The actress

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Movie
Original title The actress
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1988
length 87 minutes
Rod
Director Siegfried Kühn
script Siegfried Kühn
production DEFA , KAG Babelsberg
music Jimmie Cox
Frédéric Chopin
Stefan Carow
camera Peter Ziesche
cut Brigitte Krex
occupation

The actress is a German feature film by the DEFA studio for feature films by Siegfried Kühn from 1988 based on the novel Arrangement with the death of Hedda Zinner from 1984.

action

Maria Rheine, actress at a provincial theater , falls in love with her colleague Mark Löwenthal. In order to show him this, she accuses him on the rehearsal stage of only marking and not playing with the heart in a mutual love scene in the play Amphitryon . During the next rehearsal of the scene, the two get closer and become a couple. They now spend their free time together, going for walks and swimming. During a walk in early April 1933, Maria wanted to buy a pair of shoes in a Jewish shoe shop that was guarded by an SA man because of the boycott of the Jews . Since Mark is Jewish himself , he doesn't want to provoke him and pulls Maria away from the business. In the bathing establishment, they both talk about their future and Maria asks him to go to Munich with her, where she can start a new engagement . But Mark, who is fired because of his Jewish origins, sees his future more in the newly founded Jewish Theater in Berlin , so they parted ways after an argument.

In the theater in Munich , Maria befriends her colleague Mario Montegasso, who makes it easier for her to get started there. The phone calls between Maria and Mark are becoming increasingly rare. In Berlin, Mark begins a relationship with his older colleague, Judith Baumann, who is also Jewish, who was able to bring her child to safety abroad and who suffers greatly as a result.

Maria premieres in Munich as Johanna in the Jungfrau von Orleans and Mark is sitting in the auditorium. After the performance, which is a great success for her, Mark does not show up with her, but just puts a bouquet of flowers with a greeting in her cloakroom. Mario Montegasso drives Maria to the train station in his car, but all they see is the departing train to Berlin. At the next opportunity Maria takes the train to Berlin to see a performance in the Jewish Theater. Here she learns that there are only tickets for members of the Jewish Cultural Association , but sneaks into the stage and watches Mark at a rehearsal. Mark sees her, runs after her, they meet in a forest while paragraphs 1 to 5 of the Nuremberg Laws can be read on the screen.

Mario Montegasso comes into Maria's dressing room and sees the otherwise blonde woman with a black wig sitting in front of the mirror. In response to his question about what she was rehearsing, she asked him to get her a passport in the name of Manja Löwenthal, née Weinstein. During her visit to Berlin she realized that another life without Mark is not possible, so she wants to move in with him as a Jew. So that the well-known actress Maria Rheine is not searched for, she fakes suicide with Mario's help and travels to Berlin as Manja Löwenthal.

But in Berlin it's not as easy as Maria imagines it to be. She lives with Mark in a small apartment and the only relaxation takes place on the roof of the apartment building, which is decorated with flowers. She also no longer dares to go out into the street after she believes she recognized herself by a former colleague while taking a walk during the 1936 Olympic Games . There are also problems in the house, because their resting place on the roof is being destroyed for racist reasons. Mark only sees the escape to the front as a help, takes her to the theater and introduces her there as his wife. Maria lives on in the theater because that is her world. She also loses her fear that someone might recognize her, applies to be an actress, and auditions on stage.

production

The scenario came from Regine Kühn , the dramaturgy was in the hands of Erika Richter and the scene was designed by Hans Poppe . The film shows longer excerpts from the plays Amphitryon , Maria Stuart , The Maid of Orleans and Saint Joan . The blue song Nobody knows you when you're down and out is sung by Bessie Smith .

The actress was shot on ORWO- Color by the Babelsberg Artistic Working Group and had its world premiere on July 9, 1988 at the 26th International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary . On October 13, 1988, the film had its festive premiere in the GDR in Berlin's Kino International and on April 3, 1990 it was shown on the second program of German television . In the Federal Republic it was shown for the first time as the opening film for the GDR Film Week on December 8, 1988 in Lübeck .

criticism

For Helmut Ullrich of the Neue Zeit it is an unheard of, an almost unbelievable story. The time background is drawn briefly but intensely in just a few scenes, and the image of the great love that connects Maria and Mark is just as sparing. Nothing sentimental or melodramatic and no psychological motivations. It is an impressive film that has found a new variant in the anti-fascist tradition of DEFA.

Margit Voss from the Berliner Zeitung says that this film was made for the young people who did not experience this time, but who have to work hard to acquire it. He does not have the pull of seduction, of soft emotion, because he is brittle and inexorable in his means. The chosen level of art, a cool, intellectual and sometimes even grotesque narrative style, wants to be accepted in all its idiosyncrasies, and every picture needs to be explored and translated in its sense and depth.

For the lexicon of international films , this film is the character study of an unusual woman who is played convincingly, but in the narrative style is rather distant and parable.

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Neues Deutschland, July 8, 1988, p. 4
  2. ↑ Neue Zeit of October 20, 1988, p. 4
  3. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of October 20, 1988, p. 7
  4. ↑ The actress. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed April 25, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used