The Metamorphosis (1975)

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Movie
Original title The transformation
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1975
length 55 minutes
Rod
Director Jan Němec
script Jan Němec
music Evžen Illín
camera Nicole Gasquet
Thomas Mauch
cut Horst Rossberger
occupation

The Metamorphosis is a German television film by the director Jan Němec . It is based on the story of the same name by Franz Kafka . The film was broadcast on October 30, 1975 on ZDF .

For a long time Kafka's works were not considered filmable. That only changed with this film adaptation of Metamorphosis . The director made the film shortly after he was forced to choose between exile or arrest, and eventually left Czechoslovakia .

action

The traveling salesman Gregor Samsa is lying in bed in his room and when one day he wakes up from restless dreams, he finds himself transformed into a “monstrous vermin”. He wonders what happened to him. At first he thinks it is just a dream and that he overslept. His alarm clock is set for four o'clock and now it is almost seven. His mother, sister Grete and father knock one after the other on the door, which is locked from the inside, and ask what is going on, whether he is not okay.

In the meantime, the authorized representative arrives to find out why Gregor didn't take the early train away. Gregor is supposed to open the door, but he doesn't, and his mother excuses him for not feeling well. Gregor tortures himself out of bed and tries to get to the door, which he only manages by crawling on the floor. But after he still doesn't open the door because he doesn't know how to get to the doorknob, the general manager is a little annoyed. After Gregor finally succeeds in turning the key in the door and operating the handle, he shows himself to his parents and the general manager in his current form. His mother passed out and his father began to cry. The general manager does not know what to think of the whole thing and retires.

Gregor's parents do not know how to deal with the situation at first. His father drives him back to his room, only Grete seems to understand and puts something to eat in her brother's room, which he gratefully accepts. On the same day, Gregor's father checked the family's financial situation, which appeared to be bigger than Gregor suspected. Since he has been the breadwinner of the family since the collapse of his father's company, he is reassured that there is enough money. Grete begins to carefully clean her brother's room and together with her mother she clears some furniture out of the room. When Gregor suddenly falls from the chandelier, both are frightened and his mother passes out again. He leaves his room and his father throws apples at him. He meets his son, who has been suffering from his injury for more than a month, with the apple stuck in his body as a visible sign.

Gregor's family is gradually realizing that despite his changed shape, he is still a member of the family and they have to put up with him. Every evening they open the living room door so that Gregor can get his food there. But since his sister no longer wants to clean the room, which has now been stripped of all furniture, a maid is employed. That doesn't clean to his satisfaction, however, and the food is just poured into his room carelessly. In addition, the family has got used to simply putting things that are no longer needed in the house in the empty room. There was a lot of that, because three rooms in the house had been rented to three gentlemen in order to have a secure income. They meticulously paid attention to order and cleanliness. They couldn't stand useless and dirty stuff. In return they love good food, which Gregor's mother prepares for them. One day they discover Gregor and quit their room on the spot. Angry about the whole situation, Grete berates her brother. In her opinion, it would not be reasonable to continue to live with him under one roof, he would have to disappear. Gregor took this to heart, retired to his room and died. The next day the chambermaid found him "dead" on the floor, took him out of the room and informed Gregor's family. She mourns a little and decides to spend the day together for a walk and to rest. In doing so, they agree to take a smaller, cheaper and more practical apartment than the current one, which Gregor had chosen. Mr and Mrs Samsa notice that their daughter has grown into a pretty young girl and that it is time to look for a husband for her.

particularities

The entire film is shown from Gregor's perspective. Its appearance as a vermin is not shown to the film viewer; In other words, the camera perspective is always from Gregor's point of view.

Just as Kafka himself considered it impossible to show the “insect” even “from a distance”, neither does the director show the animal. The literary means of the monologue in the film corresponds to the fact that long text parts are only spoken from the off. Close-ups of a once stately apartment from many perspectives create haunting images and thus depict the world of the Beetle. The looks and actions of the others, which make him a vermin in the first place, come into the picture from below.

Wherever Kafka gives details of the objects, the director follows him. Often these are props that fulfill several functions.

Although the director sticks closely to the original, there are also differences to the narrative: the film interprets it as an oedipal conflict. Therefore Gregor's parents are much younger than in the story. Even Gregor's death is in the motif of erotic tension. In order to underline Gregor's closeness to Kafka's biography, the picture of Gregor in uniform has been replaced by a picture of Kafka himself.

The director also shows that he paid special attention to the interaction-psychological element in Kafka's story with the closing quote in the credits, a note from Kafka on September 17, 1920: “I have never been under the pressure of any other responsibility than that of existence, the gaze , other people's judgment imposed on me. "

background

Franz Kafka wrote the autobiographical story of the same name, on which this film adaptation by Jan Němec is based, in just under seven weeks in 1912. It basically shows Kafka's troubles with his father. These flow very strongly into the father-son conflict of the narrative. Gregor Samsa's relationship with sister Grete is similar to Kafka's affection for his own sister Ottla. The transformation itself is not depicted as a drawing in Kafka's work, nor in this film, which rather shows what is happening from Gregor's perspective. At first Gregor still thinks and speaks, later only he is talked about. In contrast to the template, a cleaning lady is named as the operator, who appears as a young girl instead of an old woman as in Kafka's work.

Reviews

Prisma.de found that this staging by Jan Nemec was "entirely in the spirit of Franz Kafka", since he had already left it to "the reader's imagination" to imagine Gregor's figure and he "did not go through it in his work wanted to narrow the graphic representation. ”In the film,“ His terrible figure [...] can only be guessed from the reactions of his family and the environment, who accidentally sees him. ”

The website dieterwunderlich.de rated: “Jan Nemec filmed Franz Kafka's story 'The Metamorphosis' in 1975 for television and adhered exactly to the literary model. We hear Gregor Samsa transformed into a beetle, and we often see what is happening from his perspective, notice how the bedspread moves when he crawls over it, but he does not get into the picture. This is a clever solution that goes hand in hand with unusual and excellent camera work. Jan Nemec has succeeded in making a fascinating, oppressive film adaptation. "

The media services.info wrote similarly and found that the “external transformation is not shown” would be “In the spirit of Kafka [because so] it is left to the imagination of the viewer to imagine the incomprehensible. 'The Metamorphosis' shows in a shocking way how a person can become a leper and how his 'disappearance' appears as redemption. The symbolic act recalls the fate of seriously ill or disabled people. "

literature

  • Peter-André Alt : Kafka and the film: about cinematographic storytelling . CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-58748-1
  • Wolfgang Gast (Hrsg.): Literaturverfilmungen . In: Topics, Texts, Interpretations Vol. 11, Buchner, Bamberg 1993, ISBN 3-7661-4341-7 .
  • Sabine Reinwald: Comparison of the story "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka with the ZDF film by Jan Němec . (Student thesis from 2008 in the Department of German Studies, Bergische Universität Wuppertal) GRIN Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-640-44583-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus M. Schmidt, Ingrid Schmidt (ed.): Lexikon Literaturverfilmungen: German-language films 1945 - 1990 , Springer-Verlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-476-03592-9
  2. ↑ Flyer Institute for Education and School Psychology Nuremberg : School and Lesson Development
  3. ↑ Jonathan Owen: Jan Němec (1936–2016) , in: Studies in Eastern European Cinema, Vol. 7 No. 3, 311-313, Routledge, 2016
  4. ↑ a b Hartmut Binder : Kafka's "Metamorphosis". Emergence. Interpretation. Effect. Stroemfeld, Frankfurt / M. 2004, ISBN 3-87877-855-4 .
  5. ^ Sabine M. Schneider (Ed.): Readings for the 21st century: Classics and bestsellers of German literature from 1900 to today . Würzburg Lecture Series Vol. 4, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3004-4
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Gast (Ed.): Literaturverfilmungen . In: Topics, Texts, Interpretations Vol. 11, Buchner, Bamberg 1993, ISBN 3-7661-4341-7
  7. ↑ Wolf Dieter Hellberg: Reading aids Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis . PONS, 2012, ISBN 978-3-12-923077-0
  8. ↑ Ulf Abraham : Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis. Basics and thoughts on understanding narrative literature . Diesterweg, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-425-06172-0
  9. ↑ a b film review at prisma.de accessed on February 26, 2018.
  10. ^ The Metamorphosis at dieterwunderlich.de accessed on February 26, 2018.
  11. ^ The Metamorphosis (1975) from mediendienste.info accessed on February 26, 2018.