives in the barber shop of his war- disabled father, who, to Karl's disappointment, has an affair with the apprentice girl whom Karl adored. Klaus and Hans were "sent to kinderland " because of the Allied air raids . Albert and Sigi live at home with their mothers, while their fathers are at the front. As the smallest of the clique, Sigi has to put up with some humiliations, which he doesn't seem to mind.

When the boys are actually moved in, their parents are stunned. Your teacher Stern, who is critical of the war anyway, tries in vain to urge Captain Fröhlich to dismiss his students. Those, on the other hand, ideologically shaped, look forward to the honorable fight for the fatherland. Karl and Walter also escape the conflicts with their fathers.

Already in the night after the first day of training, the alarm is given, and the new, as yet untrained recruits are to be sent to fight the advancing Americans. Only because of fears that the boys could weaken the morale of the entire company, they are finally assigned to defend an unimportant bridge in their home town, which is about to be blown up anyway, but they don't know. You will be subordinate to Sergeant Heilmann, who should ensure that there is no battle over the bridge.

At first the boys are disappointed that they are not fighting on the front lines, but then they eagerly take up positions at the bridgehead , ammunition their weapons and dig in. Heilmann wants to make the war game as pleasant as possible for the boys and goes out early in the morning to get coffee. But on the way he is mistaken for a deserter by two military policemen because he has no marching orders and does not carry a weapon; the only verbally ordered defensive position at the bridge is not believed him. When they want to arrest him, he runs away and is shot from behind. Since he does not return, the boys are now on their own; They follow their orders to secure the bridge and ignore the warnings of an elderly civilian and a few returning Wehrmacht soldiers as cowardice.

When an enemy low-flying aircraft under fire at the bridge, Sigi, previously laughed at by his comrades, is the only one to stand defiantly to show his courage and is fatally hit. The death of the youngest of all people really fuels the will of others to fight. When the American armored spearhead appeared soon afterwards and took fire on the Spanish cavalry that the boys had set up in front of the bridge , they set the first tank on fire with the bazooka , and a battle began. The US soldiers occupy a two-story house in front of the bridge as a fire position, in the basement of which German civilians have holed up.

Jürgen, who has positioned himself in a lookout in the tree, is shot by a sniper while he gives fire protection to Walter, who ventures through the field of fire into the occupied house and even reaches it. When Walter fired at a second tank through the window with the bazooka, he did not notice the German civilian standing behind him trying to keep him from firing. The man gets the jet of fire from the bazooka directly in his face and collapses with a charred face and excruciating cries of pain. Walter dies in the tank explosion.

An American soldier has seen Walters last few seconds in the house and is appalled that they are fighting a group of teenagers. To end the fight, he comes out of cover and tells the boys in English to stop the fire and go home. He uses the word “kindergarten” several times, which the boys perceive as mockery. In his indignation, Karl fires a volley of machine guns in the soldier's stomach, who dies painfully from it. Shocked by the sight, Klaus yells at Karl several times to shoot the dying man and only then notices that Karl is lying dead next to him with a shot in the head. From this Klaus gets a nervous breakdown, which leads him into the enemy fire, convinced that he himself killed Karl, where he is hit and lies dead next to the American soldier. In the ensuing silence, the Americans withdraw under cover of a smoke grenade .

While the two boys, Hans and Albert, who are still alive, are happy to have repulsed the enemy, three Wehrmacht soldiers appear with orders to blow up the bridge. The two boys, whose friends fell for the bridge, are completely upset and now oppose their own demolition squad with force of arms. When one of the three soldiers mocked Hans for the pointless battle and tries to force him to leave the bridge with his gun, Albert shoots him from behind without warning. The other two fire a volley at the two boys as they drive away and meet Hans. He dies when Albert tries to get him to safety.

While Albert leaves the bridge completely broken and goes home, the camera takes a bird's-eye view of the apocalyptic scene: On the bridge lie the corpses of Hans, Sigi and the German soldier who was shot by Albert, further back those of Klaus, Jürgen and the shot Americans while the two shelled tanks are still on fire. After a fade to black, the note appears: "This happened on April 27, 1945. It was so insignificant that it was not mentioned in any army report."

