Volume 45

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title Volume 45
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1966
length 94 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Jürgen Böttcher
script Klaus Poche ,
Jürgen Böttcher
production DEFA , "Red Circle" group
music Henry Purcell,
Wolf Biermann
camera Roland Graef
cut Helga Gentz
occupation

Year 45 is a DEFA relationship film by Jürgen Böttcher from 1966. Böttcher's only fictional film was withdrawn in the raw version due to hopeless approval and was only premiered in 1990.

action

The nurse Li and the 23-year-old auto mechanic Al are married but have grown apart. Al feels restricted by the "adult" Li in his urge for freedom and files for a divorce . The divorce lawyers give both of them six weeks to think about it.

Al, who still has four days of vacation, moves out of the shared apartment in an old building in Prenzlauer Berg and first of all to a former music bar and later to his mother. He meets with his former girlfriend Rita. However, his friends advise him not to give up on Li, as he will never find a woman like that again. Meanwhile, Li has had enough of Al's whims and goes dancing with friends. Jealously, he follows her into the bar, but refuses to dance with her himself. She reveals to him not to mourn for him anymore and to be young enough to find a new friend.

Al, who is spending his days off haphazardly, returns to work early. The manager of his company asks him to speak to him because he has learned of the imminent divorce. Al accuses him of not having stopped him from marrying too early two years ago, on the contrary, of reinforcing him. The divorce is solely his private matter, since the divorce lawyers have already given him enough moral sermons.

With friends, Al visits a large construction site where high-rise buildings are being built. One of his friends will move into one of these apartments with his girlfriend high above the city. Al sees the couple's affection. He visits Li in the hospital when she is showing young fathers their newborn children. He picks her up from work, both of them drive into the countryside and look from a distance at one of those construction sites.

production

Year 45 was filmed in the spring and summer of 1966 on original locations in Berlin. The playrooms were based on designs by production designer Harry Leupold in original apartments a. a. in Prenzlauer Berg in the Käthe-Kollwitz-Kiez, in the Zionskirchstraße and on the Teutoburger Platz. The film was first viewed in-house in August 1966, with the first scenes removed. Changes to the material were also made afterwards. On September 27, 1966, a rough cut version of the film was shown to studio manager Franz Bruk and employees of the film headquarters of the Ministry of Culture . They expressed their incomprehension about what was shown, which did not correspond to the youth of the GDR and also did not take a political standpoint. The portrayal of the main character Al was particularly criticized:

“Al seems almost antisocial in his habitus. [...] People and the environment are rather designed in such a way that they could be assigned to the capitalist rather than the socialist sphere of life. However, since the film clearly pretends to reflect an excerpt from our social conditions, it becomes deeply untrue [and] leads to statements that are directed against socialist society. "

- Statement from Dr. Franz Jahrwow the HV film 1966

Against the background of the decisions of the 11th plenum of the Central Committee of the SED in 1965 and the sharp criticism of HV Film , the film was ultimately not even proposed for state approval. Instead, the dramaturge group and the studio management ordered the storage of the film material.

The basement film was completed in 1990 and had its cinema premiere on October 11, 1990 in Berlin's Babylon . It had previously been shown at the Berlinale in February 1990 . In October 2005 he was part of the DEFA film retrospective "Rebels With A Cause" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City .

stylistics

Year 45 borrows from Czech films such as Miloš Forman's The Black Peter , but also deals with Italian neorealism . “We all [...] wanted to make a different kind of film than was usual in DEFA. When we started at that time, we said 'Not like that!' ”, Says dramaturge Christel Gräf, looking back. New presentations and cinematic effects could be achieved through technical innovations of the time, including highly sensitive film material and lighter cameras.

The score includes pieces by Henry Purcell , among others . In one scene, Al and his friend Mogul hear the song Schwarz ist mein Liebste of Wolf Biermann , who was already banned from performing in 1966, on the radio, sings Eva-Maria Hagen and accompanies Biermann himself on the guitar. The jump between the making of the film and its release two and a half decades later is also illustrated by the use of the song After the Sunset by the band Die Vision in the final cut from 1990.

The silent film that Li and Al watched on television is Charles Chaplin's The Idle Class .

Criticism after the premiere in 1990

For Heinz Kersten from Tagesspiegel , year 45 was a "very lyrical film with poetic everyday impressions from the Prenzlauer Berg milieu."

In 1990, Der Spiegel stated that "the director's first and only feature film [...] already betrays the unmistakable handwriting of the now internationally known documentarist [Jürgen Böttcher]" and praised the "beautiful black and white photos ... by cameraman Roland Graef".

For the Berliner Filmspiegel , year 45 was "one of the most revealing memories of the life of those who were young in the sixties, a prophetic document that not only those who are interested in the art of that time should look at."

The film-dienst called the film unusually "both in camera work and editing as well as in the free play of the actors - informal, everyday, without excessive, meaning-overloaded dialogues. [...] This unfortunately only feature film by Jürgen Böttcher is interesting both as historical evidence of a development phase and as a formal experiment, although the undramatic fable does not get close to the viewer and hardly attracts him from a distance. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from Ralf Schenk, Erika Richter: Apropos, film: the yearbook of the DEFA Foundation. 2001 . Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 2000, p. 22
  2. ↑ Ingrid Poss (Ed.): Trace of Films. Contemporary witnesses about DEFA . Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2006, p. 215.
  3. ↑ Ingrid Poss (Ed.): Trace of Films. Contemporary witnesses about DEFA . Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2006, p. 216.
  4. ↑ Heinz Kersten in Tagesspiegel , February 18, 1990.
  5. ↑ f: Comeback for rabbits . In: Der Spiegel , No. 7, 1990, p. 233.
  6. ↑ Rolf Richter: Clear-sighted waking dreams . In: Filmspiegel , No. 1, 1991.
  7. ^ Silke Ronneburg: Year 45 . In: film-dienst , No. 25, December 11, 1990.