In those days (1947)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | In those days |
 | |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1947 |
| length | 98 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Helmut Käutner |
| script | Helmut Käutner Ernst Schnabel |
| production | Camera-Film GmbH, Hamburg (Helmut Käutner) |
| music | Bernhard Eichhorn |
| camera | Igor Oberberg |
| cut | Wolfgang Wehrum |
| occupation | |
| |
In those days is a German episode film by director Helmut Käutner . It is one of the so-called rubble films that were made in the four zones of occupation shortly after the Second World War .
action
Karl and Willi slaughtered an old car in the rubble of Hamburg in 1946 and talked about whether there were still people at all in those times. Various traces and objects on and in the car indicate its previous owners and their fates. Since these are not always correctly interpreted by the men, the car itself begins to tell its story in seven episodes linked by the framework plot.
1st story
Sybille gets a new car delivered. It comes from Peter, who asks her in a letter to come to him in Berlin by car. When she drives off the next day, January 30, 1933 , she meets her lover Steffen. He tells her that he wants to go to Tampico , Mexico the next morning and take Sybille with him. However, she decides against it and continues her journey to Berlin. Only in conversation with Peter does Sybille understand that Steffen had to flee abroad because of the Nazi seizure of power, and so she decides to go with him after all.
2. History
The car then belongs to Wolfgang Grunelius, a modern composer . He is a good friend of the Buschenhagen family and often visits. The daughter Angela asks Wolfgang to be allowed to accompany him on his tour, but he refuses and travels alone. At the same time, Angela's mother Elisabeth goes to see her sister in Bremen. When they both return, Angela finds her mother's comb in Wolfgang's car. Angela suspects that her mother is having an affair with the composer. She wants to get the matter out on a joint excursion, but decides against it when Wolfgang says that his music was banned as degenerate .
3. History
The couple Wilhelm and Sally Bienert own a shop for frame art in Berlin. Sally is Jewish and the trade is registered in her name. The two drive their fully loaded car to their allotment outside the city. There Sally says that she wants to divorce Wilhelm and leave the business to him. However, they do not have the heart to break up and drive back to the city, where the pogroms of the " Kristallnacht " of 1938 have now begun. All Jewish shops are destroyed and looted. Since the shop windows of the frame art shop are not marked with white letters, this is spared. Wilhelm then throws in the window himself. A few days later, the couple was found dead in the allotment garden, they both committed suicide.
4th story
Dorothea Wieland's husband Jochen has disappeared. Her sister Ruth confesses to her that she and Jochen are in love with each other and are active in the resistance. They had planned to flee to Zurich together. Presumably the plan was blown. From her friend Dr. Ansbach learns from Dorothea that Jochen was "shot while trying to escape", that is, murdered by the Nazis. He advises her to flee quickly herself, since the Nazis assume that she is the woman who wanted to escape with Jochen. Instead, however, she calls Ruth and tells her that she has to leave the country on the planned route. Since Ruth would otherwise probably stay with her sister, Dorothea lies that Jochen is alive and that he had managed to escape. Dorothea is arrested a short time later and leaves the car behind. It is requisitioned by the Wehrmacht .
5th story
The soldier of the Wehrmacht August Hintze picks up a new lieutenant from the train station in Russia by car. He suggests not going back until the next day, because at night there is a great danger of being attacked by partisans in moonlight. But the lieutenant does not take his warning seriously and insists on driving immediately. Even when there were indications for partisans nearby on the way, he urged them to continue. Hintze tells of the horrors of the Russian campaign and speaks of the fact that the Russians are human beings and that the Germans are "the enemy" for them. The lieutenant has no understanding for such statements. When flares are shot down by partisans, the two soldiers try to escape with their headlights switched off. The moonlight breaks through the cloud cover and the car comes under fire. Hintze is hit and dies.
6. History
In Berlin, Erna tries to get her former employer, the Baroness von Thorn, whose son was involved in the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 , out of the city . However, when she faces the baroness, she pretends to be ignorant and only wants to get her to safety from the bombs. On the journey the women break down - the cooling water is exhausted. A policeman recognizes the name of the baroness and arrests them both. Only now does Ms. von Thorn find out that Erna knew about her son's involvement and nevertheless took the risk of helping her escape.
7. Story
1945, in the last months of the war, the soldier Josef finds the car in a barn. There he meets the young widow Marie, who fled Silesia on foot with her newborn child and wants to go to a village north of Hamburg . This place is the actually existing place Ihlienworth in the district of Cuxhaven in Lower Saxony. Although he has to go south and there is a risk of being picked up by a patrol and immediately shot as a deserter , Josef drives them to Hamburg the next morning. There he assures Marie that he will visit her one day. On the way back he is stopped by a patrol. Although he cannot explain why he is near Hamburg, one of the police officers enables him to escape on foot.
