Sharks and small fish

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Movie
Original title Sharks and small fish
Sharks and small fish Logo 001.svg
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1957
length 120 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Frank Wisbar
script Wolfgang Ott
production Willy Zeyn junior
Alf Teichs
music Hans-Martin Majewski
Orchestra Erwin Lehn
camera Günter Haase
cut Carl Otto Bartning
occupation

Sharks and Small Fish was created in 1957 under the direction of Frank Wisbar . The film is based on the novel of the same name by Wolfgang Ott from 1954, which depicts the submarine war . Wolfgang Ott achieved a great success with his first work in 1956. He processed his personal experiences as a soldier in the Navy . The novel was staged quite realistically by Wisbar with the then rather unknown actors Hansjörg Felmy and Horst Frank . Further leading roles are occupied by Sabine Bethmann , Wolfgang Preiss , Heinz Engelmann and Siegfried Lowitz .

action

Detail of the film poster by Helmuth Ellgaard

The film is set in Germany during the Second World War . In 1940 the Albatros minesweeper took four “fresh” midshipmen on board who had previously worked together as friends on a herring catcher : Hans Teichmann, Gerd Heyne, Emil Stollenberg and Vögele. They run out the next day. The team gets into heavy fighting. Vögele dies. Teichmann saves the life of the seriously wounded flotilla chief Wegener, with whose wife Edith he is unhappily in love. The blind Wegener is now completely dependent on the help of his wife. Disillusioned about his hopeless love, Teichmann reports to the submarine operation after he has recovered in the hospital . Wegener's childhood friend Jochen Lüttke is in command of this submarine. Wegener had made sure that Teichmann can hire there. Lüttke suspects something of Teichmann's love for Edith, which is why the young officer has to endure all kinds of harassment. Lüttke also made a completely wrong assessment of Teichmann because of an incident on the minesweeper. Teichmann had beaten the incompetent and overwhelmed Lieutenant Pauli, who repeatedly blackened him, for good reason.

Teichmann's friend Gerd Heyne commits suicide when he learns of the death of his Jewish-born father, a critic of the regime, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp . Shortly before that he said to Teichmann: “Both of us, we are very small fish and we will all be eaten by the sharks, one sooner, the other later, those gentlemen who obey a basking shark that only lives on killing. "

In another battle, the British located the submarine by radar and attacked it and sank. Stollenberg dies, Teichmann and other comrades who were in another part of the submarine still have a chance. The men are struggling desperately to get to the surface alive. Everything is being prepared for the exit. Only eight of them were discovered by a German ship on the next day and pulled out of the water, including Teichmann.

production

Production notes and background

It is a production by Willy Zeyn Film GmbH (Munich) and distributed by Deutsche Film Hansa. The film recordings were made in the summer of 1957 in the Kaiserhafen , on the Weser , in the Bremerhaven fishing port and in the Bendestorf film studios .

Wisbar portrays simple soldiers and officers in his film and makes it clear that they have to fight in a war for which they are not responsible. Sharks and Small Fish was the first of four films by Wisbar that dealt with the Second World War. In 1958 he turned dogs, would you like to live forever and in 1959 night fell over Gotenhafen and the officers' factory .

The title song, which is also sung in the credits, is Lost, Forgotten , sung by Ralf Bendix . The song Who Forgets That by Lotar Olias and Peter Moesser can also be heard in the film .

The terms small fish and sharks mentioned in the title also refer to the actual allegorical meaning, the mine clearer (= small fish) and the submarine weapon (= sharks). In addition, the catchy title sharks and small fish is used to characterize relationships between people (the powerful up there and the little ones down there).

publication

The premiere of Sharks and Small Fish in the Federal Republic of Germany took place on September 26, 1957 in the Universum Cinema in Stuttgart . The film was also shown in Sweden, Finland, Japan and Denmark in 1958 and in Mexico in 1965. It was also published in Belgium, Brazil, France, Greece, Italy and the USA, there under the title Sharks and Small Fish , worldwide international title Sharks and Little Fish .

The film was released on October 4, 2013 by Alive as part of the "Jewels of Film History" series on DVD.

criticism

“Despite efforts to the contrary, the content is pretty bland, but the technical design of the battle is impressive. For adults. "

- 6000 films. Critical notes from the cinema years 1945 to 1958.

“A tragically accentuated, technically well-versed film, but the content is on the level of booklet novels. Much too unreflective about the Nazi dictatorship, especially towards the end, the impression that it could have been filmed with this emphasis in 1942 increases. "

“Wisbar, who emigrated to the USA in 1938 and returned to Germany as an American citizen after the war, relied more on the character drawings of the young protagonists than on lurid battlefields. The claustrophobic scenes in the submarine are particularly convincing - one involuntarily thinks of Wolfgang Petersen's later world success Das Boot . Some critics complained that Wisbar had treated the Nazi dictatorship far too unreflectively, but the director was concerned here with the suffering of the individual in the war, not with dealing with the Nazi dictatorship. "

“First of four films by Frank Wisbar, which dealt with various aspects of World War II, and second meeting of the two young stars Horst Frank and Hansjörg Felmy, who had just been seen in The Star of Africa . Successful war scenes, some of which were assembled with documentary recordings. As a reappraisal of the recent past, it is rather ambiguous. "

“Frank Wisbar's story of an initially carefree midshipman who a little later (1942/43) experienced the horrors of the war in the North Atlantic, lost his friends and only barely survived the war, mentally and physically broken, still proves to be exciting and thought-provoking today right cinema piece. The well-cast film is scenically dense and contains a multitude of gripping combat shots that come close to reality. In addition, director Wisbar also conveys the mood and sense of time of the early forties in an oppressive way. "

- Dirk Jasper , Film Lexicon

Award

Horst Frank was awarded the German Film Critics' Prize in 1958 in the "Best Actor" category for his performance in this film .

literature

  • Wolfgang Ott: Sharks and small fish. Novel . Herbig, Munich 2003, 512 pages, ISBN 3-7766-2314-4
  • Gerhard Bliersbach: The heather was so green. The German post-war film in a new perspective. Beltz Verlag, Weinheim and Basel 1985, ISBN 3-407-85055-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sharks and small fish (1957) Frank Wisbar The German film 1930 to 1980 . Retrieved September 12, 2017.
  2. Sharks and small fish adS kino-im-hafen.de
  3. Production mirror of Studio Bendestorf. Retrieved February 2, 2018 .
  4. Sharks and small fish In: Universal-Lexikon.de
  5. Sharks and small fish The gripping classic war film adS filmportal (Cover picture: Hansjörg Felmy, Horst Frank, Ernst Reinhold)
  6. 6000 films. Critical notes from the cinema years 1945 to 1958. Handbuch V. der Katholische Filmkritik, 3rd edition, Verlag Haus Altenberg, Düsseldorf 1963, p. 175.
  7. Sharks and Small Fish. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  8. Sharks and small fish at prisma.de. Retrieved March 26, 2013.
  9. Sharks and small fish at kino.de. Retrieved March 26, 2013.
  10. Sharks and small fish from Dirk Jasper, film-lexikon.de. Retrieved March 26, 2013.