Comments, background

Filming

The new Florian Geyer Bridge in 2006
Film set "Biertor" in 2011
Sheet metal tape with scenes from the film on the bridge railing

A shooting time of six weeks was planned, which turned into three months. The budget had to be increased several times. Because Bernhard Wicki shouted directing instructions to the actors in front of the camera, the film had to be dubbed. Wicki dealt tough with the young actors during the shoot - for example, he threw sand in their eyes in the fight scenes or slapped them so that they could believe they cried. Afterwards he compensated her with coffee and cake or hugged her because he felt sorry for them and was ashamed of using such inarticulate means.

The location was the Upper Palatinate town of Cham , especially the old Florian-Geyer Bridge over a tributary of the Regen . Since Bernhard Wicki had to shoot the film in July, but the action takes place in April, he had some trees defoliated in the camera's field of view. The labor office provided him with the manpower he needed. The original Florian Geyer Bridge was demolished in 1991 for structural reasons. In 1995 a new bridge was built. On the occasion of “40 Years of 'The Bridge' - 1959–1999”, a sheet of sheet metal with photos of scenes was attached to the outskirts of the city in a semicircle of the bridge railing. On the premises of the Chamer Joseph-von-Fraunhofer-Gymnasium , scenes were filmed during regular lessons that take place in and in front of the German barracks.

Since it was impossible to get US tanks at the time of shooting, wooden models were used, only one of which was motorized. After the shooting scene with the bazooka it had to be rotated 90 degrees very quickly, which was done with long ropes and pulleys. This required 30-40 helpers, and the ropes had to be laboriously held out of the camera angle. If you look closely, you can see truck wheels with double tires under this tank model. The inner wheels can also be seen when the Sherman tanks appear for the first time. When taking close-up photos of the tanks, the view under the vehicles is covered by an apron.

actor

The original version of the film has neither opening credits nor closing credits in order to create a documentary character. It wasn't until 1969 that credits were added naming the actors and crew members. Three of the boys' seven actors had their very first film role in Die Brücke : Frank Glaubrecht, Volker Lechtenbrink and Michael Hinz.

The actor Til Kiwe, who played the role of the Knight's Cross, was actually a former Wehrmacht officer and holder of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. Vicco von Bülow, later famous as Loriot , has one of his first film roles here. As a staff sergeant, he calls the code word “beehive” several times on the phone.

Aftermath

Excerpts from Die Brücke were used as documentary recordings in the Soviet cult multi-part Seventeen Moments of Spring ( Russian Семнадцать мгновений весны ), 1973. In 2003, the Federal Agency for Civic Education, in cooperation with numerous filmmakers, created a film canon for work in schools and included this film in their list.

Wicki later said about the film:

“In the years since the 'Brücke' I have received thousands of letters from young men who wrote to me that they had also refused to do military service because of my film. That and the award from the United Nations for work on peace is one of the few things in my life that I am really proud of. "

- Bernhard Wicki : accompanying booklet, Bernhard-Wicki-Gedächtnis-Fonds, Munich 2004

Awards

"Die Brücke" is one of the German feature films that won the most prizes after 1945. With an impressive dramaturgy and strongly affective images, Wicki shows how the German youth who grew up under National Socialism grow up with a misguided idealism and are brought up to be heroic, which leads them consistently into the politically abused "death for the fatherland".

The film was awarded five times at the German Film Prize in 1960 :

Golden bowl (challenge award)

  • Fono-Film for the best full-length feature film

Federal film tapes in gold

Bernhard Wicki received another special award from the Federal Film Prize for this film in 1989 on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The film also received the Golden Globe Award for best foreign film and a nomination for the Oscar for best foreign language film, as well as other awards at home and abroad. In addition, he helped Wicki to work in the monumental war film The Longest Day .