The framework story closes with a monologue about the car, even in inhuman times there are people.
background
The concept for In those days was designed by Helmut Käutner and Ernst Schnabel during the war. It was the first film by Camera-Filmproduktion GmbH, which had been founded by Helmut Käutner and Helmut Beck in March 1946 and which was the first film production company in the British occupation zone to receive a feature film license. Filming began in August 1946, with a borrowed camera. The rest of the equipment also had to be bought, borrowed or otherwise procured on the black market. Since there were no studios in Hamburg at the time, the film was only filmed in the open air. This made shooting a torture, especially in the harsh winter of 1946/47, with temperatures dropping to minus 26 degrees Celsius. Due to the lack of studios, no rear projection could be used for the car journeys, which is why cameraman Igor Oberberg had to be strapped to the hood for some scenes and a sound truck connected with cables drove next to the vehicle. Restrictions had to be accepted at the casting because many actors were unable to travel to Hamburg. This meant that both occurred in propaganda films Hermann Speelmans and the in Buchenwald -established Erwin Geschonneck were involved in the shooting.
The later very successful director Rudolf Jugert worked again as assistant to Helmut Käutner in this film and also took on a small role as a postman in the third story alongside Ida Ehre and Willy Maertens. Herbert Kirchhoff created the film structures, Helmut Beck was the production manager.
In those days it stands out from other rubble films like The Murderers Are Among Us in that it does not take the perpetrators as the subject, but the victims of National Socialism, and by saying that there were also good people in these times, a more optimistic one Mood than other films of this genre.
The idea of a car and the fates to make its various owners on an episodic film, was picked up in the UK again in 1964: The Yellow Rolls-Royce ( The Yellow Rolls-Royce ), directed by Anthony Asquith .
The premiere was on June 13, 1947 in Hamburg . The film was first shown in West Berlin on June 17, 1947, and as an exchange film between West Germany and Central Germany, it was shown for the first time on September 17, 1948 in East Berlin.
Reviews
The film was received rather positively by the press.
Der Spiegel wrote in the 24/1947 issue: “ It's a difficult film. With him Käutner gives an example that with a poetically written script, a good ensemble with a lot of own ideas and a lot of temperament, films can be created from the experience of the present that concern everyone. ". He also praises cameraman Igor Oberberg and that the film does not "raise the political finger ".
“ Hardly is the whole of German post-war literature so toneless, so in the 'sideline' and so precisely recorded the characteristic language of tyranny. ”Writes Die Gegenwart 1948,“ What is shown here, very quietly, with the naturalness of a good heart, there is no counter-argument. It is as if the bright voice of the boy David, who slew the monster Goliath, called to the fearful courage. "
Wolfdietrich Schnurre wrote in Der Neue Film: “ God knows Käutner has not disappointed the hopes placed in him by experts. On the contrary: technically, in his 'emergency art' of suggesting and abstracting, he has probably even surpassed it. [...] Since June 13, 1947 there has been another serious German film. "
The lexicon of international film describes In those days as “ (film) historically important film, which in a concise, precise characterization and skillful processing of the atmosphere of the time asks what it means to be 'human'. ". Käutner's inclination to superficial symbolism occasionally weakens the overall impression.
Prices
In those days , the first German film to be awarded a prize at the Locarno International Film Festival, and in 1960 it received the rating of "particularly valuable" from the Wiesbaden film evaluation office .
literature
- Hans-Jürgen Tast: Helmut Käutner - In those days. 1947 . Schellerten: Kulleraugen 2007. (= Kulleraugen . 33.) ISBN 978-3-88842-034-4 .
Web links
- In those days in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Since the voluntary self-regulation of the film industry only started its work in 1949, the FSK rating of the VHS released in 2000 and the DVD released in 2006 is given here.
- ↑ Claudia Mehlinger: The heroes are among us . In: Thomas Koebner , Fabienne Liptay (Ed.): Film Concepts 11: Helmut Käutner . Edition Text + Critique, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-88377-943-0 , pp. 40–46.
- ↑ Eggert Woost: “Those days” ( memento of the original from September 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , on the website of the Hamburg Film Museum (accessed January 12, 2009)
- ↑ a b Wolfdietrich Schnurre : Ingenuity and talent for improvisation , Der neue Film, No. 4 of July 7, 1947. Quoted from: Wolfgang Jacobsen , Hans Helmut Prinzler (ed.): Käutner. Edition films. , Spiess-Verlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-89166-159-2 .
- ^ A b c Christiane Fritsche: Coming to terms with the past on television , Martin Meidenbauer Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-89975-031-4 .
- ^ Alfred Bauer : German feature film Almanach. Volume 2: 1946–1955 , pp. 9 f.
- ↑ A car drives for twelve years . In: Der Spiegel . No. 24 , 1947 ( online ).
- ↑ Das Erlösende Wort , Die Gegenwart, No. 17, March 1948. Quoted from: Wolfgang Jacobsen, Hans Helmut Prinzler (Ed.): Käutner. Edition films. , Spiess-Verlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-89166-159-2 .
- ↑ In those days in the Lexicon of International Films , accessed on January 3, 2009.
