Gotthard (TV movie)

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Movie
Original title Gotthard
Country of production Switzerland
original language German , Swiss German , Italian , French
Publishing year 2016
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Urs Egger
script Stefan Dähnert
production Lukas Hobi ,
Reto Schärli
music Fabian Römer
camera Lukas Strebel
cut Benjamin Hembus
occupation

Gotthard is a two-part historical film about the construction of the 15 km long first Gotthard tunnel from 1873 to 1882. The 180-minute television film was produced in 2015 by Zodiac Pictures for Swiss Radio and Television (SRF), directed by Urs Egger . The largest film production on Swiss television to date was made in a co-production with ZDF , ORF , RSI and RTS .

The film premiered on August 2, 2016 at the Locarno Film Festival . On December 11 and 12, 2016, it was broadcast as a two-part series on SRF 1 on the occasion of the scheduled commissioning of the 50 km long follow-up project, the Gotthard Base Tunnel , located deeper in the mountain . ZDF first showed it on December 19 and 21, 2016.

action

Construction site at the Gotthard north portal, 1875
Louis Favre, patron and chief engineer in the construction of the Gotthard tunnel

The film begins with the arrival of the fictional entrepreneur's son Max Bühl from Germany in Göschenen . He would like to apply as an engineer for tunnel construction, even though he is not yet trained as an engineer. The film alludes to the self-taught Favre. First of all, Bühl is given a job with the transport troop, which brings the tunnel construction equipment up to Göschenen in horse-drawn vehicles - the construction of the access route to the tunnel takes place at the same time. While looking for a place to stay, he meets the beautiful Anna Tresch, daughter of a trucking company, who rents him a room. Because the Italian construction worker Tommaso Lazzaroni is also looking for a room at the same time and they can only pay the required rent together, Tommaso and Max share the room from now on.

Max notices that the transport keeps coming to a standstill because the truck drivers from Göschenen refuse to work for the company (Gotthard Railway Company) dominated by Escher . This out of fear that they would jeopardize their own existence by helping to build the tunnel - once the tunnel was built, it would no longer need truckers. Max suggests that Favre enter into exclusive contracts with truckers to ensure transportation.

At Max's request, Anna is able to convince her father to enter into such a contract - he would earn enough to be able to retire afterwards and prepare a new perspective for the future generation. The new and long-awaited dynamite for tunnel construction should be transported with Anna's father Anton's wagons for the first time. It gets colder and colder during the transport. Max knows that below 4 degrees the nitroglycerin contained in dynamite is no longer bound and it is very sensitive to shock. When the car driven by Anton's brother Hans loses a wheel, it explodes. From then on, Anton is depressed and can no longer speak well of the company. At his daughter's wedding party with Tommaso, he lets the dynamite stores go up in Göschenen and then disappears without a trace.

Anna has a problem: She wants to open a hostel for the increasing number of workers, but as a woman she is not allowed to run a company. Because Max is moving to the office of construction manager Louis Favre in Lucerne for his actual engineering studies , she decides to marry Tommaso without further ado. Max, who also had clear feelings for Anna, tacitly accepts this. Tommaso, identified as the leader of a strike after a disaster in the tunnel, is laid off as a construction worker and builds and runs the hostel together with Anna.

While Max is working in Favre's office in Lucerne , he meets Maja, Favre's niece, who also works for Favre and develops feelings for him. At the same time, the financial situation for Favre's company is becoming more and more uncomfortable because things are not progressing as quickly as planned. Three years later the money is gradually running out and , contrary to Escher's request, the Federal Council in Bern is no longer willing to continue to finance Favre's company. The Federal Council turns the tap on Favre and Alfred Escher , President of Gotthardbahn-Aktiengesellschaft and founder of Schweizerische Kreditanstalt , has to resign. The film repeatedly shows fade-ins from meetings of the partly international supervisory bodies of the Gotthard Railway Company . Favre wants to shoot himself. Max gets in the way, however, because he has found a way to bridge the financial bottleneck: In future, the workers will not be paid in francs, but in a kind of share currency that would be exchanged for francs a few months later . After mediation by Tommaso, the workers accept the offer, otherwise all the work would have been in vain and their wages would have been lost.

After three years in the Lucerne office , Max is returning to Göschenen and is now personally in charge of the construction work on the north portal. He is particularly concerned about the poor health of the workers. Many allegedly die of the " dust lung " known in mining . Dr. Zwyssig, the only doctor on site, is unable or unwilling to assess this more precisely. Max identifies the bad air in the tunnel as the main cause and receives permission from Favre to use compressed air locomotives instead of the coal-fired and sooting steam locomotives in the tunnel . Yet more and more workers die of strange lung problems - much more acute than would be the case with pneumonia. Anna and Tommaso secretly take care of the sick workers and blame Max for not doing enough for them. At the same time it becomes clear that Max still loves Anna and she is now surprised again that he simply left her to Tommaso back then. While he is looking for a better doctor, Max sleeps with Anna. Tommaso finds out, but keeps it to himself.

He couldn't find a better doctor, but he could buy a light microscope . For now, Dr. Zwyssig but know nothing about it. In 1875 the workers went on strike because they no longer wanted to put up with the precarious working conditions. Among other things, they are demanding CHF 1 more wages per day. The Gotthard Railway Company is not able to meet this requirement. Max asks the army for help. This is completely overwhelmed and brutally suppresses the uprising against its will - several workers are shot. Tommaso, who campaigned for the workers again, had to flee. But he applied under a false name as a worker in Airolo and was employed there.

In the meantime, Anna's father Anton Louis Favre saves his life on the pass . He wanted to visit the construction site in Airolo. He threatened to freeze to death on the pass. Anton dragged him to his hut on the pass, where he was hiding, and thus saves him.

Favre dies in the tunnel

In tunnel construction there are increasing doubts that the breakthrough would be successful. According to the measurements, it should have entered it long ago, but not even the explosions from the opposite side can be heard. Favre dies during an inspection in the tunnel.

After many more deaths, the doctor Dr. Zwyssig determined the hookworm infestation on the workers with Tommaso's microscope and implemented hygiene measures. Because Max sends this discovery to the Federal Council along with demands for better working conditions, he is dismissed, but stays with Anna. Shortly afterwards the puncture takes place . As a first sign, the workers pass a picture of Favre through the opening, who could no longer experience it. When Max looks at the puncture, he meets Tommaso. He wants to go to London because Karl Marx is one of the leading figures in the international labor movement there . Tommaso leaves Max to his wife Anna and their daughter.

Federal Councilor Emil Welti

In the final scene Federal Councilor Emil Welti opens the tunnel. In the end credits one learns that 177 workers were killed during the construction (199 are known in reality) and more than a thousand later died at home as a result of the tunnel construction. In contrast to the film, the official Swiss statistics only contain a few who died from illness - far more died in accidents and explosions.

background

  • The shooting lasted from September 1 to November 26, 2015. The Göschenen town of Valendas served as the set for the tunnel construction village of Göschenen . The outer construction site was recreated in a disused quarry near Prague , including office barracks and signal box. For the tunnel scenes, a 90 meter long backdrop was built in a former Pulheim furniture logistics center, into which no daylight was allowed to penetrate. Smaller city scenes were shot in Bern , Lucerne and Cologne . Some scenes were filmed on the Furka Mountain Steam Railway , in particular the arrival of Swedish dynamite.
  • The roles: As usual in such histotainment projects, the actors use real figures and fictional characters at the same time in order to be able to show essential elements of the time in a condensed manner. In essence, true events about the Geneva builder Louis Favre and the Zurich builder and politician Alfred Escher play around the three main characters Max, Anna and Tommaso. The number of extras , over 2500, is considerable for a television production.
  • A visual effects team from Mackevision in Stuttgart , which has already worked on Hollywood productions, edited the film for half a year. The alpine landscape around the construction site filmed in the Czech Republic, locomotives, horse-drawn carriages and crowds were inserted or reproduced.
  • The production costs were 11 million Swiss francs .
  • Historical: Crossing the Alps and framing , Nobel's dynamite production in Switzerland
  • Previous film projects: * Die Schweizer, Alfred Escher and Stefano Franscini - Fight for the Gotthard , part of the four-part documentary of Swiss television from 2013.

criticism

In this SRG's most expensive production to date, inaccuracies or errors have of course also been found. For example, the historian Kilian T. Elsasser criticizes errors in the cost overruns on the tunnel and the number of people who were killed in the construction. They are given with 177 instead of 199 dead at the construction sites. In reality, it was not the Swiss community doctor who discovered the worm infestation due to the poor hygiene in the accommodations, but the Turin parasitologist Edoardo Perroncito (born 1847) in stool samples from the miners who returned home. The microscope helped, however.

Awards and nominations

  • 2017: Prix ​​Walo in the TV production category (award for 2016)
  • 2017: Prix ​​Europa - nomination in the category "TV Fiction"
  • 2017: Seoul International Drama Award in the "Best Director" category (Urs Egger)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Approval certificate for Gotthard . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ The significantly improved transport stability compared to pure nitroglycerine was actually the great achievement of the new dynamite, but it is known that the mixture at that time was not stable enough at cold temperatures.
  3. ↑ The aforementioned engineering degree at the ETH in Zurich would theoretically have been possible since it opened in 1855, but in reality it took another 30 years until the first female engineer graduate. It was the civil engineer Elsa Diamant from Hungary. Maja's role contrasts with the reality of the women of the time in Göschenen.
  4. ↑ Historically incorrect, because the speech was given by the first Bündener Bundesrat and then Federal President Simeon Bavier
  5. ↑ a b c Nathalie Röllin: Historians criticize “Gotthard”: SRF did everything wrong. (No longer available online.) In: Bluewin . Swisscom , December 12, 2016, archived from the original on December 20, 2016 ; Retrieved December 20, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bluewin.ch
  6. ↑ Start of shooting of the great historical two-part “Gotthard” , srgd.ch, September 4, 2015, accessed on December 11, 2016
  7. ↑ "Was that real?" All questions from the live chat about “Gotthard”  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Answers from the director and a historian)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.srf.ch  
  8. ↑ The Gotthard Tunnel from Pulheim , express.de, December 21, 2016
  9. ↑ “It is by far my most elaborate film” , srf.ch, December 11, 2016
  10. ↑ Gotthard - how did they do it (making of)
  11. ↑ Making of video for the film, broadcast on December 8, 2016
  12. ↑ The “Who's Who” in the “Gotthard” . SRF page from December 11, 2016
  13. ↑ Special effects as in “Game of Thrones” , srf.ch, December 11, 2016
  14. ^ Beat Berger: Explosives. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . November 22, 2005 , accessed June 7, 2019 .
  15. ^ Prix ​​Walo for Viola Tami and "Gotthard" article by SRG Deutschschweiz from May 15, 2017
  16. ↑ Seven ORF nominations at the Prix Europa 2017 . OTS announcement of September 1, 2017, accessed on September 2, 2017
  17. ↑ ORF co-productions “Das Sacher” and “Gotthard” received awards . OTS notification dated September 8, 2017, accessed September 8, 2017