The Russians are Coming
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The Russians are Coming |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1968 |
| length | 96 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Heiner Carow |
| script |
Claus chef Heiner Carow |
| production | DEFA , KAG "Babelsberg" |
| music | Peter Gotthardt |
| camera | Jürgen Brauer |
| cut | Evelyn Carow |
| occupation | |
| |
The Russians Come is a German DEFA film directed by Heiner Carow and made in 1968. The film was banned before its premiere and was partially incorporated into Carow's feature film career in 1971 . The Russians Come was long considered destroyed, but a working copy was discovered in the mid-1980s. After its restoration and processing, the film was shown for the first time in 1987.
action
April 1945 in a village on the Baltic Sea: 16-year-old Günter Walcher is a staunch Hitler Youth and believes in the final victory . He and his girlfriend Christine find the corpse of a soldier on the beach. While Christine runs away in horror, Günter is impressed because the soldier fell in battle. A Russian boy of Günter's age also comes to the corpse. He realizes that the German Reich is at an end and walks away singing. A little later the boy, an " Eastern worker ", is hunted down by members of the Hitler Youth. It is Günter who follows him up to the roof in an empty hall and puts him there. When he tries to shake hands with the boy so that both can go downstairs and the boy can face the police, the boy is shot by a police officer and falls dead in front of Günter's eyes. Günter was awarded the Iron Cross , 2nd class, and the newspapers reported about it. At home, his mother welcomes him with a celebration on the occasion of the honor. Günter's father died at the front in Russia and Günter's teacher, who feels responsible for the boy, tries to clear him up: he himself received the Iron Cross in the First World War . At that time, however, he believed in Germany and not in a single man. The war is lost. Günter doesn't believe it, because then you wouldn't fight anymore.
He goes to the cinema with Christine and watches Kolberg . A little later he is one of the youngsters who are sent to the front as the last contingent. His mother and Christine offer to hide him until the end of the war, but Günter wants to go to the front. There he takes up a position in a house with other young people. He falls asleep and dreams of the Russian boy and his father. When he wakes up he is alone. He runs into the next village, but there is no one to be seen. He waits dejected and a little later is picked up by Russians in a jeep. The jeep hits a mine and the occupants die. Only Günter survived and fled to Christine. However, their parents send Günter away when the Russians enter the village. Christine's father, who was never in the NSDAP , commits suicide. Günter in turn goes to his mother and is arrested by the Russians.
While in custody, Günter - firmly convinced that right cannot suddenly become wrong - admits to having been in the Hitler Youth and receiving the Iron Cross for picking up a Russian boy. He did that for Germany and his fallen father would certainly have been proud of him. Only through a letter from his father does Günter realize that the father consciously sought death at the front because he could no longer bear the murder of innocent people. Günter is confused, but refuses to reveal the name of the policeman who shot the boy. Günter also covers the other children who were present at the event. The policeman is found and arrested anyway. When the policeman tries to assure Günter's silence about the act, Günter kills him in a maddened state. In his fantasy the murdered Russian boy appears to him again and again next to his father, to whom he shows, among other things, the principle of the box devil . Günter finally collapses and tells the guards that hurry up that he is not a murderer and that he does not want to have been the only one to blame. He is taken away in the ambulance. A little later, the Wehrmacht announced its surrender.
production
The Russians Come is loosely based on the story The Advertisement in the volume Ferien am Feuer by Egon Richter . The film was shot on the Baltic Sea, among other places, and was completed in 1968. A screening of the film was refused, however: The film was accused of “psychologizing fascism”. Other reasons were the possible association of the title with the crackdown on the Prague Spring that same year as well as English-language passages of the film; in one scene of the film the dead Russian communicates with Christine in English because she doesn't understand Russian.
Director Heiner Carow initially used parts of the banned film for the film Karriere , which was made from 1968 and which was released in GDR cinemas in 1971. The figure of Günter Walcher also appears here - as a 40-year-old employee of a corporation in West Germany who is supposed to betray a communist for his career advancement. Walcher recalls a similar betrayal at the end of World War II in this film. Here Carow worked numerous scenes from The Russians Come In . The film was criticized: “The flashbacks to the past have a noticeably emotional charisma and make the director's involvement immediately clear. The level of the present, on the other hand, appears sterile, appears aseptic, looks like a world out of a retort ”. Carow subsequently distanced himself from the film.
