Over time

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Movie
Original title Over time
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1976
length 168 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Wim Wenders
script Wim Wenders
production Wim Wenders
film publisher of the authors
music Axel Linstädt
camera Robby Müller
Martin Schäfer
cut Peter Przygodda
occupation
chronology

←  Predecessor
Wrong movement

Over Time is a road movie by Wim Wenders from 1976. After Alice in the Cities (1974) and Wrong Movement (1975), the almost three-hour black and white film is the third part of the feature film trilogy "Road Movie".

prolog

“In the course of time” begins with an improvised prologue in which an older man reports in a semi-documentary manner about the real changes in his life as a former cinema musician and still a cinema operator. The silent film once secured him and his wife an income with the musical accompaniment to famous films such as Fritz Lang's “ The Nibelungs ”. The light sound introduced in the 1930s and a decade later the magnetic sound brought his guild to an irrevocable end. The current situation finally enables the small country cinema neither a secure present let alone a future. The fact that practically all small movie theaters, even those in less remote regions, actually had to close if they weren't showing some kind of rental junk, was a phenomenon of that time, which the filmmaker Wenders deals with in an overriding way in In The Course of Time .

action

The focus of the game is the relationship between two men. Bruno Winter, nicknamed "King Of The Road", still attracts with its roller cabinet, a converted old MAN moving van, whose driver's cab in large letters the word removals is, across the country and repaired cinema projectors . Robert Lander, who later and somewhat evasively tells about himself that he is “a kind of pediatrician”, only separated from his wife the day before (and in Genoa too ). He is just about to throw himself into the Elbe in a short-circuit reaction in a frenzied suicidal ride in his VW Beetle . Bruno is visibly amused by Robert's half-hearted attempt to kill himself with this dramatic performance and gives him the nickname "Kamikaze". In his currently aimless position, Robert lets himself be taken in the moving van and the two men approach each other on friendly terms despite persistent animosity. Their common route goes on the Elbe and along the former German-German border to the south, mostly on back roads with little traffic; only interrupted by two side scenes that lead them to the places of their childhood.

Both protagonists are alone and have failed in their relationships with women. Meanwhile, Bruno emphasizes the contradictions that exist between men and women in his opinion, Robert cannot understand the allegedly wanted loneliness of his new friend. Talking about it is difficult, however, and in addition to a latently perceptible tension, there is mostly speechlessness. How all the characters in the film act extremely taciturn and especially the view of women is mostly noticeably one-sided. Strangely enough, a woman is mentioned who sits with her hands folded in her lap in bright sunshine under a dryer hood in a front garden, while another suffers a vaginal cramp during a secretly arranged coitus in a run-down country cinema, which only shows cheap sex films (The involuntarily reunited couple has to be transported to the hospital during the performance). The next one even takes her own life when she deliberately crashes her car into a tree and has a fatal accident. In this post-mortem episode, her husband is the victim of an equally failed relationship - abandoned and dejected after the first shock, he feels drawn to all sorts of gloomy and absurd speculations, such as: “There is only life, there is death but not at all. ”The short interlude between Bruno and a box office girl, who unexpectedly fell for him, also turns out to be hopeless - determined on both sides by unspoken longings, but as if obliged despite the loneliness. And so there is only one farewell without a promise; a furniture store called "Sad", which Bruno then drives past, visualizes the general mood. Robert, on the other hand, tries to call his wife again and again when a phone is nearby, but hangs up immediately after dialing. When he finally makes it, she abruptly breaks the connection. A deeper insight into the mixture of antagonistic views about women only emerges towards the end of the journey together - as an aspect of social change due to the Americanization of German life. Robert replies to Bruno's anecdote that once during an argument with a woman he had the melody of the Elvis Presley song Mean Woman Blues in his ear and then the meaning of the line of text "I got a woman, mean as she can be" ( analogously: "I have a wife, however mean she may be") became aware: "The Americans have colonized our subconscious".

On a short trip into his family past, Robert seeks out his old father, who lives alone after the death of Robert's mother. The gap between father and son, however, seems insurmountable, because Robert forbids every word. Finally, the father did not let him ever to speak nor the mother, and now should he kindly listen again. But Robert hardly finds words himself. What is more, after leaving home, his entire life was animated by the obsessive thought that he had to see every idea or concept immediately printed in order for it to have any meaning at all. In silence, he went to the typesetting machine and wrote a speech to his father overnight - in the form of an extra sheet , as Bruno called it shortly afterwards. The bold headline reads: “How a woman can look out” - without a question mark ... As farewell, the father tries to hug his son, a brief reply and a clear look make him understand that there is nothing more to say.

