Johannes Kepler (film)

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Movie
Original title Johannes Kepler
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1974
length 95 minutes
Rod
Director Frank Vogel
script Manfred Friday
Frank Vogel
production DEFA , KAG "Red Circle"
music Gerhard Rosenfeld
camera Otto Hanisch
cut Evelyn Carow
occupation

Johannes Kepler is a DEFA German feature film directed by Frank Vogel from 1974.

action

The action is set in the first years of the Thirty Years' War , in the last decade of Johannes Kepler's life . This is a famous and hostile man, astronomer and mathematician, his calculations of the planetary orbits are a tremendous insight and a tremendous threat to recognized religious doctrine at the same time. Behind the facade of the religious war, the powerful are trying to realize their interests.

In 1620 Kepler traveled from Linz , where he worked as a university professor, to Württemberg . He wants to fight for the life of his mother, who was denounced as a witch by a former girlfriend after an argument. In the days of negotiation, full of hysteria and religious madness, he remembers crucial stages in his lifelong struggle for enlightenment and reason. He must realize that the court is really trying to get him to testify against his own teaching and to bow to Catholic dogmas . This is the grasp of the dark men after Kepler, which they cannot get over by their own thinking.

The film shows episodes of Kepler's struggle to assert his scientific views. At the same time, the Protestants lose a decisive battle near Prague, which the prosecutor uses to fuel the pogrom mood. Kepler tries to get support from the Protestant leadership, which he is denied. A Jesuit , Kepler's former college friend, now asserts his influence at the Inquisition . The seemingly hopeless thing succeeds after a long argument: Kepler's mother is set free. Insights and encounters with other famous personalities, such as with his sponsor Tycho Brahe , are woven into the plot as memories.

production

Johannes Kepler was shot on ORWO- Color by the artistic working group “Red Circle” and had its festive premiere on November 14, 1974 at the Berlin Kino International . It was first broadcast on the second channel on GDR television on May 14, 1976.

The scenario came from Manfred Freitag and Joachim Nestler and the dramaturgy from Christel Gräf and Günter Karl .

The original plan was to shoot the film as a co-production with the CSSR under the title Petzt das Licht der Vernunft .

criticism

Horst Knietzsch wrote in Neues Deutschland that the authors of the film were on the trail of Kepler's genius, but that they only half-heartedly managed to make what is special about this person visible.

“'Kepler' - a film that is difficult to open up in terms of its problems, that offers the audience the pleasure of thinking along too brittle and, not least, makes it too difficult. Indecision in the dramaturgical expansion of the conflicts inherent in the material. Indecision also in the implementation on the part of the director seem to me to be the reason why the potentially existing wealth of problems does not reach the audience, or only with difficulty. "

- Berliner Zeitung

The lexicon of international films called the film less than satisfactory.

literature

  • Johannes Kepler In: F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 292-293.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Neue Zeit of February 14, 1973; P. 2
  2. ↑ Neues Deutschland from November 17, 1974; P. 4
  3. ^ Günter Sobe in the Berliner Zeitung of November 21, 1974; P. 6
  4. ↑ Johannes Kepler. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used