Group picture with lady (film)
Group picture with lady is a Franco-German film drama by Aleksandar Petrović from 1977. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Heinrich Böll , who initially also worked on the script. Romy Schneider as Leni Gruyten and Brad Dourif as Boris Koltowski play the leading roles . The protagonists also included Michel Galabru , Vadim Glowna , Richard Münch and Vitus Zeplichal .
The film premiered on May 25, 1977 at the Cannes Film Festival , where Aleksandar Petrović was nominated for the Palme d' Or. The French title is Portrait de groupe avec dame .
action
Leni Gruyten is the self-confident daughter of a building contractor. Leni had to cope with losses again and again during the National Socialist era , but she was still alive and consistently maintained a humanistic attitude. When Leni visits her cousin and friend Erhard Schweigert, who is stationed as a soldier in Denmark, he tells her that he intends to desert to Sweden, where Leni should come. Since the plan is half-baked, it promptly fails and ends with Erhard, as well as Leni's brother Heinrich, who accompanies him, being shot. Leni returns to Germany. Her mother Helene dies only a little later. Her father Hubert, who had founded a bogus company to harm the National Socialists, as he defiantly declares, is sent to a concentration camp .
Leni, who is now on her own, finds a job in Walter Pelzer's cemetery nursery, where she tied wreaths for the fallen. There she repeatedly takes sides for the Russian Boris Koltowski, who is harassed as a prisoner of war and fears for his life more than once. Leni starts a conversation with the clever and sensitive engineer, who speaks the German language and occasionally recites poetic verses by Trakl , and falls in love with him. Although both are aware of the danger of being discovered, they enjoy the moments of togetherness that are brought to them especially when the bomb alarm lets their work colleagues flee into the next bunker - and Leni becomes pregnant.
After the war, Boris and Leni find each other again and Leni gives birth to a son. Again it is Walter Pelzer who helps Leni, Boris and Hubert Gruyten, who has meanwhile been released from the concentration camp, and hires them as workers. Because Boris has a passport in the name of Alfred Bullhorst, he is arrested by the American military police and taken prisoner by France. There he is killed in a mining accident. Leni's father dies in a construction accident. Leni struggles with being insulted as a Russian lover, albeit behind closed doors.
In 1963, in the middle of winter, red roses lie on Alfred Bullhorst's grave, which were placed there by the parents of a German soldier with that name, and at the same time red roses bloom on the grave of Rachel Maria Ginsburg, who died exactly 20 years ago. Ginsburg was a nun and Leni's idol, who had always been able to confide in her. Sister Klementine asks Walter Pelzer for advice, while Leni plays the piano in a neighboring apartment and then offers her imaginary guests homemade biscuits. The news of the roses also reaches the Vatican, whereupon the nuns exhume and burn the bones of Rachel Maria Ginsburg. The nun, who came from a Jewish family, was imprisoned in the convent and accused of corrupting schoolgirls. She died of hunger and cold in 1943.
Production notes
It is a production by Stella-Film GmbH (Munich), Cinema 77 Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. 4. Produktions KG (Berlin), Second German Television ( ZDF , Mainz) and Productions Artists Associés (Paris).
Differences between film and book
The book describes how Leni Gruyten married NCO Alois Pfeiffer after Erhard Schweigert's death. This falls just three days after the wedding on the Eastern Front. This episode is left out in the film. Nor is it shown that Leni's son works in the garbage disposal and that she shared an apartment with guest workers in the 1960s, where she forged a relationship with a Turk and became pregnant again. A narrator appears in the novel, which is not the case in the film, which means that Böll's pseudo-documentary narrative style is lost. The breadth of the content of the novel is also only partially taken up.
publication
The film was first released in Austria in May 1977, in the Federal Republic of Germany on May 26, 1977 and in the USA in November 1980. The film was also published in Hungary, Poland, Sweden and Yugoslavia. The English title is Group Portrait with Lady , alternatively Group Portrait with a Lady .
The film was released on September 19, 2008 by Kinowelt Home Entertainment and on May 16, 2012 by Studiocanal as part of the "Romy Schneider Edition".
criticism
The criticism was mostly negative. A good example of this is the in-depth discussion by Ruprecht Skasa-Weiß , who clearly named the deficiencies under the heading “Head salad instead of group picture”. Hellmuth Karasek wrote in Der Spiegel that it must have been “difficult” to turn the story into a “nostalgic snitch of forbidden love in the midst of a hail of bombs and misery on the home front” that exuded “instead of an act, only cinematic sweat”. Petrović had "turned a bitch, whose Slavic soul he had turned into the" involuntarily grotesque "in the 'Briederchen' manner à la Ivan Rebroff ," partly out of shame, partly out of ambitious inability ".
Marie Anderson from Kinozeit also agreed with the negative tenor and said that the film had rightly come out “empty” in the competition for the Palme d'Or, “if you follow the mainstream of criticism at the time, the cinematic implementation of the celebrated and thoroughly analyzed book that marked a milestone in literary history, simply described it as a failure ”. Anderson stated that “it is by no means the impressive acting achievements - above all Romy Schneider […] and the extremely versatile Brad Dourif […] that ultimately make the film a disappointment despite some noteworthy approaches, but rather the deficient dramaturgy that makes it does not succeed in conveying the complex, beautifully interwoven story of the literary original appropriately and conclusively, so that even the focus on the multi-layered figure of Leni, who is quite appealing, cannot balance out the slightly confused contexts ”.
At PostModern Timp Liber , Mihaela Matel is of the opinion that it is Romy Schneider's game, her contagious laughing and crying, sometimes transitioning to irony, that carries the film, if you consider that Heinrich Böll was initially categorically against her play the role of Leni. The film is worth watching, regardless of whether the ending is felt as pleasant or unpleasant, you will definitely be fascinated, and that's what you expect from a film after all.
Awards
At the German Film Prize 1977, the film received the film tape in silver in the category “Other feature-length films” and the film tape in gold for the best performance (to Romy Schneider).
Web links
- Group picture with lady in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Group picture with lady at filmportal.de
- Movie poster on filmposter-archiv.de
- incomplete film (1:28) on YouTube
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for group picture with lady . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , May 2008 (PDF; test number: 49 149 V / DVD / UMD).
- ↑ Group picture with lady Fig. DVD case "Romy Schneider Edition" (in the picture: Romy Schneider, Vadim Glowna)
- ↑ Head salad instead of group picture. Heinrich Böll's novel - now as a film , In: Stuttgarter Zeitung , No. 123, May 31, 1977.
- ^ Film: In the shaving mirror: group picture with lady , Der Spiegel , June 6, 1977.
- ↑ Group picture with lady see film review by Marie Anderson at kino-zeit.de
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↑ Portret de grup cu doamna - Bucura-te de razboi, pacea va fi groaznica sS postmodern.ro, January 4, 2013 (Romanian).
Retrieved September 18, 2018.
