The mother (1958)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The mother |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1958 |
| length | 150 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Manfred Wekwerth (theater) Harry Bremer (film) |
| script |
Isot Kilian Harry Bremer Manfred Wekwerth |
| production | DEFA studio for newsreels and documentaries |
| music | Hanns Eisler |
| camera | Harry Bremer |
| cut | Ella Ensink |
| occupation | |
| |
The mother is the 1958 recording of the DEFA studio for newsreels and documentaries of a production by Bertolt Brecht at the Berliner Ensemble based freely on motifs from the novel of the same name by Maxim Gorki from 1907.
action
On the edge of a poor industrial suburb, a communist group tries to organize a strike. In their factory, the entrepreneur intends to cut wages by one kopeck. Pavel, the son of the worker widow Pelagea Vlasowa, also joined this group. At a secret nightly meeting in the Vlasova's kitchen, the group decides that Pavel should smuggle the banned leaflets into the factory. In any case, someone has to do it to relieve the distributor from the last day who was arrested, because some of them appear again. The mother tries in vain to talk Pawel out of sympathy for the Marxist group. Since the group had already been observed over a long period of time, the police suddenly intruded during the consultation and carried out a house search. However, the leaflets that are quickly hidden are not found. Because the police are extremely brutal in the search, the mother decides to protect her son and take over Pavel's job. The next day, instead of him, she distributed the leaflets calling for a strike against the wage cut.
The May Day demonstration becomes a turning point in the mother's life. If she previously believed that the tsarist police were behaving in accordance with the law and not taking action against peaceful demonstrators, she will now be taught otherwise. When the bearer of the red flag is shot, it is she who carries the flag. Pavel is arrested and the mother is hidden by the worker Semjon Lapkin with his brother Fyodor, an anti-communist teacher. The mother comes more and more under communist influence and is more and more involved in the party. She even learns to read and write together with several neighbors. Under the influence of Pelagea's friends, the teacher slowly turns into a communist . During the unrest of the peasant and workers' uprisings in the autumn of 1905, the mother took the lead in an effort to unite peasants and workers. Even a farm butcher reveals the truth to their arguments and he becomes a communist.
Pavel escapes from prison and visits his mother. She will see him for the last time. But since she doesn't know that, printing leaflets is much more important to her than cutting off a slice of bread for him. Shortly afterwards, the comrades who want to accompany Pavel on his escape are already there. Pavel is sentenced to death and executed for participating in a riot. This breaks the mother. However, the impending war drives them again. For the Bolsheviks she takes to the streets against the war and tries to expose the unreasonableness of the war. For her active participation she even receives the membership book of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (Bolsheviks). In October 1917 the tsar was ousted. The Russian proletarians are in charge.
production
Bertolt Brecht wrote the piece based on a draft by Günther Stark and Günther Weisenborn and with the assistance of Slatan Dudow and Hanns Eisler . The production by Bertolt Brechts dates back to 1951. The new production in 1958 was done by Manfred Wekwerth, as in 1954 when the play was first revived. The photo projections were designed by the brothers Wieland Herzfelde and John Heartfield . The camera recorded the events on the stage from the stalls with a full frame setting.
The Berlin Ensemble and VEB DEFA-Studio for newsreels and documentaries showed the documentary adaptation of the production together for the first time on the 40th anniversary of the November Revolution on November 9, 1958 in the Colosseum cinema in Berlin .
criticism
After the play was resumed in 1951 in the Christian daily Neue Zeit , ypsi found that the scene of condolence with the mother after the execution of her son, which was often perceived as repulsive, should be deleted. “The representatives of the Christian faith appearing there are in no way typical of the Christian spiritual world in general. In this play, however, they are the only spokesmen for the Christian worldview, which therefore only appears in a polemical distortion. The women's squabbling over possession of the Bible is disgusting. Brecht wants to denounce the hypocrisy, but probably all Christians among the audience feel that through this whole scene the Christian world view is not only criticized or denied, but made contemptible. Does Brecht want that too? We doubt it. ”In the monthly magazine Theater der Zeit, André Müller described the play as a preserve, which is important for theater studies but unsuitable as a feature film.
literature
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 423-424 .
Web links
- The mother in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The mother at filmportal.de