The third generation

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Movie
Original title The third generation
Country of production Federal Republic of Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1979
length 105 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder
script Rainer Werner Fassbinder
production Tango movie
music Peer ravens
camera Rainer Werner Fassbinder
cut Juliane Lorenz
occupation

The Third Generation is a black comedy by Rainer Werner Fassbinder about the political underground and terrorism from 1979. The film premiered in Cannes .

action

West Berlin , winter 1978/79: the third generation of the RAF terrorists are a local group of bored young people. They come from different backgrounds: Rudolf Mann is a salesman in a music store, Petra Vielhaber is the wife of a bank director. The self-proclaimed composer Edgar Gast lives with his family with his parents, his father is Police Commissioner Gerhard Gast. Then the history teacher Hilde Krieger and Susanne Gast - Edgar's wife and secretary of an American computer company. In addition, the terrorist Paul trained in Africa and two discharged Bundeswehr soldiers - the Afro-German Franz Walsch and Bernhard von Stein. The leader of the group is August Brem (an agent provocateur ). They chose Arthur Schopenhauer's “ The World as Will and Idea ” as a distinguishing mark , but the group lacks political ideas and social utopias.

The third generation carries out their actions in West Berlin. Three members steal passports from a residents' registration office . The cell experienced a setback when Paul was shot and killed by a police killing squad led by Inspector Gast. The group then moves underground. The former apartment of the group is searched by Inspector Gast and his people. You only meet the confused Bernhard. The third generation, disguised and given new identities, steals money in a bank robbery in the bank of Petra's husband Hans Vielhaber. Petra kills Hans with several shots, but is shot by the police in Schöneberg Town Hall when she tries to place an explosive device built by Franz, which August has given her.

Bernhard had previously secretly observed a meeting between PJ Lurz and August and then the delivery of the bomb from Franz to August in an Asian restaurant.

Shortly afterwards, Franz is shot by the police at the grave of his girlfriend who is addicted to heroin. Bernhard finally confronts Inspector Gast that he saw through the game and recognized August Brem as the group's traitor, but also pays for this with his life: Guest throws Bernhard over the railing into the stairwell.

Brem has his double game paid for by the American entrepreneur Peter Lurz, who wants to sell his search computer in the FRG and therefore supports the terrorist attacks. He founded the revolutionary cell together with Commissioner Gast, who is persecuting the terrorists. In order to force the authorities of the FRG to buy new computers, the US entrepreneur Lurz, who knows about the agreement, is kidnapped. The remaining members of the group shoot a confessional video in which the computer representative turns hostage to the public and announces that he is “being held here in the name of the people and for the good of them” .

History of origin

Fassbinder realized the third generation after the co-production Germany in autumn , in which numerous well-known filmmakers had dealt with the events of autumn 1977 . The title of the film refers to a third generation of terrorists invented by Fassbinder, alluding to the second generation of the Red Army faction that was active at the time of production (the real third generation of the RAF did not appear until the 1980s). The film was shot in Berlin in early 1979. His "comedy in six parts about board games full of tension, excitement and logic, cruelty and madness, similar to the fairy tales that are told to children to help their lives to be put to death" he structured with sayings that he responded to while filming in public toilets met. These documents were interpreted by contemporary critics as a symbol of a broken sexuality or as an attempt to vent Fassbinder's fears.

When the WDR and the Berlin Senate were informed of the content of the film, they canceled their financial commitments for the project. Fassbinder then went into debt and produced The Third Generation alone. Actor Volker Spengler , who played August Brem, viewed this as a kind of subtle censorship. Cooper advertised with the phrase "I throw bombs, I make films" for the third generation .

Reviews

The film premiered on May 13, 1979 at the Cannes Film Festival out of competition. American and French critics hailed the film as the most exciting of the festival. “An effective, cinematographic exercise in style and one of the most terrifying political films that we have ever seen from across the Rhine,” says the French daily Le Figaro . The West German film critics largely rejected the third generation when it started in cinemas on September 14, 1979. Fassbinder has nothing essential to say in his comedy and is confusing in its narrative, according to Joe Hill ( film-dienst ). "For Fassbinder, the terrorists are naive children, the women predominantly hysterical, the men poor copies of those well-known cigarette advertising figures that go their way." At the time , the film met with little acceptance. The film is an “absurd farce” and one wonders whether Fassbinder's staging is tasteless in view of the kidnapping scene reminiscent of the Schleyer drama. The third generation is comedy, melodrama, documentary film and diary all at the same time and sometimes "as indescribably crazy as if Jerry Lewis and Robert Bresson had teamed up" . Der Spiegel was reminded of the works of Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol's thriller Nada (1974) and, technically, of Fassbinder's last film In a Year with 13 Moons (1978), but the film was just as confusing as his theses. “'The third generation' is clear-cut, rigorous and shrill.” Wolfram Schütte ( Frankfurter Rundschau ) commented significantly more positively, reviewing the film as “an ice-cold piece of cinema, modern, current cinema from the Federal Republic of our days” .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b cf. Review by Joe Hill in: film-dienst 20/1979
  2. ↑ a b c cf. The third generation: an insane fairy tale . In: Die Zeit , No. 38/1978
  3. ↑ Fassbinder's Terrorists . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1979, pp. 201 ( online ).
  4. ↑ a b The third generation . In: The large TV feature film film lexicon (CD-ROM). Directmedia Publ., 2006. - ISBN 978-3-89853-036-1
  5. ↑ Peter Buchka: Terror as a Comedy. (No longer available online.) In: filmportal.de. Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 16, 1979, formerly in the original ; Retrieved April 6, 2016 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.filmportal.de
  6. ↑ a b Wolfram Schütte: A Feyer evening for cosiness . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , September 17, 1979 (accessed on August 23, 2009 via filmportal.de)
  7. ↑ Brave slobs . In: Der Spiegel . No. 38 , 1979, pp. 257 ( online ).