The legend of Paul and Paula

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title The legend of Paul and Paula
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1973
length 105 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Heiner Carow
script Ulrich Plenzdorf
Heiner Carow
production Erich Albrecht
for DEFA
music Peter Gotthardt
camera Jürgen Brauer
cut Evelyn Carow
occupation

The Legend of Paul and Paula is one of the most successful in the GDR turned movies . It was created in the DEFA studio for feature films, production group Berlin , today's Studio Babelsberg . The direction was directed by Heiner Carow based on the script by Ulrich Plenzdorf (also DEFA dramaturge).

The premiere date was March 29, 1973; a day later the film was shown in the cinemas.

plot

Paul is unhappily married. The single Paula lives across from his apartment with her two children. Your encounter in a cellar bar becomes a passion. While Paula believes she is in seventh heaven from now on, Paul remains aloof, wants to preserve the appearance of his marriage and thus protect his career. He can enjoy the good moments, but he is worried about the affair and its possible consequences. It is only when Paula loses her son in an accident and then distances himself from him that he feels the depth of his love for her and fights for her. The two become a couple. Shortly afterwards Paula becomes pregnant again. The doctors are convinced that for health reasons Paula will not survive the birth of a third child. Paula decides in favor of the child and dies in childbirth.

background

The film adaptation of Heiner Carow was a box-office hit with around three million viewers. Originally there was a threat of a performance ban until Erich Honecker personally decided to release the film because he saw a film specifically for young people in “Paul and Paula”. The main actors Angelica Domröse (Paula) and Winfried Glatzeder (Paul) embody the romantic attempt to find personal happiness in life through devotion to love and the abandonment of unsuccessful attempts in order to fail. This allowed metaphorical references that were initially criticized.

The director Ingrid Reschke was initially involved in the work on the script.

The film also helped the Puhdys achieve their final breakthrough. The composer Peter Gotthardt won over the band to interpret the film music. The composed by Gotthardt film songs go to her , and if a person lives were beside doors open to the city (1971) and not go the wind out of the way (1972) to the first hits of the band. Ulrich Plenzdorf wrote the texts using verses from the Old Testament , especially from the books Hohes Lied und Preacher (Kohelet) . Both songs were found to have similarities with English-language hits, here Look Wot You Dun by Slade and Spicks and Specks by Bee Gees .

In the booklet of a CD with the film music that appeared after the fall of the Berlin Wall , Gotthardt wrote that there was a real role model for Paul: the young personal advisor to an SED functionary who died “in the mysterious assassination attempt on Werner Lamberz ” in March 1978.

Production designer Harry Leupold played a key role in the success of the legend of Paul and Paula . In this way he created a poetic mood that seems to be permeated equally with reality and fiction. Examples of this are the use of a double bed cut in half picture 40 / shot 136 Paula's bedroom and in picture 59 / shot 294, the trip on the painted Spree barge in the Rummelsburger Bucht in Berlin with Angelica Domröse and Winfried Glatzeder.

The stage version of Paul and Paula was canceled before the premiere in 1979 .

Based on the successful screenplay, Plenzdorf published the novel The Legend of Happiness Without End in 1979 , which, in addition to the content of the film, contains a continuation of the subject matter: After Paula's death, Paul meets Laura, who looks very similar to Paula. She helps him get over his depression, but they are not happy.

Ludger Vollmer composed the opera Paul and Paula or the legend of happiness without end based on the book. It does not end with Paula's death, but also refers to the second part of the book. The first performance of the work took place in 2004 at the Nordhausen Theater. The title roles featured baritone Thomas Kohl as Paul and mezzo-soprano Anja Daniela Wagner as Paula / Laura.

As part of the retrospective Rebel with a Cause: The Cinema of East Germany at the Museum of Modern Art , Die Legende von Paul und Paula was shown in New York in 2005 .

The film was shown for the first time on the television of the GDR on October 11, 1975, on the television of the Federal Republic of Germany it was first seen on November 7, 1975 from 8.15 p.m. on ARD .

other

Draft for production design in Singerstraße (but was not realized)

On the wall of Paula's bedroom hangs a print of the painting Child with a Dove (1901) by Pablo Picasso .

