Squadron bat

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Movie
Original title Squadron bat
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1958
length 98 minutes
Rod
Director Erich Engel
script Hans Székely
Rolf Honold (collaboration)
Ilse Langosch (dramaturgy)
production DEFA
music Hanns Eisler
camera Karl Plintzner
Erwin Anders
cut Hildegard Tegener
occupation

Squadron bat is a DEFA - feature film by Erich Engel from the year 1958 , which on the same play, the West German author Rolf Honold based. The film is set in 1954 in the mercenary milieu of the Indochina War ; Claire Lee Chennault's Civil Air Transport airline was the real model . It is the first German feature film to feature Vietnamese leading actors.

action

Indochina 1954. General Lee's US airline, informally known as the “Fledermaus Squadron”, transports supplies for the army in the fight against the Viet Minh on behalf of the French government . Lee's pilots are all veterans of the Second World War , which already missions over Africa , Japan , Berlin , Hamburg and Dresden have flown.

The pilots came to Lee for a variety of reasons. Tex Stankowsky is blackmailed into child support payments from his wife, even though she lives with his best friend. Mitch Bryk couldn't finish his studies because he had to look after his mother and sisters. The pilots spend their free time drinking alcohol, playing pinball and visiting a Hanoi brothel .

Sam Kirby, who fought in World War II, replaces the downed pilot O'Brien. He receives a briefing on the situation from Flessy, Lee's secretary and lover. This is not rosy. The Viet Minh has completely enclosed the Tun Sao base and sealed it off with flak , so that every approach and departure becomes a risk for the "bats". From a legal point of view, the Americans are halfway on the safe side, since according to the treaty they are not considered mercenaries as long as they are not transporting war material or French troops.

But the French commander of the base, Colonel d'Allard, is under pressure from the Army High Command. The number of wounded in Tun Sao is increasing rapidly and they are in urgent need of medical care. Although Lee knows that the transportation of troops is a breach of contract that would cause pilots to lose the protection of the Geneva Convention , he agrees for higher premiums. He appeased initial protests from Tex Stankowsky and other pilots with the prospect of higher pay. The Colonel despises Lee; he considers him a worse subject than a " Nazi officer".

Mitch Bryk had doubts about his job. On the last return flight, numerous seriously wounded people died due to insufficient care in his aircraft and were only unloaded as corpses. Mitch considers the situation at the base to be hopeless, but the French still let new "slaughter cattle" fly in.

Mitch gets in touch with Thao, who works as a radio operator and interpreter for the French Air Force. When a French officer tries to force the captured Viet Minh to load the ammunition and they refuse by pointing out that they are prisoners of war, he threatens them to be shot. Thao interprets, the prisoners give in, but she is insulted as a "French whore".

Thao is also in contact with Dong, a Vietnamese student who works in the “Bats” bar. One day an ammunition dump explodes at the base. The French military police identified Dong as the perpetrator. In order to force him to confess and to learn more about the people behind him, Dong is tortured, but does not reveal anything. After all, he is to be executed by hanging. He refuses the offer to have his life given for betrayal by the backers and is hanged.

Meanwhile, Flessy also has doubts about the way she is living with Lee. She longs for security and peace. But for Lee, a warrior who has already served in Bolivia and flown for Chiang Kai-shek , there is no longer any perspective for a bourgeois life. Flessy is desperate.

Mitch Bryk does not tolerate alcohol, but gets drunk with his comrades and then tries to rape Thao. She hits him over the head with an ashtray and escapes from her room. The next day, Mitch tries to apologize to her. They start a conversation and Thao learns that Mitch wants to get out of the war. When she asks him whether he would also fly for the “Reds”, he replies that liberation movements have no money to pay for planes, but have to rely on themselves. In turn, Mitch learns that Thao has previously studied at the Sorbonne in Paris . He is unclear about her motives, why she works here as a radio operator.

The well-known American sensational reporter Sandra Seyler arrives at the base, a young, good-looking blonde who wants to impress the pilots and who, despite the high risk, wants to fly into the base. Colonel d'Allard also admires Seyler. She was one of the few Americans who knew what America owed to European culture, whereupon the cynical Lee provoked him by asking whether he was talking about the colonial wars. The colonel struggles. France defended not only her colony but the ideals of the entire free world; the barbarians will be exterminated.

When Seyler asks why the squadron was named after the bat, Mitch replies ambiguously: "Because bats fly at night - and are blind." Unlike Seyler, Mitch does not sympathize with the French; he had learned in his youth that America sympathized with the oppressed peoples and was against colonization, but in the meantime the history books have probably been rewritten. Seyler calls for all communists to be hanged, but Mitch points out that there are now over 900 million of them.