In the meantime, recurring scenes are Robert's glance at regional newspapers that happen to be lying around, which explains the connection with his father as the publisher of a newspaper of the same type and affected by the decline. The rail traffic on branch lines, which is frequented by a few passengers, attests to further images of the ongoing structural change. In addition, moving trains in long-distance traffic and barred level crossings are repeatedly staged, whereby the road often ends in a dead end after crossing. Trains moving randomly through the background also give the impression of being extras in the travel movements of the two main characters, who therefore see each other for the last time at the end of their journey in a parallel journey by moving van and rail bus .

The excitement after Robert's father's visit and the boredom that Bruno's job brings with it causes the two actors to spontaneously break out of the confines of the furniture truck. After a somewhat daring ride across the middle of Germany on an old BMW motorcycle with a sidecar , you spend a restless night on a no longer inhabited island in the Rhine . Bruno spent his childhood here in an old villa with his mother, the father never came back from the war. Lost in thought, he strides through the rooms of the now dilapidated building, and before he finally leaves the house, he suddenly throws in a pane. Finally, under the entrance stairs, he finds the “treasures” of his past: formerly important objects from childhood, secretly hidden and forgotten over time; Emotionally deeply affected, Bruno urges to return to the Elbe as soon as possible. A little later he will say with a certain relief about the stay on the island: "For the first time I see myself as someone who has come through a time and that this time is my story."

Due to the constant proximity to the border, the division of Germany is included in the plot - one night an odyssey ends at the stop here border sign and in an orphaned American observation post. Dogs barking and even single bursts of fire from the direction of the brightly lit death strip can be heard in the distance . The hut turns out to be not only a symbolic place of divided countries and foreign powers, but also as night quarters and scene of an alcohol-laden, long overdue discussion of the two protagonists, which culminates in a tangible argument. And it is the location of an (allegorical) key scene in the film - the climax of the characterization of the characters and the final turning point of the plot: after self-discovery trips and mutually acute situational perception of the characters follows Robert's farewell - the last episode in a long series of strangeness and alienations in this story - inevitably another division or separation. Nonetheless, combined with the vague promise of "the end of all aimless travel movements", of a new beginning. The following morning Bruno finds a piece of paper with the note: “Everything has to be different. So long. R. "

epilogue

The epilogue closes the circle on the introductory theme of the film - Wenders has an old-style cinema owner philosophize about film as the “art of seeing”, which leads to a final summary of the state of cinema in western Germany in the mid-1970s: “So as it is now, it is better there is no cinema than there is a cinema as it is now. "

In the final scene, the camera slides over a thoughtfully pensive Bruno, who is slowly tearing paper plans for the present into small pieces in his old moving van. Floats on over the white painted, empty showcase of a movie theater with the metaphorical name White Wall , of whose neon writing above the entrance portal only single letters still work: "WW, E, N, D" - like "White Wall" (or "Wim Wenders") ) - "END".

Production and Background

The production costs amounted to 730,800 DM . The film was financed with a script bonus from the Federal Ministry of the Interior in the amount of 250,000 DM, the pre-sale of the license to ARD with 200,000 DM, a distribution guarantee of 50,000 DM as well as insurance benefits of 53,000 DM and own contributions or provisions to the value of 177,800 DM.

The film, shot in black and white and with the original sound, was shot in 11 weeks from July 1 to October 31, 1975 and uses the widescreen format in a ratio of 1: 1.66 - all of this information is shown in the opening credits of the film. For this purpose 49,000 meters of negative material Kodak -Plus-X and Four-X were twisted, cut and copied onto Orwo -Positive with a length of 4,760 meters. The camera was an ARRI 35 BL with integrated sound; Apart from a few close-ups, it was equipped with a bright 28 mm wide-angle lens newly released by Zeiss , whose high sharpness turned out to be unsuitable in test photos and was mitigated with diffusion filters. The otherwise sparsely equipped recording technology consisted of a rail for a camera movement of just 10 m along with a dolly , tripod and swivel arm as well as a “practical” frame in front of the moving van for camera and lighting for frontal shots of the cabin during the journey. The majority of the night scenes were created using the day-for-night process with inclined sunlight, strong red filters and underexposure of the negative material. A stylistic device that is often used is the wiper panel for connecting different scenes over time, such as the rotating roll of film in the projection room in the transition to the rolling wheels of the furniture truck on the country road.

