GPU (movie)

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Movie
Original title GPU
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1942
length 99 minutes
Age rating FSK unchecked
Rod
Director Karl Ritter
script Karl Ritter ,
Felix Lützkendorf ,
Andrews Engelmann
production Karl Ritter for Universum-Film AG Berlin (Ufa)
music Herbert Windt
camera Igor Oberberg
cut Conrad from Molo
occupation

GPU is an anti-Soviet propaganda film directed by Karl Ritter in 1942 .

Today it is a reserved film from the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation . It is part of the foundation's portfolio, has not been released for distribution and may only be shown with the consent and under the conditions of the foundation.

content

The Russian violin virtuoso Olga Feodorovna is the star guest of an event organized by the Riga local branch of the “International Women's League for Peace and Freedom”, which after the concert unctuously announces its aspirations and goals: According to the chairperson of the women's league, these are “completely non-political” goals among other things, the "total peace" and the "freedom of all peoples". The guests present did not mind that a protester was led away very quickly by ominous backers at this event. The demonstrator wanted to point out the real identity of the women's league : it is an offshoot of the Soviet secret service GPU , whose sole aim seems to be the infiltration of the whole world. Olga only appears on the organization's website. In reality, she seeks revenge on the murderer of her parents, whom she knows to be in the ranks of the GPU. It is Nikolai Bokscha, who has a high position within the organization and is behind numerous attacks on dissenters, which he has carried out by middlemen. He has an Armenian revolutionary killed by the unsuspecting Baltic student Peter Assmus with a parcel bomb . The young secretary of the Armenian Irina is captured by the GPU as an alleged spy . It is handed over to Olga because the girl refuses to reveal any secret information. Olga escapes with her via Rotterdam to Gothenburg , where Peter, who managed to escape from the GPU's pre-trial detention, also joins them.

Meanwhile, Olga continues to work on her revenge on Nikolai Bokscha. The two of them meet again in the Soviet embassy in Helsinki and it becomes clear that Bokscha is drawn to Olga. Unknowingly, he reveals himself to be the murderer of her family. Both later meet in Paris , where Bokscha reveals his future plans to her: He wants to move into a small house somewhere in Brittany and enjoy his retirement under a false name undiscovered - with Olga. She now sees her moment of revenge coming. She shows Bokscha as a double agent at the GPU, which then liquidates him. Olga's time at the GPU is over now. She reveals to her manager that only revenge was her reason for working with the GPU and demands to be able to leave the organization. When the head of the GPU refuses to do so, she shoots herself.

Meanwhile, in Rotterdam, Irina and Peter are found by the GPU and taken to the organization's torture cellars. They were rescued near death when the German army took Rotterdam in 1940 and was able to free the prisoners.

production

Filming began on December 11, 1941 and ended in mid-May 1942. The location was the Babelsberg film studio for the interior shots; the outdoor shots took place in Berlin and the surrounding area, Paris, Potsdam and Stettin. The production cost was 1,556,000 RM. On July 17, 1942, the censors imposed a "youth ban" on GPU . The first performance took place on August 14, 1942 in the Berlin Capitol am Zoo . In the same year the film was also published as a book by Fred Hildenbrandt .

GPU is considered to be “the only direct anti-communist film that the Nazis made.” After the end of World War II , the performance was banned by the high command of the victorious Allied powers .

criticism

Karl Ritter, the director

Contemporary critics saw GPU as an "exciting" film that "knows how to explain the universally valid in individual fates". The “unscrupulous and inhumane methods of the GPU”, whose goal was a “Bolshevik revolution”, were highlighted. It was also emphasized that the film would represent reality: "The harsh reality of this gripping film strip is underlined and intensified by the skillful cutting of newsreel recordings , which show scenes from the battle for Rotterdam, among other things." that the audience would see a “trend or even political film” with GPU, said director Karl Ritter: “All of our images that we see in the film are, as far as possible, based on the real events. ... We are actually only reconstructing a series of GPU terrorist attacks in this film. Only, for the sake of the unity of the whole, we pull all these horror scenes together into one plot - whereby one has to consider that we are only aware of a fraction of the crimes of these assassin organizations. "

Erwin Leiser described GPU in 1968 as a clumsy melodrama and directly anti-communist propaganda film, which, however, works “with such simple, vulgar and lying clichés” that the propaganda becomes unreliable. According to Courtade and Cadars, “the 'reds' would become caricatures”: “In this film, the communist agents are Mongols with clean-shaven skulls, wild faces and a sardonic grin on their gangster faces.” In his monograph , the Polish evaluated the history of the film Film historian Jerzy Toeplitz wrote about the film: "GPU is undoubtedly Ritter's worst film and, overall, the weakest propaganda film that was made during the Third Reich."

For the film scholar Gert Berghoff, GPU was one of the “most dangerous and nasty propaganda films of the Third Reich”. Reclam's Lexikon des Deutschen Films rated GPU as a “hateful film”: “The Nazi army, the film suggests, is liberating Europe from brutal oppressors in the service of humanity. In its stark black-and-white drawing, the film is a typical example of the falsification of contemporary history by National Socialist propaganda. ”Karlheinz Wendtland, who usually tried to create a positive image for many films from the Nazi era, dealt with the GPU in just a few lines in which he the " Limehouse Blues , played in the best jazz tradition , which  honors the performing musicians - Freddie Brocksieper with his combo ". His conclusion: "A vicious, if gripping film."

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fred Hildenbrandt: GPU. With 16 pictures based on the Ufa film of the same name . Ufa book publisher, 1942.
  2. ^ Rolf Giesen, Manfred Hobsch: Hitler Youth Quex, Jud Süss and Kolberg. The propaganda films of the Third Reich. Documents and materials on Nazi films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2005, p. 394.
  3. ↑ a b c Hanns Poszokinsky Search: Films We Saw : GPU . In: Filmwelt , No. 43/44, September 2, 1942, p. 254.
  4. ^ Willi Körbel: In the Capitol am Zoo: GPU . Newspaper article in a Berlin newspaper, 1942.
  5. ↑ Karl Ritter about his film "GPU" . Quoted from: Rolf Giesen, Manfred Hobsch: Hitler Youth Quex, Jud Süss and Kolberg. The propaganda films of the Third Reich. Documents and materials on Nazi films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2005, p. 393.
  6. ↑ Erwin Leiser : "Germany, awake!" Propaganda in the film of the Third Reich . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1968, p. 38f.
  7. ^ Francis Courtade, Pierre Cadars' History of Film in the Third Reich . C. Hanser, Munich 1975, p. 178.
  8. ↑ Jerzy Toeplitz: History of the film . Volume 4: 1939-1945. Rogner & Bernhard, Munich 1983, p. 222.
  9. ^ Theater: Lützkendorf - Forehead of Time . In: Der Spiegel , No. 46, 1965, p. 157.
  10. ↑ Thomas Kramer (Ed.): Reclam's Lexicon of German Films . Reclam, Stuttgart 1995, p. 113.
  11. ^ Karlheinz Wendtland: Beloved Kintopp. All German feature films from 1929–1945 with numerous artist biographies, born in 1941 and 1942 . 2nd edition Medium Film, Berlin 1989, p. 111.