Stories of that night

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Movie
Original title Stories of that night
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1967
length 109 minutes

Stories that night is a four-part anthology film of the DEFA of 1967 , the occasion of the VII. Congress was produced as a commitment of the movie studios. The third and fourth episodes received the GDR's state rating for feature films in 1967.

The episodes are not linked by a framework story, but completely independent. The common theme is the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 from the perspective of members of the working class fighting groups . Dieter Wolf , dramaturge of the group "Babelsberg 67", was responsible for the dramaturgy of the four individual films and thus the overall concept . The film was made with the support of the National People's Army and combat groups.

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Episode 1: Phoenix

Movie
Original title Phoenix
length 19 minutes
Rod
Director Karlheinz Carpentier
script Karlheinz Carpentier
music Georg Katzer
camera Hans-Jürgen Sasse
cut Susanne Carpentier
occupation

In a city in the GDR, an alarm is triggered for the combat groups. Your commander Karl has to interrupt a hen party because a mission in Berlin is pending.

Flashback 1933. Karl is a member of the KPD and smuggles the persecuted across the German-Czechoslovak border. This time it's a poet. Karl takes him to an artist friend of his. This shows the poet his picture "Phoenix from the Ashes"; Symbol for a future, better Germany. To help with the smuggling, Karl needs a friend who is spending his wedding night. His bride lets him go without hesitation. You fall into a trap of the German border police. Although Karl and the poet manage to cross the border, the friend is shot.

Present, Berlin August 13, 1961. Karl is ready with his combat group unit. The groom is also present. In memory of the bridegroom from 1933 and the painting by the painter, he calls him "Phoenix".

Episode 2: The Trial

Movie
Original title The exam
length 39 minutes
Rod
Director Ulrich Thein
script Ulrich Thein,
Erik Neutsch ,
Hartwig Strobel
music Wolfgang Pietsch
camera Hartwig Strobel
cut Brigitte Krex
occupation

The 18-year-old Jutta Huth is about to graduate from high school, but is determined to take a trip to Prague with her new boyfriend Robert. Her parents blame her. But suddenly they explain to Jutta that they want to leave the GDR. Jutta can consider coming along or staying in the GDR for the time being.

Jutta sees her parents' behavior as treason. A relative from the West appears with a Porsche and reproaches Jutta; she is also supposed to leave the GDR for family reasons. Jutta has since found out that she is not allowed to study biology for the time being because she is considered politically unreliable, but she passes her Abitur. Robert and Jutta's relative meet by chance and argue about the division of Germany. Robert calls for a barricade against western political and cultural influences. He sleeps with Jutta, but is woken up by an alarm that announces the construction of the wall.

Episode 3: Materna

Movie
Original title Materna
length 14 minutes
Rod
Director Frank Vogel
script Werner Bräunig ,
Frank Vogel
music Günter Hauk
camera Claus Neumann
cut Lotti Mehnert
occupation

The trained bricklayer Materna is a member of the combat groups deployed in the construction of the wall and asks himself about the meaning of his work.

Flashback, end of the war in 1945. The former Wehrmacht soldier Materna returns home. The city has been destroyed, his relatives have disappeared. Materna becomes a pacifist and never wants to pick up a rifle again. With the help of a former classmate, Hanna, he survived the post-war period. You get married and have a child. With the help of the SED, he is continuing his career. On June 17, 1953, there was a confrontation with rioters on a construction site. Materna defends the party secretary.

August 13, 1961. Materna realizes that he has to revise his earlier decision in favor of pacifism and guards the border security measures with rifle in hand.

Episode 4: Big and Little Willi

Movie
Original title Big and small Willi
length 31 minutes
Rod
Director Gerhard Klein
script Helmut Baierl ,
Gerhard Klein
music Wilhelm Neef
camera Peter Krause
cut Evelyn Carow
occupation

February 1967, a training area of ​​the National People's Army. A young man in a coat and flat cap secretly observes a joint maneuver by Soviet troops and the NVA with binoculars. He turns to the audience and reveals that he is agent 008 and actually not allowed to be here. He is arrested by two Soviet soldiers and taken to an office. His comment: "If only I had listened to the great Willi".

