The brownies
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The brownies |
 | |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1956 |
| length | 73 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 0 (previously 6) |
| Rod | |
| Director | Erich Kobler |
| script | Erich Kobler Konrad Lustig |
| production | Hubert Schonger (Schongerfilm Production) |
| music | Carl Stueber |
| camera | Wolf swan |
| cut | Horst Rossberger |
| occupation | |
| |
Die Heinzelmännchen is a German children's film by Erich Kobler from 1956 based on the legend and ballad by August Kopisch . It opened in theaters on September 23 of that year.
action
The shoemaker children Anton and Käthe find a rare flower in the forest that resembles a water lily and is floating in a small lake. They fish them out and take them home to show to their father. The explains to them that this is the flower of brownies and blooms only once every hundred years. As soon as it blooms, the brownies would come into people's homes at night and do all the work there. They do this as long as they are not seen and therefore nobody knows what they actually look like.
The people of the city are now gathering in front of the tailor's house because there is a fire there. Obviously his wife let the food burn because she chatted too long again. The governor helps extinguish the fire and tears his skirt in the process. The tailor is supposed to repair it and the captain leaves it with him overnight.
After the night watchman calls for the night, the city is quiet. Only the thief Halunk is secretly on the prowl. He had been able to sneak into the city unnoticed after the city governor recognized him at the city gate and chased him away. In the bakery, too, the baker makes his way home and quickly orders Bruno, his baker's boy, to prepare a few things for the next day. But he prefers to climb into the flour box to be able to sleep there undisturbed.
At the tailor's, the children lie very excited in their beds and look forward to the brownies coming and doing their schoolwork for them.
When the tower clock strikes the twelfth hour, the brownies come out of their hiding places and spread out across the city. They bake bread and cakes for the baker. They sew aprons and uniforms for the tailor. They resole all the shoemaker's shoes in the workshop and even do the arithmetic tasks for Anton. They plan the boards for the carpenter, build wagon wheels and hobby horses for the children. They are only disturbed by Halunk, who shakes a shutter late at night and then goes into the carpenter's workshop. The brownies hide and chase the thief out of the workshop so that he has to think that it is haunted. The washerwomen wash, dye, mangle and iron the laundry.
Halunk is still on a robbery and gets new shoes from the shoemaker's workshop. He stuffs a whole sack of shoes and climbs out of the window with them. However, the smart brownies quickly put a barrel under the window so that he climbs in there and they quickly cover it, give him a push and the thief rolls through half the city in it. The barrel shatters at the corner of a house and Halunk, dazed, flees after the gendarmes have noticed him. With the secret help of the brownies, they catch the thief and put him in prison.
When the tower clock strikes the fifth hour, the brownies pull back and the city comes to life. People see the works of the night with surprise and are delighted.
The curious seamstress, however, has only one wish: she wants to watch the brownies at work. Her husband warns her, because then the hard-working helpers would disappear forever. When the two of them leave the tailor's room, the youngest Heinzelmann crawls out of the closet. He had slept through the retreat and now has to watch as he gets to the others unseen. So he hides in a laundry basket and lets the Scheiderspeople carry him to the attic, where he awaits the night and the appearance of his friends. As soon as the clock strikes twelve, the little helpers with the red headscarves begin their hard work, just as they did the night before.
But the tailor's wife cannot overcome her curiosity. She scatters peas on the floor at night and hides behind a curtain. When the brownies enter the tailor's workshop, they slip on the peas. The tailor wakes up due to the noise. He had warned his wife and now a brownie not only gives her a long nose as a punishment, but is even driven from the tailor's workshop.
The citizens of the city are sad because the tailor's wife's curiosity has resulted in the brownies no longer doing any work for the people. But they learned from it that one shouldn't rely too much on others. You have to be diligent yourself. "And that's how it rushes from the clear waters of the brownie fountain."
To commemorate this story, the Heinzelmännchenbrunnen still stands in the small town.
background
The film was produced by Schongerfilm Hubert Schonger from Inning am Ammersee , after the script was developed by Erich Kobler and Konrad Lustig based on a poem by August Kopisch . The outdoor shots were taken in the old town of Landsberg am Lech around the Alte Bergstrasse, the Roßmarkt and in the area of the Klösterl. The Bäckertor (Landsberg am Lech) served as the city gate. Some girls and boys from Landsberg am Lech embodied the brownies.
The Heinzelmännchen had its premiere on September 23, 1956 in the Federal Republic of Germany. In June 1992 the film was released on VHS by Euro Video GmbH .
Reviews
“A legend is not a fairy tale. (… The) who play brownies here are certainly cute and cute to look at, but they are costumed human children and not the brownies of legend. (...) (These films) must not aim to satisfy curiosity, but rather must create a real, non-belittling fairytale atmosphere and not illuminate the mysterious with the spotlight. Seen in this light, this well-intentioned film is regrettably wrong. "
"From today's point of view, the adorable old-fashioned and leisurely, but with a lot of fantasy staged film adaptation of the Cologne ballad of the little men who dance across the screen as a silent play of movement in color and rhythm."
Web links
- The brownies in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Heinzelmännchen in the online film database
- The Heinzelmännchen at filmportal.de
- Heinzelmännchen come back to Landsberg Memories of Monika Kleinert, one of the actors and contemporary witness
- August Kopisch : The Heinzelmännchen in Cologne in the Gutenberg-DE project
Individual evidence
- ↑ Heinzelmännchen come back to Landsberg at Augsburger Allgemeine on November 5, 2010. Accessed on September 18, 2014.
- ^ The brownies at the Internet Movie Database . Retrieved September 18, 2014.
- ↑ The Brownies at Amazon.com. Retrieved September 18, 2014.
- ↑ Ronald M. Hahn , Volker Jansen, Norbert Stresau : Lexicon of Fantasy Films. 650 films from 1900 to 1986 . Heyne, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-453-02273-4 , p. 210.
- ↑ The Brownies. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .