The capture of the citadel
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The capture of the citadel |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1977 |
| length | 137, 151 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Bernhard Wicki |
| script | Bernhard Wicki Gunther Witte based on the novel of the same name by Günter Herburger |
| production |
Jürgen Dohme Bernhard Wicki for Scorpion Film (Munich), WDR (Cologne) |
| music | George Gruntz |
| camera | Igor Luther |
| cut | Jane Seitz |
| occupation | |
| |
The Conquest of the Citadel is a German drama film made in 1975 about the fate of a German guest worker in Italy by Bernhard Wicki .
action
The German writer Hermann Brucker has so far led an orderly life without extensive contact with his surroundings and the outside world. When, while on vacation in Italy, he caused an accident in which his mother died, he decided, under the impression of deep-seated shock, not to go home, not to return to his old world. Soon he is as penniless as he is helpless, and from then on Brucker does not shy away from any difficult and poor (undeclared) work. He is humiliated in the process, but does not give up. Together with two Italians, a Basque and a Greek refugee, he builds the citadel for little money and with a lot of sweat, a villa high in the coastal cliffs for a wealthy and blasé client, the finance broker Faconi. During this time, there are brief moments of happiness. Hermann forges a tender bond with his daughter Alessandra, who is as beautiful as she is deaf and mute. But ultimately its failure is programmed here too: the gap between rich and poor, gentlemen and employees, seems insurmountable.
At the upcoming topping-out ceremony of the Protzbau, followed by an inauguration party, there is a cross-class scandal. The arrogant upper class of the area has rushed up with their souped-up luxury yachts and, in their aloofness, tramples carelessly on the not yet completed work of the five exhausted black workers. The ruthlessness of one provokes the rebellion of the other. Brucker and his four buddies finally pour buckets of paint and tar over the snobby millionaire society and drive them back to their status symbols floating off the coast. The recapture of the citadel is complete, but the small victory is short-lived. Soon the upper class will arrive again accompanied by the police. The state power hunted down the lumpenproletariat with great severity: one of them was shot, Brucker himself was beaten up and taken away. On the way to the local prison, he finally realizes that his consciousness has really changed.
Production notes
The film was made, intermittently, between April 24th and August 15th 1975 on Elba and the surrounding area. The Conquest of the Citadel premiered on June 30, 1977 as part of the Berlin International Film Festival. The cinema mass launch took place one week later, on July 7, 1977. In July 1979, The Conquest of the Citadel was broadcast for the first time on German television.
The buildings were designed by Bernd Müller and Jörg Neumann, the costumes were designed by Stasi Kurz .
In order to be able to realize the film, Wicki, who appeared here in personal union as director, screenwriter and producer, had to go into debt when filming in Italy was massively delayed due to persistently bad weather. The conquest of the citadel was a controversial event at the Berlinale, and it was also a financial failure in the theatrical release.
Wicki was nominated for the Golden Bear, and the film received the silver tape for best production in 1977 .
Reviews
“This film was caused by a German love, the longing for the south, the love of Italy. And wherever it falls, as you know from the concrete desert of tourist passion, grass will soon no longer grow. In any case, Bernhard Wicki smothered his subject with affection when he made a film of Günter Herburger's story "Die Zitadelle". The camera sees nothing because tears of sentimentality are in her eyes all the time: "O bella Italia". And the act, which wants to make common with the oppressed and exploited, does not convey anything, because it behaves like a general manager who has ended up in a bar with a beer: false fraternization occurs instead of insight. It may be that the misfortune began with the choice of material. Günter Herburger's story lives more from its exemplary ambitions than from realistic observations. The film would have to show its colors, picture for picture. Unfortunately, instead, he secretes feelings, albeit very noble and honorable. (...) Wicki's "Conquest of the Citadel", which begins furiously with the car accident, the funeral of the mother and the writer's sudden rediscovery in the Italy of the common people, wanted to deliberately demonstrate a division of German consciousness through a paradoxical inversion: the division of Italy into guest workers and sunny South. But the good intentions, demonstrated using the example of the German guest working in the south, turns into a strangely immobile and unmoving mixture of superficial neo-verismo (sweat of maloching in the land where the lemons bloom) and folkloristic sentimentality. The Italians are loud but cordial, they still know how to live, despite all the Povertà. And so two old aunts not only dance the tango in their picturesque bar, but also perform a sexual ride on two of the guest workers without Nordic complexes. In short: it is as sensual as in the cliché catalog of tourist wishes. The film embraces the Italians with the same warmth with which ladies in Italian restaurants call the waiter "Mario". "
"Bernhard Wicki's film adaptation of the novella by Günter Herburger approaches the socio-critical topic with the help of highly emotional narrative techniques and depicts the learning process of a German intellectual as an intoxicating change of consciousness - whereby the sun-drenched landscape of the south, conjured up in vitalistic images, acts as a catalyst for a revolution in sensuality."
"An attempt to depict social grievances and mechanisms of exploitation of the capitalist system in an individual fate."
Web links
- The Conquest of the Citadel in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The conquest of the citadel at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. CineGraph , delivery 4, Bernhard Wicki, D 2
- ↑ Conquering the Citadel. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .