The journey into a hidden life

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Movie
Original title Journey into a hidden life
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1983
length 91 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Hans Neuenfels
script Hans Neuenfels
production Regina Ziegler (Ziegler Film GmbH & Co. KG (Berlin + Cologne) / Sender Free Berlin (SFB) (Berlin))
music Heiner Goebbels
camera Hans-Günther Bücking
cut Dörthe Völz
occupation

Journey into a Hidden Life is a German film by Hans Neuenfels from 1983 .

The film is considered an imaginary biography about Jean Genet .

action

The traveler is naked and smoking in a damp and dirty place. Once again dressed, he sets out on his bike for the city. A quote from Jean Arthur Rimbaud “I am someone else” is faded in (Rimbaud is referred to more often in the plot). In a bookstore, the traveler is observed by the bookseller stealing three books. The traveler runs out of business and takes refuge in a park on a bicycle. There he stops at a bust of Jean Arthur Rimbaud. He climbs the pedestal and kisses the lips of the bust. Then he is grabbed by a police officer. The traveler tries to escape, but the policeman pushes him to the ground. During the scramble on the floor, they both pause and almost kiss. The policeman first takes the traveler to prison, but finally frees him and escapes with him on a motorcycle towards Brest. At a stop, the traveler kisses the policeman and the policeman burns his uniform. At the next stop, the traveler is approached by a sailor who offers himself to him. The sailor also wants to go to Brest. The traveler and the policeman take the sailor with them on the motorcycle on the further journey. During a further stop, the sailor and the traveler want to break into a house, the policeman does not want to participate and leaves them alone for two hours. In the pigsty next to the house there is sadomasochistic intimacy between the sailor and the traveler. The sailor baptizes the traveler in the name of Jean Genet. The traveler confesses his love to the sailor. The policeman is jealous of the sailor and does not want to take him any further. The traveler sits down on the motorcycle with the policeman and they leave the sailor behind. The sailor shouts after the traveler: Think of me when my juice runs out of your ass.

Again and again there are reviews that show exactly how the policeman brings the traveler to prison and into his cell. The incipient tenderness between the two can be seen - with looks and gestures.

During an overnight stay in a guesthouse, the traveler and the policeman get closer physically and fall asleep together. In a dream, the traveler meets his father and mother. The father is represented by a belt whipping the traveler and his mother accusing him of his sexuality. When the traveler wakes up the next morning, the policeman has left him. He only finds a suicide note in which the policeman confesses that he loves him but is not homosexual. The policeman writes: "I love you, but without a tail. See you soon in Brest." The policeman wants to wait for him in Brest before they want to join a ship together. In front of the pension, the traveler meets a handicapped guitar player. He hitchhiked on to Brest with him. Arrived at a place by the sea, the traveler and the guitar player meet the policeman, the sailor and the prince.

Everyone meets again in a lighthouse by the sea. Here the traveler experiences five different, so-called lectures with the policeman, the sailor, the guitar player, the third and with the prince.

1. Lecture: The traveler is asked by a man who calls himself Buck Mulligan, who has just shaved and is only dressed in a towel, to travel on alone and fly like Stephen Dedalus once did . The traveler prefers to drive away with the police officer on the motorcycle.

2nd lecture: The traveler has become a girl because he no longer has a penis. He's bleeding under the dress between his legs. The scene refers to the policeman's farewell letter.

3rd lecture: The traveler, the policeman and the sailor are each given a book in which the further life of each is described. But they shouldn't read it. The traveler collects the books and wants to read them all later. The policeman wants to continue his journey and leaves the traveler behind.

4th lecture: The one-legged guitar player enters the room together with the sailor, the third and the prince and asks again and again: Who is the most beautiful in the whole country? The sailor wants to prove this to him and undresses. The guitar player also undresses so that you can see his whole body, including the complete prosthesis, and say that he is the most beautiful, the smartest and the most intelligent and that he is always lucky.

5th lecture: The traveler, the policeman, the sailor and the prince lie naked on a staircase, grab each other's armpits and pubic areas and fall asleep smoking together. The poem “Die Läusesucherin” by Jean Arthur Rimbaud is spoken in German off-screen by his mother.

The traveler leaves the prince and his disciples, as the traveler calls them, and travels on by bicycle. In a toilet, he looks at the books in his backpack. The books are about Alberto Giacometti , Stephen Dedalus , Francis Bacon and Jean Genet . Later on, on his bicycle journey, he discovers how the sailor falls to his death near a dam. He gets to the naked sailor and can only determine his death. He gets on the bike and drives on. In the final scene, the traveler is back in his prison cell, says goodbye to the audience and disappears.

It remains unclear whether he has really experienced everything and is just back in prison or whether it is all an expression of his own self that he wishes for, sometimes dreams and just processed some of it. An indication of this could be the individual travel sections and scenarios. These are repeatedly accompanied by philosophical monologues by the traveler, sometimes also by dialogues with the police officer. The monologues and dialogues are mainly characterized by vulgar, sexist, very direct and, in spite of everything, philosophical expression and symbolically describe the literature of Jean Genet.

production

The production was a joint production by Regina Ziegler and her production company Ziegler Film GmbH & Co. KG and the public-law company Sender Freies Berlin (SFB).

Performances

The film premiered on September 30, 1983 as part of the Berliner Festwoche .

However, the film was never shown on television. The then SFB TV game director Hans Kwier banned the broadcast because of suspicion of pornography. The film producer Regina Ziegler justified this: “The film was too much of a good thing at the time. Various ARD stations accused us of unbearable fecal language and refused to broadcast. The material in which Genet's homosexuality plays a leading role was ahead of its time and has not yet been broadcast. " The film was made available for the first time and once on May 11, 2020 for 24 hours online as a stream free of charge via ziegler-film.com as part of a company anniversary.

Director Neuenfels recorded an interview with Jean Genet about this film in February 1983 by Francois Bondy , which was to be supplemented by the feature film "Journey into a Hidden Life". It ran under the title I'm 73 and don't live in nostalgia, but only on August 9, 1984 on WDR.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ film portal
  2. ↑ Pure censorship , taz, December 10, 1994.
  3. ↑ Jean Genet is allowed out of the poison cabinet for 24 hours , Crew Magazine, May 10, 2020.
  4. ↑ TV program from August 9, 1984 .
  5. ↑ Helmut Schödel: The game is over. In: The time . March 25, 1983, Retrieved May 15, 2020 .