The songs played on Bruno's portable single turntable are The more I see you by Chris Montez , Just like Eddy by Heinz and King of the Road by Roger Miller . So long by Crispian St. Peters is running at the fair .

The film, which was rated from the age of 18 in the first FSK examination on February 17, 1976, has been approved for ages 6 and over since a new FSK examination on August 1, 2005.

In his documentary White Walls (1995), the director Mike Schlömer went in search of the cinemas between Lüneburg and Hof along the former inner-German border 20 years later, in which Wim Wenders shot in the course of time .

criticism

“Wim Wenders' film combines the captivating clarity and epic serenity of a classic educational novel with the mythical qualities of American genre films. Going far beyond the carefully developed story of a friendship between men, the film takes stock of the opportunities to experience the world in the mid-1970s and creates new and independent visions of the loss of tradition and alienation. He unobtrusively formulates the need for change and tries out possibilities for a new beginning - in a technically perfect staging style that leaves room for the figures, thoughts and landscapes to unfold. "

- Lexicon of International Films

“Movements, confusingly beautiful and suggestive image sequences, compositions of great poetry and technical perfection make up the special charm of this three-hour black and white film. [...] Scenes in the night fog, in the twilight in the morning and in the evening, depth of field, diaphragms, iridescent effects in the interaction of filters, daylight and artificial light, long shots, as if whole landscapes had been illuminated: formal qualities that always have the denote the double meaning of this being on the move, the nowhere of this journey, the intermediate area beyond the usual references to reality. The technical virtuosity of 'In the course of time' will make cineastes addicted. "

- Wolf Donner for the time

“After weeks in a Munich and Berlin cinema, 'Im Lauf der Zeit' is still well attended, mainly by younger semesters who want to see how it is done. [...] There are enough bad films: I just hear that this one is making fashion and I think: For God's sake, don't do it like that! [...] How exhausting to watch men who constantly pretend they are 'natural'. That really hurts. For this reason, I recommend not allowing the film to be allowed to young people under thirty, or better, only showing it to film buffs who are supposed to be 'addictive', as 'Die Zeit' prophesies, and then not for them either there is much more to spoil. "

- Renate Rasp for the mirror

Awards

Web links

literature

  • Fritz Müller-Scherz and Wim Wenders (eds.): In the course of time - picture for picture / dialogue book / materials . Film publishing house of the authors, Munich 1976.
  • Mario Schrader: Small cinemas really big. A journey through 100 years of cinema history in the Helmstedt district - BoD , 2009, ISBN 978-3-8391-1395-0

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Certificate of Release for Over Time . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , August 2005 (PDF; test number: 48 024 V / DVD).
  2. ↑ Film music - Source: YouTube
  3. ↑ Screenshot - from: In the course of time , two thousand and one edition , source: Directupload
  4. ↑ Places on the route mentioned in the film are Wolfsburg , Helmstedt , Schöningen , Machtlos , Friedlos , Ostheim vor der Rhön , Haßfurt , Hof and in a scene with the huge sign Rhine kilometer "544" an island in the Rhine near the Loreley (the Bacharacher Werth )
  5. ↑ Main actor - Source: Wim Wenders Foundation
  6. ↑ Father and Son - Source: Wim Wenders Foundation
  7. ↑ Directupload - from: In the course of time , two thousand and one edition
  8. ↑ Directupload - from: In the course of time , two thousand and one edition
  9. ↑ a b In: In the course of time - audio commentary by Wim Wenders , Arthaus  / Zweiausendeins Edition, 1/1976
  10. ↑ Directupload - from: In the course of time , two thousand and one edition
  11. ↑ a b Fritz Müller-Scherz (Ed.): In the course of time , Frankfurt a. M .: Two thousand and one, 1976 (The complete film in 1256 stills)
  12. ↑ In the course of time - from: Film data sheet of the Berlinale
  13. ↑ filmportal.de
  14. ^ White Walls - Documentary Germany 1994/95, screenplay: Mike Schlömer, Heinz Schink; in: Zweiausendeins Filmlexikon
  15. ↑ Over time. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  16. ↑ Wolf Donner in Die Zeit, March 5, 1976
  17. ↑ Renate Rasp in Der Spiegel from April 19, 1976