The colored checkers
The Beaverskin is a German feature film of the DEFA of Kurt Maetzig from 1949. It was created by the radio play during the power cut of Berta Waterstradt .
action
In 1883, the maid Marie gave birth to an illegitimate daughter named Guste. Marie dies giving birth and Guste grows up with her grandmother. Although she prefers to be “rulership” as a child, she later also works as a maid. Here she met the master painter Paul Schmiedecke - this was followed by the marriage, for which her owners gave her checkered bed linen, which is usually used by maids. Guste gives up her job and becomes a housewife. Ten years later she is a mother of two. In addition to the older son Hans, the family also includes their daughter Susi. The First World War is difficult for the family: Father Paul is drafted and the unskilled Guste now has to earn a living for the family. When she realizes that she is indirectly working as a grenade turner for the continuation of the war, she quits her job and instead becomes a window cleaner. During the difficult times, she is also helped by the Jewish neighbor family Lewin, who take care of the children and, for example, sew their things.
Father Paul returns unscathed from the war and is most looking forward to "the colorful checkers", as he tells his wife with a wink. He is involved in the union, but becomes unemployed during the global economic crisis and dies shortly thereafter, seriously ill. Son Hans also loses his job shortly after he married the young Erika and became Christel's father. Hitler's power grows and Hans gets work again: like his mother years before, he is involved in the manufacture of grenades. Guste reproaches him for suspecting that there will be another war, but Hans is happy to finally be able to earn money again after four years of unemployment. When Guste's neighbor Lewin is deported, Guste promises to take care of their apartment. She reacts with horror when the family's furniture is auctioned a little later. Only Hans can calm her down. Hans, Erika and the children are killed in a bomb attack on Berlin. Guste is desperate and loudly expresses her anger. She is being arrested. She was only able to leave the prison at the end of the Second World War .
Her granddaughter Christel survived the attack on Berlin because she was working as an anti-aircraft helper at the time . In 1949 she was admitted to university after an entrance examination. She goes to Guste, who gives her a dress to celebrate the day that she made especially for her - from the brightly checked bed linen that she received for her wedding.
production
The colored checkers were based on the radio play During the Stromsperre by the author Berta Waterstradt , who wrote the material shortly after the end of the Second World War and had a great success with the radio play - it was broadcast six times by Berlin radio .
Waterstradt's exposé on the film was initially rejected by DEFA, but Kurt Maetzig took it up a short time later. At the time he had actually wanted to film a film adaptation of Eduard Claudius' novel Green Olives and Naked Mountains about the Spanish Civil War , but the script turned out to be unusable. He met Waterstradt by chance in the cinema and started talking to her. As a replacement for the film that could not be realized, he finally decided on Die Buntkarierten . Waterstradt wrote the script for the film.
The film was shot in the Babelsberg studio from 1948 to 1949 . The exterior shots were taken in and around Berlin, including in the Hennigsdorf locomotive works . The premiere took place on July 8, 1949 in the Babylon cinema in Berlin . The audience at the premiere included writers Arnold Zweig and Friedrich Wolf .
Before the premiere, the film's Soviet advisors had put forward various requests for changes in an expert report. Among other things, it was criticized that Paul as a representative of the working class only acts passively. His life should end more heroically, for example through a call to fight from Paul to his comrades on their deathbed. Guste's character was also criticized, for example, as a pacifist she quit work in the ammunition factory, but could have "acted more agitatively" and had to make other women protest against the war and stoppage of work. “It was by no means compulsory to take changes from the Soviet side into account in every case” - the director and screenwriters made no changes to the film. Waterstradt also refused to rewrite the ending of the film, after which Guste was asked to recap her life in a meeting. “[S] o something would have contradicted her [Gustes] character. I was very upset about how it is. And I had to be persistent. If I had given in, it would have only damaged the film. "
criticism
Contemporary critics praised the film as "a great epic". The director said “the atmosphere of the Berlin working class was captured and reproduced very precisely and sensitively. It starts with the buildings and ends with the actors ”. Particular emphasis was placed on the authentic portrayal of the actors who do not look like “actors in disguise”. “Kurt Maetzig, the director of Ehe im Schatten , staged the Zeitcavalcade with spirit and wit. Good actors stood by his side. “, Said Der Spiegel . Camilla Spira appears just as authentic as a teenager as as an old woman. In retrospect, Christiane Mückenberger also emphasized the performance of the actors: "It was [the] actors who, despite a few didactic passages and occasional wooden dialogues , gave the colorful checkers a freshness and sensuality that DEFA films would enjoy."
In 2000, Frank-Burkhard Habel called Die Buntkarierte "one of the great classics of DEFA films of the first post-war years".
The lexicon of international films praised Die Buntkarierte as “[l] the fate of human beings portrayed smoothly and in a straight line in an artistically impressive DEFA production committed to the socialist worldview.” Cinema wrote: “The elaborately produced DEFA family epic is at the same time a socialist chronicle of the union movement . Conclusion: Opulent classic of the GDR political cinema ”.
Awards
On August 25, 1949, various participants in the film received the National Prize for Art and Literature , Second Class, awarded for the first time by Wilhelm Pieck : Camilla Spira, Kurt Maetzig, Friedl Behn-Grund and Berta Waterstradt were awarded.
literature
- The colored checkers . In: F.-B. Habel: The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 91-92.
Web links
- The Beaverskin in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The colored checkers at filmportal.de
- The colored checkers at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ^ Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 19.
- ↑ a b c Seventy years with colored checkers. From the radio to the screen . In: Der Spiegel , No. 29, 1949, p. 33.
- ↑ Philip Zengel: Die Buntkarierten - A worker portrait over three generations. DEFA Foundation, accessed on July 31, 2019 .
- ^ Alfred Bauer: German feature film Almanach. Volume 2: 1946-1955 , p. 45
- ↑ a b The colored checkers . In: F.-B. Habel: The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, p. 92.
- ↑ Reproduced from: Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Ed.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 22.
- ^ Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 22.
- ^ Berta Waterstradt. Quoted from: Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 22.
- ↑ Neue Zeitung , 1949. Quoted after seventy years with colored checkers. From the radio to the screen . In: Der Spiegel , No. 29, 1949, p. 34.
- ↑ a b Hans Ulrich Eylau: An epic from the workers' life . In: Daily Review , July 9, 1949.
- ^ Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 42.
- ↑ The colored checkers. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed August 4, 2018 .
- ↑ The colored checkers. In: Cinema , Hubert Burda Media , accessed on August 4, 2018.
- ↑ See defa.de