Eisenhans (film)

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Movie
Original title Eisenhans
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1983
length 109 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Tankred Dorst
script Tankred Dorst; Ursula Ehler
production Helmut Krapp ( Bavaria Filmverleih- und Produktions GmbH ; Westdeutscher Rundfunk )
music Bert reason
camera Jürgen Juerges
cut Stefan Arnsten ; Liesgret Schmitt-Klink ( anonymous )
occupation

Eisenhans is a feature film by the German playwright and writer Tankred Dorst from 1983. The plot of the black and white film is set in Upper Franconia on the German-German border . The film is based on the book of the same name, for which Dorst received the Literature Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in 1983 .

The stage director's cinema debut was described by him as "A bad German fairy tale" (see Der Eisenhans ). Gerhard Olschewski was awarded the German Film Prize for his role as Eisenhans as the best leading actor .

action

The simple, coarse-looking truck driver Hans Schroth ( Gerhard Olschewski ), known as "Eisenhans" because of his strength, lives with his wife Sophie ( Hannelore Hoger ) and his moronic daughter Marga ( Susanne Lothar ) on the German-German border. Not only is the geographical location isolated, Hans also finds little emotional closeness with his wife and in his social environment. Only his boss, the brewery owner Feininger, is a friend despite great social, intellectual and habitual differences, as Hans protected the then weak boy from the other children when they were at school together. Feininger's new fiancée Ingrid urges him to keep more distance "from these people".

He focuses all his affection on his younger teenage daughter, whom, contrary to the villagers' expectation, he does not shyly hide because of her mental handicap, but with whom he wants to actively participate in village life. His relationship with her becomes closer the more she is laughed at by her peers and other villagers in his efforts. He finally prefers the girl to his older daughter Hilde, who is already working and who lives in the nearby district town, who reacts with jealousy at the weekend family visits. She is also ashamed of her mentally handicapped sister, as she too is mocked for it.

Her mother takes Marga with her to her work as a cook in the “Wolfsschlucht” inn, where she wanders around and exposes herself in the men's room, watched by old Habek and a passing representative. Schroth fears that men will soon approach Marga. He confronts her and notices a desire of his own which, after attending a church festival , leads to sexual abuse in the chicken coop while drunk , which does not go unnoticed by the mother.

When the people around them suspected the incestuous relationship that finally manifested itself and, on Feininger's advice, Marga was placed in the care of a pastor , Eisenhans reacted with blind aggression, stepped in the door of the marital bedroom while drunk and threatened to kill his wife there. It is difficult for him to let Marga go, although he knows that his behavior will drag himself and everyone else into ruin. When Marga unexpectedly returns home, he begins to drink more heavily, becomes more and more aggressive and his friend Feininger turns away from him. After his wife reported him for fear that he might harm her, he was arrested by the police.

Production notes

Eisenhans , a film and television joint production, was made between July 12 and August 25, 1982 in the vicinity of Kronach , Ludwigsstadt and Lauenstein in Upper Franconia. The film premiered on March 25, 1983. Since Eisenhans was a co-production with the WDR, the Dorst film could also be viewed on TV for the first time on September 4, 1989 on ARD.

backgrounds

Dorst's drama was inspired by a press article that reported on a family man from the region who was imprisoned for the sexual abuse of his daughter and who died there by suicide . Before that, he is said to have participated in all shooting festivals and church fairs with his daughter and only danced with her because he could not find another dancer for her.

The drama takes place in the Franconian Forest , a symbolically charged landscape of the border area where Dorst grew up. The border, which he perceived as a crack in the landscape and in the souls of the people living there, is indicated in many ways in the film. The unreality of the area, which is characterized by decay and lethargy, is also reflected in the sadness of the Schroth family's living environment. Surreal dream sequences go hand in hand with no less surreal actual circumstances. The restaurant is representative: A crack runs through the kitchen of the “Wolfsschlucht”, the building is dilapidated and even the landlord walks on crutches and complains about the better times when the “VIPs” came.

Dorst, who saw himself as a layman in filmmaking, felt all the more free to explore the limits of film art. In his work on Eisenhans, for example, he was less interested in a realistic representation of a social drama than in a fairy-tale visualization of images. Just as he saw the basic pattern of all human relationships in real fairy tales, his fairy tale should also have a true core, but not exclusively depict reality.

Reviews

Tankred Dorst explained about his own film: “This should not be a realistic film (...) This is not a film that only wants to explain people from their milieu. And it's a fairy tale. For many people, 'fairy tale' means 'untrue'. But that's wrong. For example, in the images of Grimm's fairy tales we find the basic patterns of all human relationships. The pictures of fairy tales are pictures of symbols and puzzles for our lives ”.

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In: Cinema, 4/1983 (issue 59), p. 50.