The complete material of Die Russenommen was long considered destroyed, but a working copy of the film was in the possession of the editor Evelyn Carow , which was finally edited and made playable in the mid-1980s. The film premiered on December 3, 1987 at the Berlin Kino International and was released the following day. In February 1989 it was launched in Germany and was shown for the first time on DFF 2 on May 4, 1990 on television.
criticism
The Russians are coming is dedicated to Konrad Wolf and was understood by him as "the second side of the coin, the addition to I was nineteen ". The criticism also took up the coexistence of the two films:
“When this film was made, the state border in Berlin was only seven years old and the country was still on the way to developing its own self-confidence. Where would [...] have been the place for a film that shines into the psychological well-being of a Hitler Youth, a boy who is not helped by a communist or a fighter on his way to life, who atones by destroying himself, who only gets nowhere goes down in madness? There was this theme […] in its perfect form, I was nineteen , Konrad Wolf's self-reflection. A young German in the uniform of the Red Army when 'The Russians' came. But the Russians are coming ? A German boy in a brown shirt, fanatical, chasing a 'Russian', incapable of change, only capable of repentance? It is easy to say that there were both ways, that both films are not adversaries, but rather brothers: Today, twenty years later. "
Other critics saw The Russians Are Coming as a counterpart to the Soviet film Ivan's Childhood - both in terms of content and style:
“Everything is told in a tough black and white style [...], some things seem close to the negative inversion; It is difficult to determine whether some of this is due to the laborious reconstruction of the original version. The stylistic range extends from blatant naturalistic moments to symbolic passages. The style is committed to the decade of production: Ivan's childhood has an impact - the Russian boy is also immediately reminiscent of Tarkovsky's famous harrowing debut film. "
The Russians come have a "stylistically idiosyncratic ... imagery," wrote other critics. “Carow has captured the traumatic experience [Günter's] in expressive images and an urgent as well as retarding montage. He creates time scenes from the inside out, pathological, unreal, then very calm again ”, stated Klaus Wischnewski in 1994.
On the occasion of the film's premiere in 1987, critic Henryk Goldberg wrote: “What moves me about this film is only a small part of the cinema, the bigger part is called history, ours. Because the fact that this film is now in the cinema is a process that is gratifying because it marks developments that have taken place in this country since the last stone was taken. "The film has" an artistic form that was ahead of its time ", The pictures contained a lot of symbolism and the game dominated" almost documentary authenticity ". Other critics wrote that the film “impressively and persistently conjures up the partly ghostly, partly grotesque atmosphere in a German town and the psyche of the people between war and peace at that time”.
The lexicon of international films wrote: “Provocatively, the film focuses on a fellow traveler as a victim, questions the boundaries between guilt and innocence and delivers an urgent plea for friendship between peoples and against sedition. Formally based on models of the Nouvelle Vague (Godard, Truffaut), the film captivates with its haunting imagery and honest 'mourning' about a seduced youth. "
Awards
In 1987 the film was awarded the state title “valuable”. At the 5th National Feature Film Festival of the GDR Karl-Marx-Stadt, Die Russenommen received the prize for direction (Heiner Carow), for costume ( Werner Bergemann ) and for editing (Evelyn Carow).
At the 1988 Berlinale , Die Russenommen ran as part of the “Panorama” series.
literature
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 499-500 .
Web links
- The Russians are coming in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Russians come to filmportal.de
- The Russians come to the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ↑ F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 499 .
- ↑ Günter Sobe: One man's "career" . In: Berliner Zeitung , April 27, 1971.
- ^ Konrad Wolf in: Film und Fernsehen , No. 7, 1980.
- ^ A b Henryk Goldberg: Cinema and History. "The Russians are coming" . In: Filmspiegel , No. 1, 1988, p. 14.
- ↑ a b Peter Ahrens: Old new Carow film . In: Weltbühne , No. 1, 1988.
- ^ Klaus Wischnewski: Dreamers and Ordinary People 1966 to 1979 . In: Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 239.
- ^ Henryk Goldberg: Cinema and History. "The Russians are coming" . In: Filmspiegel , No. 1, 1988.
- ↑ The Russians are coming. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed August 3, 2018 . Compare. Zweiausendeins.de
- ↑ See defa.de
- ↑ Cf. progress-film.de ( Memento from November 15, 2011 in the Internet Archive )