Little by little, the situation for the pilots is becoming more and more critical, as the Viet Minh are now even using radar for their flak. Finally, d'Allard demands that ammunition be flown into the base, since the ammunition depot had also exploded there due to sabotage . Since Lee's contract has now expired, he refuses. The Colonel is outraged: while France was fighting for its colony, the Americans were hacking corpses. Lee reacts coolly; the French would not do it better the other way round, France had played out. The French defends himself. Paris is still the spiritual capital of the world, mankind has learned from France what culture is. Lee points to the gallows on which Dong was hanged: "What is dangling from it, your culture?"

The Colonel then turned directly to the pilots, who agreed in return for a considerable increase in the fee, although the machines were owned by Lee. They have become mercenaries for good. Flessy tries to stop them, but apart from Mitch they are intoxicated by the prospect of high pay. While they are flying to Tun Sao again, the air force base learns that the radio key has been betrayed. Lee immediately recognizes the danger. He desperately tries to convince the men to turn back by radio, but the pilots believe Lee is a trick. One after the other, Tex, Terry and Andy West's machines are set on fire.

Suddenly the barracks of the "bats" are cordoned off by the field gendarmerie. The gendarmes are looking for "the yellow one", Thao. Apparently she gave away the radio key. Mitch finds her hiding in the shower. He smuggles her out of the barracks, overpowers a guard on a Dakota and flies with her into the night sky into the area liberated from the Viet Minh.

Production history

The script is based on the play of the same name by Rolf Honold, which premiered on May 19, 1955 under his direction in the Osnabrück Theater am Dom. The plot is based on a French newspaper report. On November 7, 1955, the premiere took place in the Theater der Zeit in Munich, with Christine Laszar already playing the role of Flessy. On January 6, 1956, the piece under the direction of the Berlin theater director was Frank Lothar from Südwestfunk as a television play broadcast; the main roles played u. a. Alexander Golling and Horst Frank . In 1957 the piece was published in print by Kurt Desch Verlag in Munich.

It is unclear when the collaboration between Honold and the DEFA studio began. DEFA apparently succeeded in hiring two Vietnamese actors through contacts in North Vietnam. The extras in the prison sequence were North Vietnamese and North Korean students. The entire film was produced in the studio or on the DEFA studio premises in Babelsberg; all flight scenes are animated. The animation sequences come from Ernst Kunstmann and Vera Kunstmann . The film premiered on December 23, 1958 in the Babylon cinema in Berlin .

The Thao actress, Nguyen Thi Hoa, was after Schnitzler in the People's Army a front-line fighter with high awards, then a broadcaster and singer. The song composed by Eisler with Vietnamese elements, which is played at the end of the film, was sung by her.

Deviations from the play

The basic dramaturgical structure of the film corresponds to the version published in Osnabrück in 1957. However, there are considerable ideological deviations in the details, which apparently originate from screenwriter Hans Székely. The figure of the Dong has been added, so there is no act of sabotage, torture or execution by him in the air force base. Thao (in the play Binh Nao) is not an underground fighter for the Viet Minh, so there is no escape with Mitch Bryk. The play ends with the destruction of the bat squadron and an instruction from Lee: "Flessing, record it: radio message to Donavan, Philadelphia - stop - request 12 Dakotas from the army as soon as possible - stop - recruit new crew - stop - Lee."

criticism

Geschwader Fledermaus was extensively reviewed by Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler in the film mirror . The plant is "the first DEFA tear". Hans Walter Clasen appears as Andy West "oppressively real with his hardness and brutal snobbery"; Wolfgang Heinz 'portrayal as General Lee is "simply masterful". The film was photographed excellently, but had weaknesses in terms of sound. In view of the current colonial wars, what happens in the film is completely topical: “What happens in the film in Vietnam happened a few months ago in Jordan and Lebanon . Algeria and Cyprus are not exactly out of the world either. And the hiccup between the Americans and the French, the common bad cause of the imperialists with simultaneous envy, hatred, blackmail and threats among themselves - that was on the day of the premiere of 'Geschwader Fledermaus' on the agenda of NATO and the common market ... " . The film was also "realistic - not only in the representation of crime and rascality, but also in the presentation of mercenaries are composed not only of greed and unscrupulousness, but also victims who are not only of black soul, evil and bad , but with remnants of human features that have been preserved in different ways. "

literature

  • Rolf Honold: Fledermaus squadron . Kurt Desch, Munich 1957.
  • Ralf Schenk (editor): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA-Spielfilme 1946–1992 , Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-89487-175-X , p. 391.
  • F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 208-209 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rolf Honold: Fledermaus squadron . Kurt Desch, Munich 1957, p. 96.
  2. ^ Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler : Fledermaus squadron . In: Filmspiegel , No. 2, 1959, p. 3.