The "Agent 008" is Willi Zank. In a flashback, he reports on his experiences on the night of August 13-14, 1961 in the eastern part of Berlin. Willi Zank lives in the east, but works as a welder at Siemens in the west of the city. He does not have to work particularly hard because he makes enough profit by exchanging West Marks for East Marks. With a portable radio he listens to rock 'n' roll with friends near the border. They are discussing ways of fleeing to the western part of the country despite the border barriers. When Willi Zank sees trucks carrying members of the combat troops pull up in front of their state-owned company , he has an idea.

He enters the VEB and tries to swindle himself into the uniform of the combat groups in order to be able to flee to the West at a suitable moment. But his intention is thwarted by the Hundred Commander Willi Lenz, known as “Der Kinderschreck”. Willi Zank claims to be a member of the unit. Willi Lenz puts him to the test: He should quote the beginning of the Communist Manifesto . Not even knowing the manifesto, he is silent. Willi Lenz replies for him: "A ghost is haunting Europe - and that's us at the moment!"

Willi Zank and the combat group have to move to the natural history museum , the hall of which is dominated by a huge dinosaur skeleton. A group of prostitutes is brought in who wanted to work in the western part of the Tauentzien . To Willi Zank's surprise, Willi Lenz is very jovial with the ladies, as he calls them. Finally he dismisses her with the address Wiesenstrasse 11a, where call girls are looked for. Willi Zank is amazed. Unlike the prostitute, he knows the address - it's the employment office.

More refugees are brought to the museum. Willi Lenz explains to them the purpose of building the wall. Securing the border prevented a war, the children will grow up in peace.

Willi Lenz notices that a member of the Hundred looks unhappy and asks why. The man explains that he accidentally pocketed the food for his family and wants to transfer it if necessary. Willi tells him he should take a taxi, but the man points out that there is probably no taxi available on a night like this. Willi Lenz does not accept this excuse. He speaks to the commander of a T-34 main battle tank of the NVA. He nods - the combat troop member gets a "tank taxi" and is allowed to deliver the food at home in the T-34.

As a youngster rioting on a section of the wall that has not yet been completed, Willi Zank and the unit are relocated to the scene. Willi Lenz "borrows" Willi Zank's leather jacket and confidently walled up a pack of western cigarettes that were thrown by rioters on the East Berlin area in front of western television.

Back at the museum, Willi Lenz receives various orders. Order No. 1 says the hundred should take lessons, Order No. 2, they should sleep. Solomon-like, the Hundred Commander decides that Order No. 1 should be carried out - and during this No. 2.

Lenz nodded off briefly. When he wakes up, not only has Willi Zank disappeared, but also his uniform jacket and hat. Willi Zank has not abandoned his original plan. Willi Lenz storms out of the museum towards the border. In a confusing, dark border section, Willi Zank can be seen in a jacket and hat. He is knocked down by a youngster emerging from the darkness. Willi Lenz enters the scene and slaps Willi Zank in the face. The stranger pulls a knife and pounces on Willi Lenz. Willi Zank warns him and then hits the stranger with a stick, who remains lying unconscious or dead. Willi Zank returns the jacket, Willi Lenz already has the hat. Lenz: "Remember that for later: You have to de-register properly when you take up a post!" - Lenz is ready to cover the escape and the theft of the uniform parts.

