Effi Briest (2009)

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Movie
Original title Effi Briest
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2009
length 118 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Hermione Huntgeburth
script Volker Einrauch
production Günter Rohrbach
music Johan Söderqvist
camera Martin Langer
cut Eva Schnare
occupation

Effi Briest is a German film by Hermine Huntgeburth from 2009 based on the novel of the same name by Theodor Fontane .

action

At the urging of her mother, the 17-year-old Elfriede "Effi" Briest marries her former admirer Baron Geert von Innstetten, who at 38 years is more than twice as old as Effi. Effi moves with him to Kessin, an abandoned little place on the Baltic Sea, where the fun-loving young wife feels lonely and is not really happy even after the birth of her daughter Annie. Among other things, she suffers from nightmares that revolve around a strange Chinese man who is said to have once lived in the same house and who tell strange stories about Innstetten and his housekeeper Johanna. Effi is frightened and thinks she hears eerie ghost noises at night. When the attractive Major Crampas, a soldier friend of Innstetten's youth, finally turns up in Kessin, she seeks protection with him, finds variety in amateur theater play (the play has the telling title “One Step From the Path”) and a passionate affair begins. At Crampas' side, Effi gets to know true love, so passionately that she would even be ready to leave her Geert. But Crampas turns out to be a mere seducer and does not want to give up his wife and children.

Innstetten is making a career, is promoted from the district administrator to the ministerial council, and the couple moves to metropolitan Berlin, where Effi frees herself from her guilty conscience, blossoms again and feels visibly more comfortable than in the boring small town.

Six years have already passed when the baron (not by chance as in the novel, but with the help of the jealous Johanna) discovered old love letters that Crampas wrote to Effi at the time. Innstetten believes he will have to restore his injured honor afterwards, calls Crampas to a duel, shoots him, gets a divorce and takes little Annie with him. In contrast to the novel, however, Effi does not die of a “broken heart”, but after her parents also rejected her for social reasons, she and her servant Roswitha move back to a small apartment in Berlin and take up a position as a librarian. The last shot of the film shows a liberated and content woman who moves through the busy streets of the big city with her head held high, self-confidently and purposefully.

production

The fifth film adaptation of the literary classic initially adheres closely to the narrative structure of the novel. Only at the end does she turn away from this: Effi does not perish in society, but develops into a free and emancipated woman. These changes in the script were important to director Hermine Huntgeburth: “[...] I think if you look at the story again, you have to show something completely new. The pure retelling, the pure translation of the novel is, I believe, no longer up to date. "

The main location - for both indoor and outdoor shots - was Marquardt Palace in Potsdam and the associated palace gardens. Sand dunes were raised here especially for the shooting. The big scenes on the beach and in the dunes were filmed in the Polish city of Łeba .

criticism

Ulrich Greiner compared the film in Die Zeit on February 12, 2009 with Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film adaptation of the same material : “The images were black and white, the camera kept its distance. But the longer we watched, the more we were gripped by this fate, which in the end seemed like our own. Hermione Huntgeburth's colorful film makes the characters so contemporary and brings them so close to us that the longer it drags on, the more mysterious and indifferent they appear to us. "

Henryk Goldberg says “Like the 'Buddenbrooks' it is a dignified production, well equipped and well played. You can look at it and find yourself entertained in an appealing way. ”However, he criticizes the conclusion that deviates from the novel:“ As didactic as in the emancipation seminar, as intrusive as the soundtrack ”.

Film music

Film music by Johan Söderqvist.

  1. The proposal
  2. Birds in a cage
  3. Effi is alone
  4. Walk in despair
  5. Effi meets Crampas
  6. Trying to kiss her
  7. The Chinese and the bride
  8. Crampas
  9. Effi goes to the theater
  10. The cabin
  11. Effi runs to Crampas
  12. Roswitha
  13. Love meeting
  14. The ride
  15. In the dune
  16. The farewell
  17. Flowers from Gieshuebler
  18. In the carriage
  19. Effi goes home
  20. The duel
  21. To Berlin
  22. Effi is banished
  23. The letters
  24. Effi and the Chinese
  25. Annie
  26. Effi Briest

Awards

Supporting actor Rüdiger Vogler and the costumes by Lucie Bates were nominated for the German Film Prize in 2009.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ moviepilot.de: Effi Briest: Does she dare to jump into a new life?
  2. ^ Potsdam.de: "Film Show Year - Marquardt Palace"
  3. ^ Film review ( Memento from June 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ Die Zeit, February 12, 2009
  5. ^ Critique by Henryk Goldberg at getidan.de
  6. ↑ cf. German Film Award: An overview of the nominations at welt.de, March 13, 2009

Web links