Ice Age (1975)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Ice age |
| Country of production |
Germany , Norway |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1975 |
| length | 115 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Peter Zadek |
| script |
Tankred Dorst , Peter Zadek |
| production | Gyula Trebitsch |
| music | Peer ravens |
| camera | Gérard Vandenberg |
| cut | Bettina Lewertoff |
| occupation | |
| |
Eiszeit is a German-Norwegian fictional film from 1975 by Peter Zadek with OE Hasse in the leading role as an old writer based on the person of Knut Hamsun . The film was based on the eponymous play by Tankred Dorst .
action
The setting: a Norwegian old people's home in the first years after the end of World War II: the German occupation has ended and the people are happy to have regained their freedom. A stubborn old man of around 90 years of age is at the center of the story, and he is in a political and social ice age. He is perfectly isolated and is ostracized by the dignitaries of the area such as the Sparkasse director and Pastor Holm because he was one of the few Norwegians who got too closely involved with the German occupiers. The old man is not just a collaborator, however, but also one of the country's most famous children: a larger-than-life writer and Nobel Prize winner. Due to his collaboration with the enemy, however, he was not arrested, imprisoned or made short work of him in 1945, as with Vidkun Quisling . Out of respect for the old man's outstanding life's work, this forced admission was left to the old people's home. However, the man of letters should answer for his behavior in an orderly court process. To this end, he is interrogated and the old man is also medically examined. You try to find out whether advanced senility or mental confusion was responsible for his behavior, and you want to find out whether the old man is still able to negotiate at all. But the old man is mentally wide awake and insists on his political views. He would rather be branded a traitor and criminal with his head upright by his compatriots than to be mistaken for a senile idiot.
One day a young man visits him in the old people's home. It is a certain Oswald Kronen. This man had joined the resistance against the Nazis from 1940 to 1945. Kronen has hidden a hand grenade in his pocket with the firm intention of using it to murder the old man, whom he sees as a traitor and Nazi collaborator. Soon, however, Kronen is captured by the spiritual freshness and intellectual sharpness of the old. You get to know each other better and begin to respect each other. They even laugh together and take walks. The Nobel Prize winner, who shows his son Paul and his second wife Vera ignorance and rejection and punishes both with intellectual arrogance and thereby constantly hurts, begins to ensnare Oswald and seeks his closeness. He wants to be part of Kronen's life and plans, the future, and enjoy Oswald's youth around him. When Oswald Kronen left the home again, the old man ran away and drove part of the way with him. In the end, however, the former resistance member, who could not bring himself to his assassination attempt, leaves the old man behind and returns to Oslo. There Oswald blows himself up with his own hand grenade. The conflict, the desperation that grew out of both admiration and disgust for the old man, meant that Kronen saw no other way out of his inner dilemma. A little later the old man learns of Oswald's suicide in the home. He puts on a black armband and says: "I mourn a friend."
Production notes
Eiszeit , a film-TV co-production, was made around Oslo in Norway in the summer of 1974 . The film had its world premiere on July 8, 1975 at the Berlinale and on August 15, 1975 its cinema release. Since Eiszeit was a co-production with the WDR, the Zadek film could already be viewed on TV for the first time on November 30, 1975 on ARD.
For OE Hasse this was the last role in a movie.
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Dorst's play Eiszeit had its German premiere on March 15, 1973 in the Schauspielhaus Bochum and was also staged there by Peter Zadek. Here, too, Hasse played the stubborn old man.
Reviews
Der Spiegel reminded the author that Dorst found that Hamsun was not a conformist and would rather remain a Nazi than be declared insane. Lead actor Hasse said, "This old stick is quite a disgust - wonderful to play."
In Die Zeit one could read that the Ice Age makers had dispensed with meaning, political stringency and psychological coherence. The result, however, is arbitrariness and thus boredom, in short "a sum of picture trivialities, but not a whole", despite an interpretation that was "spread out" and was "meaningful". Conclusion: "And so in the end there was nothing left but a northern landscape ... arts and crafts of the cheapest kind".
"Excellent acting, but intellectually unclear and somewhat confused film about the last days of the Norwegian poet Knut Hamsun's life."
Web links
- Ice Age in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Ice Age at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ 'This Week on TV' , Der Spiegel on November 24, 1975, last accessed on May 18, 2019.
- ↑ Der Spiegel, No. 25, June 19, 1978
- ^ The time of December 5, 1975
- ^ Ice Age in the Lexicon of International Films