Someone goes to the dogs
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Someone goes to the dogs |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1983 |
| length | 98 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Hans Knötzsch |
| script |
Werner Bernhardy , Hans Knötzsch |
| production | DEFA on behalf of East German television |
| music | Bernd Wefelmeyer |
| camera | Siegfried Mogel |
| cut | Brigitte Koppe |
| occupation | |
| |
It's a to the dogs is commissioned by the television of the GDR produced feature film of the DEFA of Hans Knötzsch from the year 1983 , based on the novel The White Dove or The wet triangle of Otto Nagel of 1978, which by then vanished manuscript already in the Between 1928 and 1932.
action
The 30-year-old welder Wilhelm Thiele becomes unemployed for the first time in his life in 1924 after 12 years of work in a mechanical engineering company. He doesn't think the visit to the employment office is so important as he intends to open his own business. To do this, he takes out a loan and is already setting up a workshop. However, he cannot start work yet, as the required permit has not yet been issued. But the credit has been used up and he always needs new money to cover the running costs such as rent and telephone. His landlord advises him to go to work illegally and he also gives him a tip, because in the early years of broadcasting, people are wanted who can install antennas for better reception. Wilhelm Thiele wants to overcome his current financial bottleneck with such work, but one of his customers is the employee of the employment office who recognizes him and therefore withdraws his unemployment card. Now Thiele doesn't even have the money to pay his apartment rent and has to spend the night in his workshop, for which the landlord naturally also demands a surcharge on the rent. The request to repay the loan taken out, since there is no longer any security, and the rejection of the business license, arrive almost at the same time.
Now he has no choice but to spend the night in the attic of an apartment building. What he does not know is that the position he has chosen is already being claimed by the homeless couple Minna and Emil, who earn their living singing in backyards. But they get along and the next morning they go to the pub Zum nassen Dreieck for breakfast , where the bum Albert Stern is already warming himself up with the help of some schnapps . He teaches Thiele how to beg properly and in the evening he can buy a warm soup with his money, which he gives Minna some of, which is why Emil beats her bloody. Since Emil is totally drunk, they cannot spend the night in the attic and spend the night together on a park bench, where Minna and Wilhelm get closer.
Although Thiele tries to remain a decent person despite his problems, he gets deeper and deeper into the trampoline milieu . While he is walking through the streets with Albert as an advertising medium at Christmas time , he also learns that Albert is actually the owner of a coffee house, which his wife runs. But since he doesn't like her, he prefers to walk the streets as a beggar and only goes to eat a piece of cake free of charge once a year. In the meantime, Thiele has specialized in the theft of metals, which he then crushed at the scrap dealer Krüger using a cutting torch he developed and which is patent pending . From him he receives the order that evening with two other crooks to get material from a high-voltage line that is not yet in operation. But that is a mistake and a young scrap thief has to pay for this effort with his health until the end of his life. Thiele can only escape arrest by the police who happened to be nearby.
On one of his begging tours, by chance he meets Minna again, who has separated from Emil and now lives with Mrs. Kneschke as a sublet. She is three months pregnant and earns her living cleaning the homes of better-off citizens. She clarifies with her landlady that Wilhelm can live with her in the future and he is very pleased with the development. Minna wants to get rid of the child and asks Mrs. Kneschke to take over. In the middle of the preparations, Wilhelm comes into the apartment and can barely prevent the termination of the pregnancy . Now he learns that the child was conceived on the park bench that night and that he is the father. Because of the attempted abortion, Ms. Kneschke has remorse and commits suicide , which has the advantage that she now owns the apartment. To keep costs down, they rent Minna's former room to a sleeper who works as a delivery man for Die Rote Fahne . One day Emil is suddenly in the apartment, having heard about the upcoming wedding, and urges Minna to come back to him. When she refuses, he tries to rape her, which is only prevented by the sudden arrival of the sleeper boy.
Shortly after the wedding, the sleeper is arrested for his work for the Communist Party of Germany , which is why the young couple again cannot collect the money for the rent. A short time later, Wilhelm is arrested, but this turns out to be a trick of the scrap dealer Krüger, who only needs him to open a safe . The safe is in Albert Stern's Café and Krüger has brought the welding torch developed by Thiele especially for it. Since Wilhelm does not want to harm his friend Albert, he makes all the banknotes and shares unusable with the flame after they leave, which annoys Krüger very much. Now the only thing left for the Thiele couple to do is to look for accommodation with the preacher Kleist, whom they still know from Mrs. Kneschke, which he also grants them. It won't be long before the delivery, so you have to take care of it. They cannot pay the sum for the stay in the municipal midwifery school , so Minna has to move into the hospital two months before the birth to do menial work and be available to the pupils as a teaching object. But shortly after her arrival, Minna breaks down during cleaning work and has her child. Now Wilhelm absolutely needs money and in desperation he turns to Krüger, who does not want to help him. But he gives him back his cutting torch, which for Wilhelm is as good as cash. But Krüger calls the police and says that Thiele is now in the maternity hospital and is carrying the burglary tool that was recently used to break into four safes, which is why he is arrested there immediately without seeing his daughter. At the next trial, he was sentenced to seven years in prison. Minna, who listens to the verdict being announced through the door, then goes to the subway , buys a ticket and throws herself with her child in front of an arriving train.
Five years later, the painter Otto Nagel stands in front of their grave to draw them. Here he meets the preacher Kleist and tells him that the trial against Wilhelm Thiele is being reopened with the help of the Communist Party. The chances of success are good, as he only had one public defender at the first trial and now the best defense attorneys can be called in, who will prove all perjuries to the key witness Krüger until he is in the dock himself. But Kleist sees a problem, because behind the coffin of a burial of an SA man that is currently taking place is this Kruger in the uniform of a Sturmbannführer whom, with his connections, he cannot imagine in a dock. How right he was shows very quickly. Wilhelm Thiele receives a visit from Emil in his cell in the middle of the night, who shoots him and then puts the pistol in his hand in such a way that it looks like suicide.
Production and publication
The scenario came from Werner Berhardy and the dramaturgy was in the hands of Albrecht Börner .
The first broadcast of the film created on ORWO-Color took place on September 11, 1983 in the first program of the television of the GDR .
criticism
Mimosa Künzel wrote in the Neue Zeit :
“'The white dove or the wet triangle' - based on this single novel by the painter Otto Nagel, written in the early 1930s, now, fifty years later, a successful television film full of atmosphere and tension has emerged. What Otto Nagel observed with a penetrating, politically trained eye in Berlin Wedding and 'recorded' with subtle perception are precisely executed, interlinked human fates, are detailed everyday episodes in the sharply contoured, socially critical metropolis at the time of the global economic crisis and afterwards, as the 'browns' were already pushing to power and liquidating everything that stood in their way. "
The lexicon of international films writes that the strip strives for atmospheric density, which, however, does not do justice to the drastic realism of Otto Nagel's novel.
Web links
- It's a to the dogs in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Someone goes to the dogs at filmportal.de
- Someone goes to the dogs in the online lexicon of television in the GDR
Individual evidence
- ↑ Neue Zeit of September 13, 1983, p. 4
- ↑ Someone goes to the dogs. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed September 28, 2019 .