Remake

In 2008 ProSieben produced an adaptation of the novel entitled Die Brücke . Directed by Wolfgang Panzer .

Reviews

On the occasion of the premiere on October 22, 1959 in Munich, the Süddeutsche Zeitung described Die Brücke as "one of the hardest, bitterest anti-war films that ever ran on a screen".

The up to then "most honest and harrowing German film about World War II" was not seen as an anti-war film by many viewers. In December 1959 the journalist Klaus Norbert Scheffler pointed out in an open letter to Wicki that the young viewers in particular did not perceive the film as an anti-war film, but enjoyed the depiction of violence. The film historian Lotte Eisner even saw Die Brücke as a glorification of the Hitler Youth spirit.

For the film critic Enno Patalas , however , Die Brücke went the furthest in denouncing the war compared to contemporary war films. Drastic scenes of violence dismantle the idea of ​​the heroic soldier's death down to the last.

In retrospect, the film stood for the end of the West German war film wave. Die Brücke is the anti-war film of German post-war cinema, "which uncompromisingly broke into the homeland film mendacity of the 1950s". In the opinion of the film critic Hilmar Hoffmann , Wicki's film still shocks "with its barren visual aesthetics and clear formal language as a rousing appeal to follow reason and humanity instead of the blind delusion of a ruthless ideology". For Peer Moritz, Die Brücke is a plea for uncompromising pacifism.

“In the abuse of youthful impartiality and ideals, the film reveals at the same time the terrible madness of the war. The important topic found a shocking and at the same time factual design. "

literature

  • Gero von Boehm : Bernhard Wicki. October 12, 1989 . Interview in: Encounters. Images of man from three decades . Collection Rolf Heyne, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-89910-443-1 , pp. 218-228, especially pp. 226-227
  • Manfred Gregor : The bridge. Novel . DVA, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-421-05870-9 .
  • Elisabeth Wicki-Endriss: The film legend Bernhard Wicki: Disturbance - and a kind of poetry . Henschel, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-89487-589-3 .
  • Elisabeth Wicki-Endriss, Arne Schneider: The bridge. A film by Bernhard Wicki . Movie booklet. Bernhard-Wicki-Gedächtnis-Fonds, Munich 2004 (24 pages).
  • The bridge : by Bernhard Wicki efter en roman by Manfred Gregor / ved Lars Bardram and Bent Lantow. Gad, København 1987, ISBN 87-12-91847-4 - Basically contains the script. In addition, comments and comments (explanations)
  • Klaus Kanzog : "Waiting for the decisive word". Puberty and heroism in Bernhard Wicki's Die Brücke (1959) . In: Klaus Kanzog (ed.): The erotic discourse: cinematic signs and arguments . Munich: Schaudig, farmer, single. 1989. ( Diskurs Film; Vol. 3), ISBN 3-926372-03-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Filmportal.de : Die Brücke, BR Germany 1959, feature film
  2. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 25, 1959.
  3. ^ Weser Kurier , December 9, 1959.
  4. ^ German Week, December 30, 1959.
  5. quoted in Daniel Kothenschulte: The Comeback of Heroes - On the History of Two Genres: Anti-War Film and War Film . In: The Parliament . No. 42, 2005.
  6. Enno Patalas: The bridge . In: film review . No. 12, 1959, pp. 316-317.
  7. ^ Philipp von Hugo: Cinema and collective memory . In: Bernhard Chiari, Matthias Rogg , Wolfgang Schmidt (eds.): War and the military in the film of the 20th century , p. 469.
  8. ^ Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz : Lexicon "Films on TV" (extended new edition) . Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 111.
  9. Hilmar Hoffmann: The bridge . In: Günter Engelhard, Horst Schäfer, Walter Schorbert (eds.): 111 masterpieces of film. The private video museum . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1989.
  10. ^ Peer Moritz: The bridge . In: Michael Töteberg (Ed.): Metzler Filmlexikon . JB Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart / Weimar 1995.
  11. The bridge. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used