Present February 1967. Willi Zank explains to the audience how he got into combat troop uniform after all, albeit only after five and a half years. He is also now a member of the party . Willi Lenz appears in combat group uniform and picks him up from the office. It turns out that Willi Zank, contrary to his assignment as "Agent 008", entered the training area. The Soviet soldiers are having fun. Willi Zank explains to the audience that in the unit he himself is called the little Willi and Willi Lenz the big one, in order to tell them apart. At the end of the film, little Willi turns back to the audience in a close-up:

By the way, I now also know the manifesto. Do you know how it ends? Check it out!

criticism

Horst Knietzsch writes in Neues Deutschland : “Despite the flashback technique, this (first) episode remains clear. Its appeal lies more in the juxtaposition of a situation under contrary social conditions, not so much in the convincing revelation of consciousness-forming elements. The static conception, the characters, the sometimes brittle dialogue design by the author and director Karl Heinz Carpentier reduce the artistic substance of the probationary situation. "

HU writes In der Neue Zeit : “The first and third episodes hardly go beyond the illustrative. and the original solution in the Materna story of consistently foregoing dialogue and only giving the title character a narrative monologue seems rather monotonous. although Ulrich Thein, here now the main actor, speaks this monologue very expressively and animatedly. "

Horst Knietzsch writes in Neues Deutschland : “Neutsch tailored all characters to their relationship to the socialist GDR. Despite the complex dramaturgical knotting of the subject matter and the necessary brevity of the (second) episode, this gives him the possibility of differentiated individual design. Filmic-literary precision is palpable, apart from a few stilted legs in the intimate scenes and not fully successful poetization. "

HU writes In der Neue Zeit : “In the fourth episode, however, by far the best, Baierl's wit and Klem's directorial precision combine to form a pointed whole in which the seriousness of the situation, a brisk boldness and all kinds of comical effects - the combat group camped, for example, in the natural history museum of all places, between stuffed animals and seamlessly merging under dinosaur skeletons. The funny story is at the same time the toughest, the toughest at the same time the most nuanced. "

Production history

The film was made, says Dr. Dieter Wolf, in the context of the 11th plenum of the Central Committee of the SED . Horst Sindermann came up with the idea for theming the combat groups . Helmut Baierl, who had already written a sequence of scenes for a workers' theater with the title Five Stories from the Thirteenth , had a strong influence on the concept of the overall production . Carpentier's television series Rote Bergsteiger , which was created at the same time, played another role . Due to the time pressure, the production could only be made as an episode film; Only half a year passed between conception and implementation.

Wolf considered the 4th film to be the dramaturgical highlight of the overall production: "[...] If you see this little episode today, it still has its freshness and its place in the political comedy genre, also in terms of our film-historical landscape [...] "

Lore

There were two previews: on April 17, 1967 in Berlin (performance in front of delegates to the Seventh Party Congress of the SED) and on May 14, 1967 in Karl-Marx-Stadt in the Luxor Palace (on the occasion of the Eighth Parliament and the Whitsun meeting of the FDJ ) . The premiere took place on June 8, 1967 in the Berlin Kino International . The film was first broadcast on the DFF on August 13, 1968, on the 7th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall . To date (2014) there is neither a video nor a DVD edition.

literature

  • "... a temperamental and combative man ...". Conversation with Dr. Dieter Wolf, head of the Babelsberg group , in: From Theory and Practice of Film , No. 2/1984, pp. 101–111. (Interview by Hannes Schmidt with Wolf about Gerhard Klein and the production background of stories from that night )
  • Dirk Jungnickel : The film as a medium of the class struggle. The DEFA episode film “Stories of that Night” , in: Federal Agency for Political Education (ed.): Leit- und Feindbilder in DDR-Medien (series of media advice, issue 5) , Bonn 1997, pp. 28–44. ISBN 3-89331-250-1
  • Horst Knietzsch : Dialogues with Consciousness , in: Neues Deutschland from June 12, 1967.
  • Ralf Schenk (editor): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA-Spielfilme 1946-1992 , Berlin 1994, pp. 219f., 432. ISBN 3-89487-175-X

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 206-208 .
  2. ↑ Horst Knietzsch in Neues Deutschland from June 12, 1967
  3. ^ HU in the New Time of June 14, 1967
  4. ↑ Horst Knietzsch in Neues Deutschland from June 12, 1967
  5. ^ HU in the New Time of June 14, 1967
  6. ↑ Wolf in an interview with Hannes Schmidt, Potsdam, May 7, 1982, printed in: From Theory and Practice of Film