The sons of Mr. Gaspary
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The sons of Mr. Gaspary |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1948 |
| length | 93 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Rolf Meyer |
| script | Kurt E. Walter |
| production | Young Film Union Rolf Meyer, Hamburg |
| music | Werner Eisbrenner |
| camera | Albert Benitz |
| cut | Martha Dübber |
| occupation | |
| |
The sons of Mr. Gaspary is a German contemporary drama from 1948 by Rolf Meyer with Lil Dagover and Hans Stüwe in the leading roles.
action
In the years of the National Socialist dictatorship from 1933 to 1945, a middle-class German family was torn apart. While the publisher Robert Gaspary, persecuted by the new government, fled to Switzerland with his eight-year-old son Hans, Margot Gaspary, Robert's wife, stayed in Germany with the other son Günther. A planned merger of all four gasparys in Switzerland will be impossible due to the political circumstances. The different politics and the completely different life differences - here the devastation of the war, there a life in the peace of a neutral nation - have caused the two halves of the family to go through completely different developments. Mother Margot is urged to divorce her exiled husband and as a result marries a Nazi general named von Korff who is loyal to the line.
1945, there is peace. Robert Gaspary tries to find his son and ex-wife from Switzerland. When they finally meet again, the Gasparys - Margot has meanwhile become a widow due to the late front-line death of their new husband - and the von Korffs have drifted apart and visibly estranged. Hans inherited the peacefulness, the understanding of democracy and the balance of his Swiss upbringing; Günther, a squadron captain of the Nazi air force during the war, is an ardent advocate of the ancien régime and believes that the war was (unjustly) only lost because of the superiority of the enemy. While the two brothers are still young enough to gradually get closer to each other, the distance between Margot and Günther remains, especially since her husband has reoriented himself in the meantime. Margot Gaspary von Korff finally renounces her former husband in favor of the new, younger woman, Sylvia Genris.
Production notes
The sons of Mr. Gaspary was shot in the Hamburg-Bendestorf studio , the exterior shots come from the Kleiner Walsertal . Helmuth Volmer worked as production manager. Erich Grave designed the film structures. Emil Papenfuß took care of the sound. The film premiered on October 26, 1948 in Hamburg. The (West) Berlin premiere took place on January 14, 1949.
Reviews
The film was criticized once as it is today for its downplaying and restorative tendency. Below are several examples:
Klaus Irler wrote in the taz : “The film 'Die Söhne des Herr Gaspary' from 1948 ... is about two dissimilar brothers in post-war Germany with the message: We don't need pacifist sissies, but rather young people who tackle the reconstruction. At the time, the film failed with the criticism that a Nazi propaganda film would not have looked any different. "
"A conglomeration of post-war problems (militarism, international understanding, refugees, consequences of emigration, etc.) in the context of a conventional family history that offers superficial, optimistic pseudo-solutions."
Peter Pleyer stated: “The sons of Mr. Gaspary is the first German feature film made after the end of the war which - disguised under the guise of entertainment - provides a rehabilitation of the war that the Nazis started. (...) With Günter, the viewer should be proud of belonging to a people whose external collapse can only be traced back to the mass of malicious enemies against whom it had to fight to defend its vital interests. "
Individual evidence
- ^ Alfred Bauer: German feature film Almanach. Volume 2: 1946-1955 , p. 31
- ^ Review in the taz Nord from November 13, 2008
- ↑ The Sons of Mr. Gaspary in the Lexicon of International Films , accessed June 19, 2019
- ^ Peter Pleyer: German Post-War Film 1946-1948, Verlag CJ Fahle, Münster / Westf. 1965
Web links
- The Sons of the Lord Gaspary in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The sons of Mr. Gaspary at filmportal.de