The strange adventures of Mr. Fridolin B.

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Movie
Original title The strange adventures of Mr. Fridolin B.
Country of production Germany (East)
original language German
Publishing year 1948
length 85 minutes
Age rating FSK 0
Rod
Director Wolfgang Staudte
script Wolfgang Staudte
production DEFA
music Herbert Trantow
camera Friedl Behn-Grund ,
Karl Plintzner
cut Lilian Seng
occupation

The strange adventures of Mr. Fridolin B. is a German DEFA film directed by Wolfgang Staudte from 1948.

action

The painter Marlen Weber applies to open a studio . The application is rejected because, as an unmarried woman, she should not be encouraged to do nude drawings of men , for example . On the spur of the moment, she marries a stranger who pretends to be Fridolin Biedermann, and wants to get divorced immediately after the marriage. However, this is not possible because the actual divorce officer is on vacation and the representation does not get to the point.

The real Fridolin Biedermann, a tailor in a small village, wants to marry his fiancée Elvira Sauer, but cannot do so because he is said to be already married and has several legitimate and illegitimate children. Even the police officer, who has known him for a long time, becomes formal when he reads an official document about Biedermann's marriage and children and arrests Biedermann. The false honest man is arrested in the meantime, but the marriage with Marlen is not divorced.

Since his arrest in Biedermann's village is the first for a long time - the prison has meanwhile been used as a stable - the prisoner transport becomes a farce. The door of the wooden cart falls off and Fridolin manages to escape. He goes to the police prefect, who in turn finds that a certain honest man is still in prison. It turns out that the fake honest man had stolen his papers from the real honest man some time ago and, among other things, committed various crimes and fathered different children under a false name. It is instructed to show the real honest man in the files as released from prison, but in the end the wrong honest man is also released. He flees.

Although the facts are clear, the real honest man still cannot marry because, according to the files, he is still married. The real honest man tries to find the wrong man, but ends up with the mistress of the wrong honest man who has five children and - since the wrong honest man is on the run - now sees the real honest man as her husband. Soon he is overwhelmed with the upbringing of the five children. Because the false honest man has meanwhile faked his death, which is recorded in the files, the lover is now considered a widow. Marlen is now also listed as a widow. The real honest man still cannot marry because officially he is no longer alive. Only the Prime Minister decreed through an amnesty that the real honest man should be taken back into the files as alive.

Due to the new admission, Biedermann is now considered a newborn, albeit at the same time as a multiple father and husband. He is not allowed to marry, because the marriage can only be concluded at the age of 21 on record. Biedermann's long-term fiancé Elvira Sauer has had enough now. She leaves Fridolin, who now wants to go to the underworld. On the way he meets Marlen, who he had met once before in search of the wrong honest man and whom he had then taken for a thief. Together they register in a hotel and pretend to be a married couple. Fridolin has a guilty conscience because of the lie and the morals police actually come by for an examination. Both show their ID: from a purely legal point of view, Fridolin is actually married to Marlen, who was never able to get her divorce from the false honest man. And the administration is also satisfied with the files: According to the files, Fridolin is only eight months old, but according to the documents, he is properly married.

production

As early as 1944, Wolfgang Staudte had made a Tobis film entitled The Man Who Was Stolen the Name . The film was banned by the censors and was partially lost in 1945. The reconstructed version of the film was not premiered until 1996. In 1947 Staudte began a new version of the film, for which he was able to win some of the same actors as in the version from 1944. As a result, some scenes from the original, including a singing scene, could be incorporated into the new version. Parts of the criticism therefore count the film as one of the few defectors that DEFA produced.

The shooting took place from November 1947 in the Althoff studio in Potsdam and in East Berlin. The strange adventures of Mr. Fridolin B. had its premiere on March 9, 1948 in the Berlin film theater on Friedrichshain . This made it the eighth DEFA film ever to be published.

Regarding the taken over scenes and the film itself, Staudte said in retrospect: “The material was then found by the DEFA people in Babelsberg, we shot some scenes again. I don't know much about it anymore, because I felt it was a manual completion. Back then I started developing the subject matter of ' Rotation ' pretty quickly ... ”Looking back, Staudte saw a work in 1963 that“ went completely wrong because I started a story in a certain form, in a certain style, but it did didn't let the story end in this way, so that I had to change my style: that was the film 'Fridolin B.' [...] It already became clear to me while writing; The film started so attractively, but it didn't go on to the end, I had to change the style and the film simply failed. "

criticism

Contemporary critics described the film as "a sometimes very funny gloss on bureaucratism", which, however, becomes boring over time: "Because a two-hour joke that revolves around one and the same topic can no longer ignite."

The Lexicon of International Films wrote that the film "[led] Staudte to a dead end. Despite vicious attacks against the bureaucracy and original ideas, the director does not have the light hand for non-binding cabaret. For the subtle political satire [...] the present film [...] lacks logic and substance. "

Cinema found: "Well-intentioned, but lacking acumen".

literature

  • The strange adventures of Mr. Fridolin B. In: F.-B. Habel: The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 536-537.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Habel, p. 537.
  2. ^ Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 44.
  3. ↑ cit. after: Fred Gehler: Mr. Fridolin B. In: Filmblatt , 1978.
  4. ↑ CMM in: Weltbühne , No. 13/14, 1948, pp. 347-348.
  5. ↑ Klaus Brühne (Ed.): Lexicon of International Films . Volume 7. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1990, p. 3402.
  6. ↑ The strange adventures of Mr. Fridolin B. In: Cinema , Hubert Burda Media , accessed on August 7, 2018.