Beloved enemy

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Movie
Original title Beloved enemy
Country of production Federal Republic of Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1955
length 100 minutes
Age rating FSK 18 or 16
(FSK exam July 8, 1955, 09410)
Rod
Director Rolf Hansen
script Juliane Kay
Jacob Geis
production NDF , Munich
( Harald Braun )
music Mark Lothar
camera Friedl Behn-Grund
Dieter Wedekind
cut Anna Höllering
occupation

Beloved Feindin is a German film melodrama from 1955, which was directed by Rolf Hansen . The script is based on the novel of the same name by Maria von Kirchbach. The main roles are cast with Ruth Leuwerik , Werner Hinz and Thomas Holtzmann .

action

“The love story this film tells takes place in a town in the southern Nile Valley before the turn of the century. The English and the French fought to conquer Sudan. This struggle between the two officially friendly nations did not take place openly, but in what we would call a cold war today. ”During a pageant, Violante Gore, the wife of the English consul Gerald Gore, with her team of horses ran into that of hers Underage stepson Ronald is awkwardly steered amidst the hubbub, in distress. She receives unexpected help from the French Foreign Legionnaire Sergeant Charly Brown. Brown is immediately carried away by the beautiful young woman. When Violante later reported the incident to her husband, he saw an opportunity to obtain information about the foreign legionaries' military plans. He compels his wife to ask her “lifesaver”, as he puts it, to have tea and to coax official secrets from him. Brown is overjoyed about the invitation, because he fell in love with Violante at first sight.

Before that, however, Brown still has to carry out a strictly confidential job and collect a sensitive, sensitive report and forward it to his manager. He gets into a dangerous situation when two horsemen take up the chase and try to snatch the secret dossier from him. In the fight that follows, Brown is wounded. However, that doesn't stop him from accepting Violante's invitation. After only briefly speaking to the young woman, however, he falls into deep unconsciousness. A doctor called in determines that there is heavy bleeding from Brown's freshly inflicted wound and receives medical attention. Gerald Gore takes the opportunity to take a case, which is placed on a table when taking off his uniform jacket, among other things, unnoticed, as he is sure that there is a message in it that Sergeant Brown should deliver to his Colonel. While the still unconscious Brown finds accommodation in a guest room in Villa Gore, the Gore couple and their two children go to the clubhouse of the British Colony, where the birthday of Queen Victoria is being celebrated.

When Brown wakes up from his faint, he is shocked to find that the important document that he has not yet been able to hand over to his superior is missing. He goes to his friend Captain Jules Ambéry, confides in him and together the men go to the British clubhouse. When Brown describes his plight to Violante, she immediately knows the consequences. She speaks to her husband about it, who frankly admits that it was he who took the document; he's just having it deciphered . Shortly afterwards, he hands the dossier to Violante and asks her to return it to Brown, but not to let him know that he has knowledge of it. Since Violante does not want to get involved, he assures her against her better judgment that the document is completely uninteresting for the English, since it only contains internals of the French. He added that the sergeant could get into trouble if it was known that the document had been in the hands of the English consul. Violante believes her husband and assures a relieved Brown that no one except her knows about the papers. They both hug and kiss and meet regularly from this point on. Violante tells her husband that her summer house in the country needs to be refurbished, which requires her presence. However, Gore suspects the real connections. The couple's happiness comes to an abrupt end when Operation Suak-Ok begins, the endeavor described in the dossier that fell into Gore's hands. The soldier Horner, who is said to have second sight, suspects that terrible things are in store for him and his comrades. And so it happens. Major Gontard dies of a fever and the French camp goes up in flames. After a long exploratory ride, Captain Ambéry has a burn in his leg and lets his comrades know that they have been betrayed. He gives the order to retreat, which Brown resists, as he does not want to leave the friend behind - as he is asked to do. Ambéry makes the decision for him and shoots himself. He is buried next to the other 69 dead soldiers. The authority now rests with Brown. In the end, eight of the 86 men remained next to him. After his return he has to answer a lawsuit before the military court and only now learns that he has been accused of treason and that this is related to the dossier he lost in the Gores' house. Through Aimée, Ambéry's lover, Violante learns of what is happening and goes to Brown's supervisor and tells him what really happened back then. He expresses his respect for her courage and allows her to speak to Brown. However, this one is a broken man and full of bitterness; he cannot forgive her. Almost tonelessly, he asks her what she wants, nothing more to be got out of him.

Consul Gore is promoted and Horner says: “We can perish, but the big ones don't, they are firmly in their saddle.” Meanwhile, Violante stands with Aimée at the harbor and looks after Charly Brown, who is boarding a ship that will take him to Europe becomes. His gaze does not go back, he no longer perceives the pain in the face of the woman he once loved.

Production and Background

Was produced Beloved enemy of the NDF new German film mbH in the studios of Bavaria Film Art in Munich-Geiselgasteig well as in the studio Nasser in Cairo. The outdoor shots were taken in Cairo and the surrounding area, in the Mokattam Mountains and in the Saqqara desert.

The film construction came from Robert Herlth . The Munich Philharmonic played . The film premiered on March 18, 1955 in Vienna ; the cinema release in the Federal Republic of Germany took place on July 28, 1955 in Karlsruhe.

Beloved Enemy is one of the few films in which Ruth Leuwerik did not impersonate a German, along with A Day That Never Ends and Portrait of a Stranger .

The film is loosely based on the Faschoda crisis , which took place between Great Britain and France in 1898. Great Britain wanted to establish a north-south belt of colonies in Africa from the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo, France an east-west belt from Dakar to Djibouti. Both interests collided in the small Sudanese town of Faschoda.

criticism

kino.de was of the opinion that the authors Jacob Geis and Juliane Kay had not succeeded in "transforming the story into a film-ready script and putting credible dialogues into the actors' mouths." Ruth Leuwerik, the great female star of German cinema in the 1950s, had to get along here under the direction of Rolf Hansen without her dream partners OW Fischer and Dieter Borsche.

For Kabel eins , this German entertainment film from the 1950s was a film "that suffers from its helpless script and stilted dialogues and is not able to convince."

In the book The Ideal Woman Ruth Leuwerik and the Cinema of the Fifties by Peter Mänz and Nils Warnecke, this Leuwerik film is described as a "flop".

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Beloved enemy at filmportal.de
  2. ^ Alfred Bauer : German feature film Almanach. Volume 2: 1946-1955 , p. 509
  3. ↑ a b The ideal woman Ruth Leuwerik and the cinema of the fifties by Peter Mänz and Nils Warnecke, Henschel-Verlag, Berlin, 2004, p. 23, 66
  4. ↑ Beloved enemy at kino.de
  5. ↑ Beloved enemy at kabeleins.de