In the Sign of the Cross (1983)

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Movie
Original title In the sign of the cross
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1983
length 103 minutes
Rod
Director Rainer Boldt
script Rainer Boldt,
Hans Rüdiger Minow
production Martin Wiebel
music Jens-Peter Ostendorf
camera Karl Kases
cut Elke Boisch
occupation

Under the Sign of the Cross is a German science fiction - TV movie and political thriller from 1983, which in the near future of 1990 plays. The film title is derived from the radiation warning sign. In a traffic accident in the fictional Lower Saxony village of Schlebusch, the local population is contaminated by nuclear waste and interned on site . When the villagers desperately tried to break through the cordon , they were shot down by a Bundeswehr soldier with a submachine gun . The production caused a scandal before it was first broadcast , with the result that the planned broadcast was not broadcast on ARD and instead the film was only broadcast on WDR and NDR on May 16, 1983 . The script , adapted as a novel , was published by Knaur in 1983 .

action

Friday, May 5, 1990. The in Hanover resident couple Christine and Dr. Jörg Bensch is in the car with his 15-year-old son Michael on the way to Schlebusch in south-eastern Lower Saxony. Michael is supposed to spend a few days with the farmer couple Eva and Gerd Wiechmann and their daughter Veronika, who are friends , because the Benschs have a marital problem and want to calmly clarify their situation. On the way they are stopped on a country road due to a driving error by Bensch by a civilian radio patrol car accompanying a truck loaded with barrels .

Once in Schlebusch, the Benschs want to buy flowers for the Wiechmanns in a small shop. A tank truck with a dangerous goods label stops in front of the shop. When Michael asks the passenger what the truck has loaded, she replies "Milk", which the boy does not buy.

When he arrives at the Wiechmanns' farm, Michael is angry at first because he is supposed to be spending his vacation here involuntarily. As it now turns out, Eva Wiechmann is seven months pregnant. Michael's parents want to return to Hanover immediately to reopen their medical practice. There is a huge explosion that lights up the sky. Gerd Wiechmann, the captain of the volunteer fire brigade , is picked up immediately by a fire engine. Bensch wants to help and sets off alone in his car to the scene of the accident.

As it turns out, there was an accident on the country road just before Schlebusch between the dangerous goods tanker and the special transporter loaded with barrels. The drivers and passengers of both trucks as well as the police officers accompanying the special transporter are already dead when the helpers arrive. Dr. Bensch can no longer help anyone and drives back to Hanover with Christine. The local workers do not know what is in the barrels and notice that they are emitting an orange gas.

No sooner have the Benschs arrived in Hanover than a criminal investigator who conspicuously avoids talking to Dr. Bensch to come into physical contact - he visibly nervously refuses a handshake - lured out of practice under the pretext of being questioned about the accident and "kidnapped" in a civilian police bus like a raid by police officers wearing NBC protective suits. A patient who had recently been examined by Bensch is arrested outside the practice. The couple and the patient are interned in a hospital; any contact with the outside world is impossible. It also turns out that the telephone lines to Schlebusch are interrupted.

Christine is determined to break out with her husband to visit their son Michael in the village. She outwits a male nurse and frees her husband. Together they overpower a policeman on guard and escape the hospital. You take a taxi to the practice, but discover that your car has been removed in the meantime. At Hanover main station , they discover that the train connection to Schlebusch has been discontinued. You decide to take the train to the district town closest to Schlebusch .

In Schlebusch itself, the entire population is interned and is in the church . They are only allowed to relieve themselves in the sacristy , never in the open air. Mayor Süchow and Pastor Lause try to calm the people down. The journalist Kaiser tries to document the mood among the internees with a Polaroid camera and a cassette recorder . The assistants have since left the site and only left pills. Eva Wiechmann has since survived a premature birth with Michael's help , while her husband Gerd, who had contact with the poison barrels at the accident site, dies.

The Bensch couple arrives in the district town by train, on which they are the only passengers. There is total chaos here. The station is occupied by the Federal Border Guard . A BGS officer explains to them that Schlebusch is completely cordoned off and nobody is allowed to enter or leave the place. Thereupon Bensch decides to break through to Schlebusch in a spontaneously stolen Range Rover . But the Benschs run into a road block by the Bundeswehr . While Christine gets out on the orders of the soldiers , Bensch deceives the guard and breaks through the barriers at full speed.

