Escape to Berlin

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title Escape to Berlin
Country of production Germany (FRG)
original language German
Publishing year 1961
length 103 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Will Tremper
script Will Tremper based
on his own template Come to Berlin with me (a star novel)
production Will Tremper
Michael E. Schwabacher
for the Will Tremper film production by Stun
music Peter Thomas
camera Günter Haase
Gerd von Bonin
cut Will Tremper
occupation

Flucht nach Berlin is a West German film drama by Will Tremper from 1960 about an escape from the GDR via the then, before the wall was built , still green border to the West.

action

Germany 1960, one year before the wall was built:

The East German farmer Hermann Güden has had enough of the state-ordered harassment of the SED leaders. Together with the other farmers in the village, he is put under massive pressure to "voluntarily" join an agricultural production cooperative (LPG) as part of the forced collectivization . Güden sees neither the chance to successfully escape this pressure nor to have a future for himself and his family in the GDR under these circumstances. So he finally plans to flee to the west. Güden first sends his wife (in mourning clothes to disguise) and child to West Berlin and wants to come as soon as possible. But the SED apparatchiks get wind of the matter. In the heat of the moment, Güden overpowers party comrade Baade and then flees.

He met the Swiss fashion journalist Doris Lange at an East German motorway rest stop. He manages to persuade her to take him for a while in her Alfa Romeo sports car . When the vehicle passed a scene of an accident where a people 's policeman lifted the stop-ladle, Güden lost his nerve for fear of being arrested during a document check, the Swiss woman grabbed the steering wheel and gave full throttle. With that he really drew attention to himself. Now the motorized Vopos stick to the car of his shocked driver. In the face of sheer panic, Doris and Hermann stop the car, jump out of it and try to hide in an adjacent forest. The two of them approach the border with complications, and various people help them, including, without realizing it, a waiter from a HO restaurant who anticipates the construction of the Wall in a comment: “The only thing missing is that West Berlin is tight do ... “Güden and Lange plan to swim to West Berlin.

Meanwhile, the SED man Baade had another misfortune in the village. In order to reassure the peasants affected by the collectivization, the party has apparently chosen him as the scapegoat, three comrades suspect him of having made common cause with Güden, have him removed for the duration of the investigation of his tasks and take away his identity card. Baade, a staunch communist, then wanted to go to Berlin too, but to East Berlin to, as he said, “to complain to Ulbricht personally” about the blatant injustice and to seek rehabilitation. But now he is suddenly suspected by his own people of planning an escape from the GDR . Due to unfortunate circumstances, Baade ends up on the border between Sacrow ( Potsdam district ) and West Berlin. There he runs into Güden and Lange by chance in the border area, at first they both fight against each other, but when a border police officer becomes aware, Baade wrestles him down and tells Güden and Lange to swim west. It remains to be seen whether the two will arrive there and how Baade's fate will go on.

Production notes

Escape to Berlin began at the end of September 1960. The filming took place in Berlin-Wannsee ( Pfaueninsel ) and on sections of the motorway around Bad Hersfeld . The fictional location is actually the village of Wölf near Eiterfeld. There are a few locals involved in this film. For example, the landlord, the waitress and the VoPo were represented by the residents of the village, the pastor was played by the actual local pastor. The world premiere was on March 17, 1961. Two and a half years later, on August 12, 1963, the film was shown for the first time on television on the occasion of the second anniversary of the building of the Wall on ZDF .

After Postlagernd Turteltaube , Weg ohne Reversel und Himmel ohne Sterne, Escape to Berlin was only the fourth German film to deal with the explosive topic of the German-German division.

The native Bulgarian Narcissus Sokatscheff , who plays the fugitive farmer Güden, made his debut in front of the camera here.

On April 17, 2015, a DVD with lots of bonus material and an alternative ending was released for the first time on the “Darling Berlin” label.

Awards

The Film Award went on June 25, 1961 Christian Doermer best young actor and Peter Thomas for the best film music.

Reviews

In its review of March 29, 1961, Der Spiegel wrote on page 90: “Will Tremper, screenwriter (“ Nasser Asphalt ”) and scandal chronicler (“ Germany, your starlets ”), tries his hand at the GDR as a directorial debutant. The exposition - a village under the sign of farming - was an excellent success, and even later, brief moments reveal the producer, author and director's intimate knowledge of zone conditions and mentality. The main features of the plot, however, the flight of a farmer and an SED functionary, are modeled on the worst movie theater models, so that in the cheaply made film, in the end, mere ripple effects predominate. "

Films 1959/61, Handbook VI of the Catholic Film Critics, said: “The film made in 1960 is a contemporary document of atmospheric density. Although it is not free from distortions and a sensational adventurousness that reduces its value, it can - in the first part - be considered worth seeing. "

The lexicon of international films found: “The subject of“ zoning ”, which is rarely dealt with in the cinema, is presented in an effective and exciting way using situations and individual fates in the GDR, which inevitably interlink. An interesting contemporary document. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to a Spiegel report from October 5, 1960, the German-born émigré and American by choice Schwabacher, the financier of the film, suggested that the film should be produced under the production umbrella of a newly founded company called "Nuts" (English for "crazy", " crazy "). When Tremper rebelled against it - according to Spiegel: "That doesn't work, that's silly" - Schwabacher is said to have suggested: "Well then from behind, so 'Stun'".
  2. ^ Escape to Berlin in the Berlin Film Catalog, accessed on November 6, 2019.
  3. ^ Escape to Berlin on spiegel.de
  4. ^ Films 1959/61, Düsseldorf 1962, p. 50.
  5. ↑ Klaus Brüne (Red.): Lexikon des Internationale Films, Volume 2, S. 1045. Reinbek near Hamburg 1987.