The brutalization of Franz Blum
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The brutalization of Franz Blum |
| Country of production | Federal Republic of Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1974 |
| length | 105 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Reinhard Hauff |
| script | Burkhard Driest |
| production |
Bioskop-Film GmbH West German Broadcasting |
| music | Michael J. Lewis |
| camera | Wolfgang-Peter Hassenstein |
| cut | Jane Seitz (as Jane Sperr) |
| occupation | |
| |
The brutalization of Franz Blum is a prison drama from 1974 with Jürgen Prochnow in the title role. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Burkhard Driest , who also wrote the screenplay and played his first film role. Directed by Reinhard Hauff .
action
After graduating from high school, Franz Blum begins a promising career as an insurance employee. But then he participates in a bank robbery, is caught and sentenced to five years in prison.
Blum comes from a better social milieu than the vast majority of his fellow prisoners. Therefore, at first he suffers enormously from the unfamiliar conditions of everyday prison life. He must first familiarize himself with the institutional rules of the game. The prisoner hierarchy is dominated by the feared criminal Walter Kuul. At the lower end of the pecking order is the ex-student Bielich, who has a heart condition and is viewed by the prison doctor as a simulant. In the past, Bielich had tried in vain to agitate the prisoners. Solitary confinement and the increased aversion of his "fellow sufferers" the intellectual outsider dealt with it. While walking in the yard, Bielich suffers a fit of weakness and is mistreated by Kuul with punches and kicks. Dull or gleefully, the inmates hardly notice the incident, except for Blum, who testifies against the thug at the prison administration. This unusual occurrence and a failed attempt by Bielich to use a dummy pistol to force a medical examination contribute to a tense situation in the prison. Cell relocations are pending. Long-term inmate Kuul is also said to be separated from a fellow prisoner with whom he has a homosexual relationship. After he was brutally beaten up by the vengeful Kuul, Blum has hit rock bottom and attempts suicide.
When a detainee detachment is sent to a labor camp to cut peat, Kuul is initially not there. The intelligent Blum now learns quickly. In the bog he uses the absence of the bellwether to improve his own position. Among other things, he plays fellow prisoners against one another with special rations that he has squeezed from the supervisory officers. Eventually he remains in a brawl with Kuul Sieger; however, he had previously secretly mixed sleeping drops into the dessert for the physically superior giant. In this way, Blum rises to become a leader within the prisoners. He earns the respect of the judiciary. The ladder covers Blum, because after all, he “ensures peace”.
With the help of tricks, Blum is elected chairman of the newly founded prisoners' sports club. From this position he and his clique want to dominate the prison-internal trade in tobacco, coffee and liquor. A inmate fabricated on a Blum arrangement allegedly of Kuul derived Kassiber wherein institution staff insulted and flight plans are indicated. The forgery is handed over to the head of the institution. Blum's archenemy and business competitor Kuul is thus sidelined and is put in the holding cell. Blum tries to finally win the skeptical loner Bielich over to his side and offers him an urgently needed heart medication. Bielich rejects the help because he rejects Blum's ruthless pursuit of profit. He even threatens to involve authorities and the public and to blow up the business within the institution. Blum comes under pressure again, but gives Bielich the opportunity to speak to the fellow prisoners during the sports lesson. The outsider offends again, meets with complete lack of understanding and is yelled at. Annoyed, you start an endurance run in which Bielich, as if rushed to death, dies of heart failure. After that, Blum was released early for good leadership and was able to return to the bourgeois world as supposedly rehabilitated.
background
The plot is based on Driest's own imprisonment from 1965 to 1968. Shortly before his legal state examination, he had robbed the Stadtsparkasse in Burgdorf . The shooting took place from mid-September to mid-October 1973 in Fuhlsbüttel and the Lührsbockeler Moor near Soltau in Lower Saxony. The film premiered on March 26, 1974 on ARD and was released in German cinemas on August 9, 1974.
Reviews
“A parable -like story of forced social adaptation: Franz Blum experiences the world behind bars as a model of a society based on mutual oppression and exploitation. Author and actor Burkhard Driest processes his own experiences and gives the film an aura of immediacy and authenticity that lets you overlook the occasional overdrawing. Well played and tightly staged. "
“There have been many prison films. Most of them were honest, and probably also committed, but they didn't go far because they got lost in the naturalistic description of everyday prison life or the psychogram of prisoners. Reinhard Hauff's film The brutalization of Franz Blum is a decisive step forward. This is nothing more of bad social romance, nothing of inconsequential introduction to the isolation of the prisoner, nothing of misery, which is of no use to anyone if the concept does not come with the concept. "
“Sterile, abundantly clear in his argumentation, without the courage to be imaginative and lacking in physical attraction. There is constant talk of the hardship of being a prisoner, but Hauff does not understand how to convey it sensually. "
“The food on German television has not yet been polished so nicely. Prisoners only sweat so photogenic in front of the camera of professionals. The smuggled tobacco is still smoky here aesthetically in the backlight. A flood of colors with a burning shed, highlights on the bald head of the prison officer - so much perfection makes Driest's debut a virtuoso thriller, but broken as a complaint or just as an insider's inventory. [...] The pillory on which Driest puts the circumstances shines in full color: too beautiful to be true. "
"One of the best German genre films of the seventies."
Others
The film shows a scene from the 1972 film Aguirre, the Wrath of God (director: Werner Herzog ) on a television set.
Awards
- 1974: Prize of the UNICRIT Critics' Association at the International Film Festival in New Delhi
literature
- Burkhard Driest: The brutalization of Franz Blum. Report. Ullstein, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-548-25669-4 .
Web links
- The brutalization of the Franz Blum in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The brutalization of Franz Blum at filmportal.de
- Interview with Burkhard Driest
Individual evidence
- ↑ The brutalization of Franz Blum. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Press reviews on The brutalization of Franz Blum on deutsches-filmhaus.de
- ^ Hans-Christoph Blumenberg : Film Tips . In: Die Zeit , No. 6/1975.
- ↑ Klaus Umbach: Potent type . In: Der Spiegel , No. 13/1974.
- ↑ Norbert Grob : Like thin tea . In: Die Zeit , No. 16/1997.