The incident apparently unsettled the commanding Bundeswehr captain. He telephones with a senior civil servant on the disaster management team who has not been identified in detail and asks to speak to the minister responsible . The official refuses to do this; Although he could not judge the military situation, he insisted on the primacy of politics: the officer should carry out the orders he received to cordon off under all circumstances.

Bensch arrives at the church. Now the internees, who are showing more and more signs of radioactive poisoning, realize that no rescue can be expected from outside. You decide to break the shut-off ring. On an empty motorway, they come across a Bundeswehr blocking post. The captain asked them several times to return. You are still pushing ahead and want to negotiate with a white flag. The captain finally gave the order to shoot, also pointing out that the soldiers did not want to be contaminated by the internees either. A soldier opens fire with his Uzi ; the internees collapse in a hail of bullets.

Production background

Originally the film produced by WDR and SFB was supposed to be broadcast on ARD. The shooting took place in Duttenstedt near Peine with the participation of residents as extras . However, the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior rejected a request from Common-Film to provide ABC gear and other equipment for an authentic prop , as the state should not contribute to the spread of irrational fears, said Interior Minister Egbert Möcklinghoff (CDU), who wrote the film later referred to as "outrageous humbug" and "business with fear". The German Society for the Construction and Operation of Repositories for Waste Materials mbH (DBE) tried to influence director Rainer Boldt during the preparations for the film by informing him in writing that the relationship on which his television film was based and the consequences resulting from it can not only be excluded theoretically, but are also practically unthinkable ”.

Defense Minister Manfred Wörner stated in an open letter that the broadcasters had exceeded the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press with this production .

In the run-up to the broadcast, the ARD program conference in Munich, in the second week of April 1983 , decided that the heads of WDR and SFB, Heinz Werner Huebner and Norbert Schneider , withdrew the DM 1.6 million production from the first program; the first broadcast was scheduled for April 24, 1983, 9:10 p.m. For Der Spiegel , this was "proof that the public service system, once properly put under pressure, squints at its own courage". In fact, in the original 1981 script, the plot time was set in the present rather than the near future. WDR editor Wiebel recognized the obvious explosiveness of the plot and pushed for a fictionalization as utopia , so that the action was moved seven years into the future. The first broadcast took place on May 16, 1983 on WDR and NDR. It was framed by a foreword and a subsequent discussion.

Special broadcast following the first broadcast

Immediately after the first broadcast, a one-hour discussion on the film was broadcast under the moderation of Rolf Seelmann-Eggebert , which included:

Like a foreword by Seelmann-Eggebert, the broadcast was a prerequisite for broadcasting, in order to “embed” the film for the audience. Director Boldt was exposed to severe attacks, especially from Meichsner, who described the film as "mediocre" and the script as "under all cannon". In addition to the technical impossibility of the accident, so Warrikoff, the portrayal of the German armed forces was particularly criticized, since, according to Beckert, they should never shoot at unarmed people. Burkhard Hirsch also criticized the representation of the Bundeswehr, but admitted director Boldt artistic freedom with regard to the technical plausibility of the accident. However, all participants agreed that the film had a strong suggestive effect.

criticism

" In the sign of the cross is a competently made, tense SF thriller that does not need to put its light under a bushel: It has impressive camera work, logically acting characters and a suitable musical background and is certainly the best utopian (?) Film that has been produced in the Federal Republic since the end of the Second World War . "

Hahn / Jansen, Lexicon of Science Fiction Films , p. 263

Trivia

After an intensive search, three days after the first broadcast, various poison barrels were found in France on May 19, 1983, which had disappeared after the Seveso accident .

See also

literature

  • Ronald M. Hahn and Volker Jansen: Lexicon of Science Fiction Films. 720 films from 1902 to 1983 , Munich (Wilhelm Heyne Verlag) 1983, p. 261f. ISBN 3-453-01901-6 .
  • Reward for fear. A WDR television game depicting the consequences of a nuclear accident in a village in Lower Saxony was catapulted out of the ARD program under political pressure , in: Der Spiegel No. 16 of April 18, 1983.
  • Ulrich Greiner : In the sign of the sheep , in: Die Zeit No. 17 of April 22, 1983.
  • Peter Leukefeld : In the sign of the cross. Novel based on the original screenplay , Munich (Knaur) 1983. ISBN 3-426-01063-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b The reward of fear . In: Spiegel Online . tape April 16 , 1983 ( spiegel.de [accessed December 22, 2019]).