The night in the border forest

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Movie
Original title The night in the border forest
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1968
length 68 minutes
Rod
Director Kurt Barthel
script Kurt Barthel
production DEFA , KAG "Youth and Children's Films"
music Peter Rabenalt
camera Wolfgang Braumann
cut Brigitte Krex
occupation

The night in the border forest is a German children's film of the DEFA of Kurt Barthel from the year 1968. The film of the GDR is based on the story by Peter Kast .

action

A small town not far from the Czechoslovak border in 1936: Within the Nazi youth groups and in the schools there is open hate speech against the enemies, including the communists . The young Fritz Brüggemann is now also marginalized, as his mother is in prison and his father has gone into hiding as an avowed communist. The pupils plan to beat up their father's hiding place in Brüggemann, but Albert Klose intervenes. He sympathizes with Fritz, would like to see himself as a fighter on the side of the communists and dreams of fighting the Nazis in Spain. His father, who was previously active in the SPD, apparently keeps out of everything and also pretends to his son that he is no longer active. Albert sees his father as a coward and wants to take action himself. That makes him careless, especially since he doesn't know that his father works underground and is on the Nazis' black list. In the meantime, Fritz says goodbye to his father, who is secretly fleeing across the Czechoslovak border to meet his comrades.

During a youth fight, Albert steals the Nazi flag from the “hostile” boys' squad, removes the swastika emblem and hoists the red flag on the town hall. As a result, all communists and socialists in the area are interrogated and some of them are imprisoned. Albert's father can only escape arrest through an alibi. However, when he receives an encrypted letter from Brüggemann, he is immediately suspicious. He is imprisoned together with his wife, even if Ms. Klose accuses communist Toni Gleiser, who has just been released from prison, of conspiracy. Albert hears this and alerts Fritz, who is now warning Toni Gleiser. He fled to the border forest with him and Albert. Here they hide in a hard-to-reach cave. The border forest is surrounded by the units of the Nazi Benningsen. Nevertheless, Toni, Fritz and Albert manage to cross the border over a rock. Fritz's father is already waiting there and hugging his son.

production

Kurt Barthel had made his first feature film Fräulein Schmetterling in July 1965 . The shooting ended in December 1965, but the rough cut was not accepted and further work on the film was prevented. Miss Butterfly did not appear. In 1967, Barthel turned to his second film, Die Nacht im Grenzwald , which was completed in 1968. The film premiered on June 16, 1968 in the Berlin cosmos and became Barthel's official directorial debut. Due to the predominantly negative criticism, Barthel finally switched to the DEFA documentary film studio in 1970.

The actor of Toni Gleiser, Jiří Vrštála, was known to the viewers of the GDR mainly in his role as the clown Ferdinand .

criticism

The GDR's contemporary criticism said that the film was exciting, but described it as “unsatisfactory. The dialogues seem cumbersome, forced, some passages […] do not come out entirely credible. ”The not always understandable plot and the artificial play of the child actors were also criticized.

For the lexicon of international films , Die Nacht im Grenzwald was a "solidly staged attempt to use the means of a children's film to contribute to the confrontation with National Socialism and to address moral courage."

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Eo: fruits of a friendship . In: Neue Zeit , June 28, 1968.
  2. ↑ The night in the border forest. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 16, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used