Fire below deck
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Fire below deck |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1979 |
| length | 92 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Herrmann Zschoche |
| script | Herrmann Zschoche, Wolfgang Müller (scenario) |
| production | DEFA , KAG "Babelsberg" |
| music | Günther Fischer |
| camera | Günter Jaeuthe |
| cut | Monika Schindler |
| occupation | |
| |
Fire Below Deck is a German DEFA film by Herrmann Zschoche , which was completed in 1977. After leading actor Manfred Krug left for the Federal Republic of Germany, the film was banned before its premiere and was only shown on East German television in 1979 .
action
Otto Scheidel has been the captain of the paddle steamer Jenissei for 22 years, which he uses to sail the Elbe . His team is sworn in, only Otto's friend Carola, called Caramba, has enough at some point. The restaurant owner wants a family and wants to get away from drunk people. When Otto finally only sends flowers for her birthday because he can't come from the steamer, Caramba separates from Otto. He soon has to cope with a second blow of fate: He also has to part with the Yenisei . The paddle steamer is the last one on the Elbe that still runs on coal. It is increasingly rare to find people who want to take on the hard and dirty work of shoveling coal, so that the Yenisei has been understaffed for some time. Now she is to become a museum and restaurant ship. After the last trip, the crew packs up. Old Jule stays on board and takes over the maintenance of the ship, which is now operated as a restaurant by Caramba. The rest of the crew began to work on a diesel-powered ship. Only Otto is looking for a new job: He starts as a rail worker with a track construction brigade.
One day at work he saw a tug and a motor barge get stuck on the Elbe at low tide. His former comrades Miltz and Langer work on the tug, while the passage of the following ships is blocked. An attempt to pull the barges out of the sandbanks with tractors fails. However, a paddle steamer like the Yenisei , which has hardly any draft, would be an option . Active paddle steamers are still working in the Czech Republic, but they wouldn't be on site for eight days.
On the spur of the moment, Otto pays a visit to the Yenisei . He makes a bit of a riot there when he trips up an unfriendly waiter. Caramba dismisses him. Otto finds Jule in the engine room and learns that the Yenisei is still roadworthy. He directs steam into the function rooms of the steamer and announces that the fire is below deck. All the guests flee in panic and the Yenisei sets sail. The next morning she arrives at the scene of the accident and after a short time the first boat is pulled into deeper water. The motorized barge, however, is much heavier and so the recovery of the barge brings the crew and the Yenisei to their limits. When the coal ran out, the crew hastily organized new ones that had to be unloaded in the ship's guest room. Caramba reacts hysterically and at some point escapes from the ship. Just as it seems that the boat is coming free, the hawser rips and smashes, among other things, the captain's stand and a chimney. Otto resolutely requests a new wire rope and can finally clear the boat. The Yenisei is then partially devastated. Like the rest of the crew, Otto will receive a bonus, but will have to answer for his behavior. Caramba, on the other hand, has recognized how much Otto would give for a ship and a good cause and both find each other again.
production
Fire below deck is based on Wolfgang Müller's volume of stories, river stories . The film was shot in 1976 in Magdeburg , Torgau , Dresden and Parey / Elbe, among others , and was originally scheduled to start at the 1977 Summer Film Festival. After Manfred Krug had signed the petition against Wolf Biermann's expatriation at the end of 1976 , the contribution was withdrawn "on the grounds that I [Manfred Krug] had knocked down a comrade in Erfurt". After Krug left for Germany in June 1977, the film was banned. It had its premiere on June 6, 1979 on DFF 1 on GDR television. Shortly before the 10th party congress of the SED in 1981, the film was shown unannounced in a few cinemas in the GDR, and had its actual cinema premiere on August 16, 1982 with a few copies. In the Federal Republic of Germany, fire below deck was first shown on TV on March 3, 1988 on BR .
criticism
Christoph Prochnow wrote in 1981 that the film succeeds to a considerable extent in “not only making 'love', but also such brittle things as the 'relationship of the hero to work and profession' tangible in sensually direct and pleasure-oriented processes.” The film manage to "establish one of those great active heroes that the film obviously still needs in order to allow action-oriented and sensual cinema to take place at all."
For the film service , fire below deck was “a non-binding film that blurs the boundaries between adventurous and humorous entertainment, but does without a coherent exploration of the story; only the good play of the two main actors deserves interest. "
“Lovable characters with Ostalgie charm,” wrote Cinema .
literature
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 168-169 .
Web links
- Fire below deck in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Fire below deck at filmportal.de
- Fire below deck at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ↑ Manfred Krug: I'm done with them . In: Der Spiegel , No. 12, 1996, p. 75.
- ↑ F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 168 .
- ^ Christoph Prochnow: Herrmann Zschoche . In: Rolf Richter (Hrsg.): DEFA feature film directors and their critics . Volume 1. Henschelverlag, Berlin 1981, pp. 232-233.
- ↑ Fire below deck. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ See cinema.de