The dead stay young (film)
The dead remain young is a German feature film from the DEFA studio for feature films by Joachim Kunert from 1968 based on the novel of the same name by Anna Seghers from 1949.
action
The three Reichswehr officers von Wenzlow, von Klemm and von Lieven drive a car into the forest in order to execute Erwin, a member of the Red Sailors, without a trial. In Berlin , his girlfriend Marie waits in vain because he has a child. Although she receives accommodation and money for an abortion from her aunt Helene , she decides to keep the child. She earns some money from the worker Geschke, whose three children she has been taking care of since his wife died. When she no longer expects to see Erwin again, she proposes to Geschke to start a family together and informs him about the expected child. It is more of a community of convenience, gifts will raise the boy who is named Hans like his own child.
In 1920 the Kapp Putsch took place against the Weimar Republic created after the November Revolution . In addition to the armed resistance of the proletarians , the general strike that has been called is primarily responsible for the suppression of the putsch. Here social democrats like Geschke and communists like the worker Triebel stick together. In order to put down the subsequent uprising in the Ruhr , Captain von Klemm and his driver Becker, after an excursion into civilian life, reported back to the Reichswehr and met his former comrades. During a trip, von Klemm is wounded by two gunshots and sends Mr. von Lieven, a Baltic emigrant , to his wife Lenore to inform her about it. He uses the opportunity to build a relationship with her. During this time, Lieutenant von Wenzlow, von Klemms' brother-in-law, had the insurgents shot down with artillery . A traitor walks through the ranks of the surviving prisoners who reports the leading fighters who are then singled out. This traitor was shot and the shooter arrested during the action. Lieutenant von Wenzlow orders his immediate shooting without a trial.
The young woman from Klemm met and fell in love with Nora, but he cannot get a divorce because he does not want to do without his son Helmut. From his chauffeur Becker, who is loyal to him, he learns that if the wife is to blame for a divorce, the child will be awarded to the husband. Since Mr. von Klemm cannot think of such a reason, Becker tells him the story of the relationship between von Lieven and his wife, which developed during the gunshot wound. Klemm is divorced and can marry his new love. But since his new wife wants to keep her old driver, he will have to fire Becker. When he found out, he was so disappointed that, with suicidal intent, he steered the car through the railing of a bridge together with Mr. von Klemm, where they fell several meters into the abyss.
One day Marie sees the young man again in a garden restaurant who was introduced to her ten years ago as Erwin's friend, but whom she was never able to speak to. When he leaves, she sends her son Hans to find out his address. Hans speaks to him and befriends him without knowing that Martin was his father's best friend. When Marie visits him at the address given, Martin denies being the friend he is looking for, as he lives in illegality . Hans becomes friends with the communist Martin and meets the girl Emmi with him. It is the time of the rising National Socialism . Geschke's second eldest son, the eldest died several years ago, allows himself to be captured by the Nazis. He comes to his sister Helene's wedding in SA uniform and congratulates with the information that Adolf Hitler has become Reich Chancellor . When Hans wants to warn his friend about the arrests that are about to begin, including Triebel, he only finds an abandoned apartment. Emmi orders him a greeting and says that he had to travel.
In 1936, Hans met Martin by chance at a train station. They go for a cup of coffee and talk, but Martin doesn't want to tell what he's doing. But Hans can convince him that he has nothing to fear from him. So Martin then tells that he is going to the International Brigades in Spain the next day and offers Hans to come along. But he has meanwhile also become a communist and is needed in the resistance in Germany. During an illegal posting of posters, the group is surprised by the police who shoot Heiner, the husband of Geschke's daughter. This is how Marie finds out what activities Hans is engaged in.
During the Second World War , von Lieven , who in the meantime had risen to become an SS officer, was able to take possession of the goods in the Baltic States that had been expropriated since the October Revolution . He is now married to his cousin Elisabeth and they have one child. But they do not live safely there, as the estate is in the middle of the partisan area. Von Lieven sends his wife and child to safety while he waits for military reinforcements. Before reinforcements arrive, however, the partisans attack and shoot von Lieven.
In the meantime, Hans is drafted into the Wehrmacht and is given the job of accompanying a transport to Berlin. He is then allowed to stay with his family for 2 days, where he meets Emmi, who comes to visit with his sister Helene. They haven't seen each other for a long time and spend the night together. Here he also tells her that he intends to desert . Once back at the front in Poland, he comes with his comrades in a battle of encirclement , which for him is the occasion, together with other soldiers the front to change. He secures the escape for the others and is therefore still arrested by the Germans and led to the unit's commander. This is von Wetzlow, who had just been promoted to lieutenant colonel. While the latter gives the order to shoot Hans immediately, he remembers his first murder victim in 1918, of whom he does not know that he was the father of the soldier who is now facing him, then von Wetzlow shoots himself, which he already does has planned for a long time.
Marie and Emmi, who is expecting a child from Hans, experience the end of the war in the air raid shelter in Berlin.
Production and publication
The dead remain young was shot as a black and white film in Totalvision by the artistic working group “Berlin” and had its celebratory double premiere on November 14, 1968 in honor of the 50th anniversary of the November Revolution in the Berlin cinemas International and Kosmos . On the television of the GDR the film was broadcast in the first program on September 9, 1973 and on November 16, 1973 it was shown on ZDF .
The dramaturgy was in the hands of Walter Janka and the scenario was created by Christa Wolf and Joachim Kunert with the assistance of Anna Seghers .
Reviews
Günter Sobe remarked in the Berliner Zeitung :
“The production design plays a major role in a film whose plot spans a quarter of a century and which is also played in many different locations. Gerhard Helwig's performance should be rated highly in this context. If it was possible to give each scene the typical and realistic color scheme in terms of its milieu, then that was to a large extent due to Kunert's objective style of staging. "
In the Neue Zeit , HU says:
“Many characters and events remain very sketchy, and some contexts and thus also some meanings will remain unclear to a film visitor who does not know the novel. The variety of shapes and plots of the novel should have been reduced a bit so that a film structure of comparable intensity could have been developed from the structure of the novel. "
In New Germany Horst Knietzsch wrote:
“'The dead stay young' is not one of the explosive films that make the screen tremble with loud sounds. It is a moving picture of German fate against the political background of the years 1918 to 1945, a piece of my own life and experience. "
The lexicon of international film writes that it is a humanly differentiated literary film adaptation that endeavors to achieve convincing contemporary color and naturalistic atmosphere, but which does not do justice to the complexity of the original to a limited extent.
literature
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 619-620 .
Web links
- The dead stay young in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The dead stay young at filmportal.de
- The dead stay young at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ↑ Berliner Zeitung of November 16, 1968, p. 4
- ↑ Neue Zeit of November 16, 1968, p. 4
- ↑ Neues Deutschland, November 18, 1968, p. 3
- ↑ The dead stay young. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed November 6, 2018 .