Most of the film was shot on Singerstrasse in Berlin-Friedrichshain . At the time the film was made, the east end of the street was a large construction site with many prefabricated buildings in the making. The film shows the extent of the urban redevelopment, for which entire streets were gradually blown away.

In one scene of the film, Paul takes Paula to a classic open-air concert. There is Beethoven's Violin Concerto given. The soloist is György Garay .

Paul and Paula cult

The Paul-und-Paula-Ufer with bench in 2011, before the redesign

After the two main actors went to the West in the early 1980s, the film was no longer shown on GDR television . It was customary to ban prominent republic refugees from the public consciousness in this way. Occasionally, however, the film was still shown in art house cinemas. 1993, the 20th anniversary, was The Legend of Paul and Paula in the presence of leading actors and Puhdys again premiered and then was released again. The film was very successful in East Germany and became a cult film . Paul and Paula were also the starting signal for the first wave of Ostalgia in the nineties.

A section of the riverside path on Rummelsburger See - where the scene with the barge was filmed - has been called Paul-und-Paula-Ufer since 1998 . For those in love there was a Paul and Paula bench there until 2012 , before the bank was paved with steel sheet piling and the path was paved over a wide area.

In the 1998 film Sonnenallee by Leander Haußmann , Paul and Paula are on a doorbell . Micha, the main character of Sonnenallee , meets Winfried Glatzeder on the stairs, who disappears into the apartment.

The album Die Suche geht weiter by the Berlin duo Rosenstolz , released in autumn 2008, begins with the title Ich bin mein Haus , the intro of which was taken from the legend of Paul and Paula .

In 2010 there was a film award called Paula , which is awarded by Progress Film Verleih .

Reviews

“It is precisely this unconditional feeling, together with an equally realistic, drastic and imaginative description of reality, what makes this film so special. ... He is also not afraid of slipping into kitsch; but it has a dramatic power that DEFA's other 'everyday films' totally lack. "

- Ulrich Gregor : History of the film

“A refreshingly entertaining and open film that mixes dream and reality, poetry and banal everyday reality and unfolds artistically with fun, irony and seriousness. The dramatically remarkable film makes it clear through its grotesque exaggerations that even in real socialist society, happiness is not born in the cradle from the outset. Both the emotional and the critical potential of the film, not least its plea for individuality and the power of dreams, ensured lasting public success in the GDR. "

- film service

“The movie is lousy; sad as a symptom of a frustration whose dream still produces stench. "

- Max Frisch : From the Berlin Journal

literature

  • Ulrich Plenzdorf: The legend of Paul & Paula . Movie count. 18th edition, Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch 173, Frankfurt am Main 2007 (first edition: Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellschaft, Berlin (East) 1974), ISBN 978-3-518-36673-8 (script version, differs from the novel).
    • Legend of happiness without end . 11th edition, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch 722, Frankfurt am Main 2005 (first edition: Hinstorff, Rostock 1979, ISBN 978-3-518-37222-7 (contains the legend of Paul and Paula as well as the sequel The legend of happiness without end ))
  • Winfried Glatzeder, Manuela Runge: Paul and me . Autobiography. Structure, Berlin 2008. ISBN 978-3-351-02665-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In the opening credits of the film you can clearly read "Gruppe Berlin".
  2. ↑ www.defa.de Film database of the DEFA Foundation
  3. ^ Filmdienst.de and Spiegel.de .
  4. ↑ 40 years: The legend of Paul and Paula. at berliner-woche.de, accessed on November 4, 2015
  5. ↑ Stephanie Warnke: The fall of old Berlin in the legend of Paul and Paula or Why Paula really has to die . In: WerkstattGeschichte 43, Klartext Verlag, Essen 2006, p. 6.
  6. ↑ Die Paula ( Memento from February 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ^ Ulrich Gregor : Geschichte des Films, 1968, ISBN 3-570-00816-9
  8. ↑ Max Frisch : From the Berliner Journal , 2014, p. 145, ISBN 978-3-518-42352-3