The trace of the amber room
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The trace of the amber room |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1992 |
| length | 105 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Roland Graef |
| script | Roland Graef Thomas Knauf |
| production | DEFA , WDR |
| music | Richard Wagner |
| camera | Roland Dressel |
| cut | Monika Schindler |
| occupation | |
| |
The Trace of the Amber Room is a German feature film by Roland Gräf from 1992 , which was made in co-production by DEFA and WDR .
action
Lawyer Lisa Mohrbrink and her friend, the musicologist Ludwig Kollenbey, are in Dresden and attend a performance of Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold in the Semperoper . Then they want to meet Lisa's father, but find him dead not far from the opera. The investigation reveals heart failure, but Lisa doesn't believe this result. At the funeral she sees a man she does not know. A little later a postman returns a parcel that his father had sent on the day of his death to a certain Max Buttstädt in Plauen. He wrote on the package that it was only bait and will now be eaten - the father had been working on the whereabouts of the amber room for some time and was considered an expert in the field of amber. Lisa goes to Plauen and finally tracks down Buttstädt in Friedrichroda . He is a retired police officer and advises Lisa not to investigate any further. On the way to Plauen and later in her hotel in Friedrichroda, Lisa sees the unknown young man again and finds out that it is a certain Siegfried Emmler. She secretly follows him and finally sees Emmler meeting Buttstädt. Later she confronts Buttstädt and he explains the background to her. Emmler's father and other men such as a certain Galitsch were once involved in hiding the Amber Room. Emmler, on the other hand, believes that the hiding place of the Amber Room, to which there is only the reference “B. Sch. WR IV ”there to have found.
Lisa finds out from a simple conclusion that B. Sch. the castle Schönfels must act. She visits Emmler, but first finds Ludwig in his apartment. He had received a fake message from Buttstädt, with which he was brought to Emmler and thus also to Lisa. Like Lisa, Emmler also found Schönfels Castle as a possible hiding place for the Amber Room. A surviving postcard from Emmler's father, which contains the Göltzschtalbrücke and a rhyme, in turn identifies Ludwig as the reference to Wagner's Rheingold , fourth movement - WR IV. It contains a reference to a bridge including sunrise and sunset scenarios. When Ludwig and Emmler stand on the Göltzschtal bridge at sunrise, the bundled rays of the sun point to a point on the weir of Schönfels Castle. Both men explore the site and find a hidden door here that leads them into the interior of the mountain. Unnoticed, she watched the seedy Costello as she entered. He wants to keep the secret of the Amber Room at all costs. He found out about the research from the pastor of the village, from whom Lisa obtained information about the death of Emmler's father. With the priest he lured Lisa into an ambush and learned from her that the two men were at the weir. However, Costello arrives too late to prevent both men from entering the mountain. In the mountain, Ludwig and Emmler find boxes that only contain Nazi devotional items, weapons and counterfeit money. Both are frustrated and call Buttstädt, who admits he knew about the wrong track on the map. Emmler and Ludwig return to Emmler's house. Here Costello has now turned on the gas, Emmler switches on the light and is killed in the subsequent explosion.
Costello kidnaps Ludwig, who is supposed to take him to Buttstädt. Lisa arrives at Buttstädt before both of them. She threatens him with a pistol because he risked all of their lives for a joke. Buttstädt reveals to her that her father was actually a desk clerk who, among other things, brought him to the concentration camp. He lived on under the identity of the murdered art dealer Mohrbrink. Buttstädt is following his own plan. He leaves Lisa in his apartment and leaves the house armed with a pistol. A short time later, Costello appears in the apartment and threatens Lisa. The neighbor Frau Ladenthin comes into the apartment because she wants to bring a cake to the birthday boy, Buttstädt. Both women manage to overpower and captivate Costello. Lisa learns where Ludwig is being held and drives off to free him. Costello, in turn, manages to escape shortly after he has shot Frau Ladenthin. He goes to the Hotel Reinhardsbrunn, where the Swiss watch manufacturer Dr. Kobler has just announced a cooperation between the Swiss company and the watch manufacturer Ruhla. Kobler later retires to a room that is currently being remodeled. Buttstädt appears here, who in all his actions only wanted to lure Kobler from Switzerland to Germany: He has long since exposed Kobler as Standartenführer Galitsch, a Nazi criminal. Back then he saw the Amber Room in this room, but it suddenly disappeared. Galitsch reveals to him that the room is still there. The amber was hidden under the wood paneling on the wall, which is the same as it was almost 50 years ago. Costello appears and shoots Buttstädt. With Kobler he goes to the car with which he will drive back to Switzerland. The seriously injured Buttstädt secretly drags himself into the trunk of Kobler's car, where he dies. His body is discovered at the border - Buttstadt's late revenge. Lisa and Ludwig don't know anything about the developments. You want to meet Buttstädt the next day and decide to spend the night at the Hotel Reinhardsbrunn. The renovation work begins here. The wood paneling is torn off and thrown into the dumpster along with the plaster on the walls. Here you can see the amber gleaming out of the rubble without anyone noticing.
production
The trace of the Amber Room was filmed in Dresden and at the Göltzschtal Bridge , among others . The film is based on a scenario by Thomas Knauf from 1988. Christiane Dorst created the costumes and Dieter Döhl designed the film. The film premiered on September 30, 1992 at the Friedrichstrasse film theater in Berlin and was shown on television for the first time on July 28, 1995 on ARD. It was released on DVD in 2007. It was the last movie that Roland Gräf made.
The soundtrack is taken from Wagner's opera Das Rheingold , recorded by the Staatskapelle Dresden under the direction of Marek Janowski and by the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, conducted by Jiří Kout. At the beginning of the film you can also see excerpts of this opera from a performance by the Deutsche Oper Berlin in a production by Götz Friedrich (in the film store transferred to the Dresden Semperoper).
criticism
The film-dienst particularly praised the beginning of the film, which was "tightly staged ..." and excellently played, but suffered from "fake comedy and overloaded plot threads" in the course of the plot. Der Spiegel found that Roland Gräf tried to "revamp" the film with "ripper props". For Cinema , the film was a "scavenger hunt with little nutritional value".
literature
- The trace of the amber room . In: F.-B. Habel: The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 575-576.
Web links
- The trace of the Amber Room in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The trace of the Amber Room at filmportal.de
- The trace of the Amber Room at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ↑ The trace of the Amber Room in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- ↑ The Trail of the Amber Room. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Defa and the detectives . In: Der Spiegel , No. 40, 1992, p. 288.
- ↑ See cinema.de