Jadup and Boel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title Jadup and Boel
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1981/1988
length 103 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Rainer Simon
script Rainer Simon
production DEFA , KAG Babelsberg
music Reiner Bredemeyer
camera Roland Dressel
cut Helga Gentz
occupation

Jadup und Boel is a contemporary German film by DEFA by Rainer Simon from 1980. It is based on the 1975 novel Jadup by Paul Kanut Schäfer . The film is one of the basement films and was banned after its completion in 1981, despite being revised. This ban was only lifted in the pre-turnaround year of 1988, so that the film was still premiered in the GDR. However, it was only available for distribution with a few copies, which is why the general public hardly had a chance to see it.

action

Jadup has been the mayor of Altmark for many years and is looking forward to the 800th anniversary of his small town Wickenhausen. During the inauguration of a new department store, of all places, the dilapidated building next to it collapsed and with it old, unresolved memories erupt. Because in the rubble is a copy of Friedrich Engels' “The Building of Socialism”, which Jadup once donated to Boel, a resettled girl. Just like Jadup, she came to the city as a refugee from the east in 1945 after the end of the war, together with her mother. Boel had fallen in love with the boy who taught her to read and write. After a rape that was never resolved, she disappeared from the place without a trace. Her mother lived in the now collapsed house and earned a meager living on the town's garbage dump. While Jadup remembers his former ideals, but also his human failure towards Boel and at the same time begins to critically question the present, rumors are circulating in the village that Jadup himself could have something to do with this rape and the disappearance of the girl. For Jadup and the other residents, the collapse of a dilapidated house is a catalyst to grapple with the disappearance of Ms. Martin's daughter Boel, which they had successfully suppressed for decades. It is initially about a possible personal complicity of the current mayor, but at the same time also about complicity of the entire older generation. Because the rapist, whose name Boel never revealed, could also be found among the friends of the time and in his own ranks. After all, the foreman of the carpenter's workshop had sexually molested Boel in front of the workers. The lewd remarks made by the men towards the innkeeper, Eva, suggest that this form of chauvinism is by no means a thing of the past. The landlord also suddenly becomes angry when the rape comes up again.

For Jadup, the rumors that are making the rounds in town turn into a gauntlet in which his position, his reputation, his family and especially his relationship with his son Max are at stake. In contrast to almost everyone else from his generation, Jadup tries not to suppress the events again. He goes on a search for the truth and, with the help of Boel's cynically bitter mother, remembers how he failed as a young man towards Boel and neither her affection for him, because of which she wanted to have her warts on her hands "talked away" , still wanted to accept her feelings after the rape. Instead, he put her under psychological and physical pressure, even threatening to have her locked up. His pangs of conscience lead his friends from the SED district leadership to the individual and collective admission of guilt: “We killed them by interrogating them. She just couldn't go on, I think ... We killed her, regardless of whether she was still alive. "

Meanwhile, the story seems to repeat itself in Jadup's son Max and Edith, the solitary daughter of the city chronicler Unger, who like Boel only immigrated after the war. Just like after the Second World War, when Jadup decided against Boel and in favor of his current wife Barbara, the daughter of a wealthy carpenter, Max now stands between the rebellious, critical Edith and the agreeable landlord's daughter Eva, who as a FDJ board member of a brilliant career dreams. Eva is completely a conformist, she behaves as the adults and the party expect, believes she is a role model for the others and hopes for maximum personal advantages through her behavior. In the Young Historians' Club she uses the empty words of the adults without exception. Eva's opponent is Edith, who also adopts Boel traits in the visual presentation and does not wear a pioneering scarf. Edith is considered an outsider, but is protected by her father, who works as a city chronicler and whom she also contradicts if necessary. She doesn't mince her words, says what she thinks and doesn't want to go into politics, but to become a pastor one day. Emotionally, Max is between the two girls and has to choose one of the two. He applauds Eva enthusiastically when she addresses the young historians and hardly responds to Edith's advances. Edith, on the other hand, steps in front of the assembled club management with a bloody forearm, which is supposed to cause their expulsion because of their parody of Eva's newspaper article, while Max unwillingly stutters to himself, only half-heartedly asks her reasons and an apology from her and ultimately is not ready, the one who remains silent To completely expose Edith. He reacts differently than his father once did with Boel. Shortly afterwards he visits Edith at home and helps her clear the dining table, their hands touching and they both smile at each other wordlessly. After Max has reconciled with his father, who accepts his doubts and tells the son true stories from his youth for the first time, the boy waves and calls to Edith from the church tower. An optimistic ending.

production

The end of April 1980 should be the acceptance of the film, in March 1981 it finally took place by the studio. Government approval was expected in the next few days, but nothing happened for a long time. The premiere was finally scheduled for December 17, 1981. A month earlier, the party newspaper Neues Deutschland had published an alleged letter to the editor whose author formulated his “expectations of DEFA and television” and his criticism - for example, that contemporary films show “too little pride” for “what the working class and theirs” Party in league with all the working people of our country on great things ”. The letter, which was obviously published “on order from above”, provided Simon's critics with the final argument: In order to protect DEFA and the filmmakers from the supposed anger of the people, the performance date was postponed. On April 22, 1983, the state approval was withdrawn again. Simons Jadup and Boel would be the last DEFA film to be banned after its completion.

Jadup und Boel was filmed in ORWO color by the Babelsberg Artistic Working Group and had its premiere on May 12, 1988 in the Karl-Marx-Stadt town hall . It was first broadcast on the second channel on GDR television on November 22, 1990.

criticism

Horst Knietzsch writes in Neues Deutschland that he sees the stimulating, thought-provoking aspect of this film in Simon's efforts to formulate his word on the moral responsibility of every citizen for the fate of society, in the call not to allow routine and indifference in dealing with one another. In Die Neue Zeit , Helmut Ullrich said that there was something brooding about the film; the reality therein has a mystical undercurrent. The Lexicon of International Films writes that it is an expressive attempt to deal with recent German history and the present in a poetic and at the same time realistic manner.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Jadup and Boel . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , June 2009 (PDF; test number: 118 534 DVD).
  2. ^ Solveig Grothe: Forbidden Films in the GDR: How Simon Learned to Love the Bomb. In: Spiegel Online . March 19, 2009. Retrieved June 9, 2018 .
  3. ^ New Germany of June 9, 1988
  4. ↑ Neue Zeit from June 2, 1988
  5. ↑ Jadup and Boel. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 

Web links