The Gustloff

Movie
Original title	The Gustloff
Country of production	Germany
original language	German
Publishing year	2008
Rod
Director	Joseph Vilsmaier
script	Rainer Berg
music	Christian Heyne
camera	Jörg Widmer
cut	Dirk Gray
occupation
	Kai Wiesinger : Captain Hellmuth Kehding; Heiner Lauterbach : Lieutenant Captain Harald Kehding; Michael Mendl : Captain Wilhelm Johannsen; Francis Fulton-Smith : Corvette Captain Leonberg; Karl Markovics : Corvette Captain Wilhelm Petri; Valerie Niehaus : Erika Galetschky; Detlev Buck : Chief radio officer Hagen Koch; Alexander Held : local group leader Escher; Nicolás Solar Lozier : Heinz Schön ; Dana Vávrová : Lilli Simoneit; Willi Gerk : Calli Simoneit; Anja Knauer : Marianne; Ulrike Kriener : Erika's superior; Thomas Wlaschiha : Boatswain Sterup; Thorsten Nindel : Lieutenant Lehmann; Waléra Kanishcheff : Russian submarine commander Alexander Marinesko ;

The Gustloff is a fictional drama staged by Joseph Vilsmaier , which thematizes the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff in January 1945. The two-part series was broadcast on March 2nd and 3rd, 2008 on ZDF and ORF .

action

The film tells from the perspective of the fictional person Hellmuth Kehding, the civilian captain of the Wilhelm Gustloff , how the ship leaves Gotenhafen . Over 10,000 people are on board, fleeing from the approaching Soviet army . On January 30, 1945 a catastrophe occurs. A dispute ensues among the numerous captains present on the navigating bridge as to whether the navigation lights should be switched on or not, which ultimately happens. This was preceded by a suspicious radio message warning of oncoming traffic. As a result, three torpedoes from a submarine of the Soviet Navy hit the German ship and capsize it. Around 9,000 people die, including many children. A subplot describes the desertion of a naval assistant on the ship and the search for her during the voyage.

Background information

Originally, the film was shot under the working title Harbor of Hope - The Last Voyage of Wilhelm Gustloff , but the producers decided on a shorter film title. The film was produced for the most part in Stralsund with a budget of over 10 million euros and 400 extras . In order to film the sinking of the ship, which should come across as realistic as the one in Titanic , the shooting team moved to a studio on the island of Malta .

criticism

“Extras swim in the water. A child is born in the lifeboat [..] There is screaming and waving. The assembly can't think of anything. She burns up the cut material as it comes. […] Dramaturgically, the approach to remedy the poverty of action with the terrorist panic of today is lost. An explosive device is said to be hidden in the ship! House search! This will be nicely painted in the first part. Until Detlev Buck does the suicide bomber. Dramaturgical botch. "

- Dietrich Kuhlbrodt : Specifically

“The ship symbolism makes it possible to tear Germany's downfall out of its historical context. Vilsmaier's main actor is the Baltic Sea fog, behind which all the causes of the catastrophe disappear. Crimes of the Wehrmacht ? Disappeared in the fog. Holocaust ? Is not mentioned. The role of victim is already occupied by German civilians. […] On Vilsmaier's Nazi dream ship, every negative figure is neutralized by a positive one […] Vilsmaier carefully distributes his Nazi antidote across all hierarchies and completely offsets the bad German with the good. "

- Stephan Maus : Star

“Rainer Berg and Joseph Vilsmaier manage to bring up the questions that the sinking of the 'Wilhelm Gustloff' still raises to this day and to show the various factions on board and the dramatic fate of the refugees. [...] The effort that goes into the two-parter is considerable, and the computer-generated images of the moving ship are also convincing. […] Otherwise, 'Die Gustloff' is at times a bit too conventional and clichéd, some figures look like woodcut and the dialogues ('Life is not a cruise, little one ...') are not always convincing. "

- Sandra Wulkan : kino.de

“German films are often accused of showing too little class. He makes everything too small, even the big issues of his own German history. [...] you have everything, they say in Hollywood. And what do you do with it? TV movies! 'Die Gustloff' could have refuted all of these prejudices. [...] And the material, the story itself meets all the requirements for a hit. The sinking of the KdF steamer 'Wilhelm Gustloff' on January 30, 1945 off the Pomeranian coast was the greatest shipping disaster of all time. Nine thousand people, the majority women and children, drowned in the icy Baltic Sea, only twelve hundred were rescued. [...] And yet Joseph Vilsmaier's 'Gustloff' two-parter wasted his chance. [...] This project must have been hit by the script as early as the script phase, because it lacks a quality that characterizes all great disaster films: narrative density, concentration. [...] Compared to the functionaries, the passengers of the 'Gustloff' appear diffuse, a monotonous mass of red-frozen faces of children and women, numb and anonymous like the baby carriages that stop at the quay from which the wrecked steamer leaves. […] On Vilsmaier's 'Gustloff', however, it is never quite clear where there is front and back, up and down; the corridors lead in all directions, the direction in none. In the chronology of the accident, the winter garden, for example, with hundreds drowned behind the armored glass panes, plays an important role. At Vilsmaier you can see Kai Wiesinger hitting the windows with an ax, but the tragedy of what happened remains closed to us because we don't know his background. This is not a problem with digital technology. It's a matter of craft. 'Die Gustloff' failed in a very elementary way, both as a narrative and as a film. "

- Andreas Kilb : Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung