The blue swords
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The blue swords |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1949 |
| length | 99 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Wolfgang Schleif |
| script | Alfred R. Bottcher |
| production | DEFA |
| music | Walter Sieber |
| camera | Ernst Wilhelm Fiedler |
| cut | Hermann Ludwig |
| occupation | |
| |
The Blue Swords is a DEFA feature film . The film, shot in black and white in 1949, deals with the biography of Johann Friedrich Böttger , co-inventor of the first white European porcelain .
action
Around 1700 the Greek monk Laskari travels to Berlin , the residence of the Prussian Elector Friedrich III. He claims to know how to make gold . The elector is interested in financing his luxurious wishes. The apprentice pharmacist Johann Friedrich Böttger becomes an enthusiastic assistant to the gold maker . However, he has to realize that Laskari is a fraud. Böttger flees to Saxony from the elector and the threat of internment in the Spandau citadel . Here he is hoping for the help of Count von Tschirnhausen . In Berlin he spoke of the production of thin porcelain, the "white gold".
The particularly lavish Saxon ruler August the Strong , however, is interested in the supposed art of making Böttger's gold and has him arrested. Böttger is brought to a fortress in Dresden , the Jungfern Bastion , and supplied with everything that is supposedly necessary for gold production.
The king waited seven years for Böttger to produce gold for him. Böttger knows that gold cannot be produced. Instead, he experiments with making white porcelain. Until then, this precious material was only produced in China . Böttger hopes that the king will release him if he gives him access to this white gold. In order to exert pressure, King Böttger allows another supposed gold producer who has been exposed as a fraud to participate in the execution . During the execution carried out by the sword, Böttger's gaze falls on two crossed swords on the wall of the courtroom.
Although Böttger succeeded in unraveling the production of porcelain in 1709, the king did not grant him the freedom he had hoped for. The swords from the courtroom, which Böttger remembers, become the symbol of the new porcelain manufacture.
Statement of the film
The film, the name of which alludes to the trademark of Meissen porcelain , two crossed blue swords, wants to denounce absolutism and princely rule. In this respect he is in the ideological line of the recently founded GDR ruled by the SED .
As an artistic means of creating a mood, the different locations of the action are contrasted in the film in clearly different lighting. The bright state rooms of the Saxon ruler and the dark work rooms of Böttger face each other.
production
The film was made in the Berlin-Johannisthal studio with external shots from Potsdam , Babelsberg and the surrounding area. The blue swords was the first independent directorial work by director Wolfgang Schleif, who had previously worked as an assistant to Veit Harlan . In order to fulfill the plan , filming took place day and night. Schleif therefore took turns directing with the director Hans Heinrich . However, only one director, namely Schleif, was responsible and was the only one named in the credits. A similar situation occurred with the DEFA film Mayor Anna, which was made shortly after the Blue Swords . Here Schleif was the unnamed.
The premiere took place on December 30, 1949 in the Babylon cinema in Berlin-Mitte . The first screening in West Germany took place on August 25, 1950. A total of 3,299,432 cinema-goers saw the film in the GDR alone. It was the 42nd most watched film in the GDR that had also been shot there.
On February 19, 1954, the film was shown for the first time on television at DFF 1 . The length of the film varies between 99 and 92 minutes. The length of the original was 2699 m. The playing time of the DVD, which was released on August 16, 2005, is 96 minutes. The age rating of the DVD version is 6 years, the film version is shown as 12 years.
Leading actor Hans Quest was not seen in DEFA films for over 37 years after the film. It wasn't until 1986 in Caspar David Friedrich - Limits of Time , a co-production at GDR locations by DEFA and Allianz-Filmproduktion from West Berlin that he was there again. The set designs created by Karl Schneider are now in the Potsdam Film Museum .
Reviews
Despite its political tendencies, the film is described in the DEFA feature films dictionary from 2001 as "atmospheric" and "with excellent actors". The lexicon of international films criticizes the work as a "dry film biography that seeks to gain socio-political arguments against absolutism from historical events."
Contemporary criticism shows itself to be critical in various aspects. In the Junge Welt of January 6, 1950, Wolfgang Kohlhaase expresses that the social situation is not showing itself clearly enough and thus portrays the film as too unideological in the socialist sense. "The feudal world is indicated with little sharpness, the social opposite, that People is limited to a few primitively drawn figures. As a result, Böttger's position is also unclear, which can be found here somewhere in the middle between the two sides. "
In the Weltbühne , Leo Menter criticized the fact that Schleif could not make up his mind to tighten up the repetitive escape scenes, even if they were “partly extremely well worked out photographically.” Menter further criticized: “The princely scenes also relied too heavily on one Gold-bronze external baroque affair. ”The acting is praised.
literature
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films. The complete documentation of all DEFA feature films from 1946 to 1993. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , p. 79.
Web links
- The blue swords in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The blue swords at filmportal.de
- The blue swords at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Ines Walk: Biography of Ernst Wilhelm Fiedler. In: defa-stiftung.de. DEFA Foundation , May 2006, accessed on September 28, 2017 .
- ^ Alfred Bauer: German feature film Almanach. Volume 2: 1946–1955 , pp. 43 f.
- ↑ a b c The blue swords. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed September 28, 2017 .
- ↑ F.-B. Habel: The great lexicon of DEFA feature films. The complete documentation of all DEFA feature films from 1946 to 1993. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , p. 89.
- ↑ www.insidekino.de
- ↑ a b c F.-B. Habel: The great lexicon of DEFA feature films. The complete documentation of all DEFA feature films from 1946 to 1993. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , p. 79.
- ↑ Wolfgang Kohlhaase in: Junge Welt , January 6, 1950.
- ^ Leo Menter in: Weltbühne , No. 3, 1950.