John Rabe (film)

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Movie
Original title John raven
Country of production Germany , France , People's Republic of China
original language German , English , Japanese , Chinese
Publishing year 2009
length Theatrical Version: 134 minutes,
Long TV Version: 172 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 14
Rod
Director Florian Gallenberger
script Florian Gallenberger , inspired by the diaries of John Rabe
production Mischa Hofmann ,
Benjamin Herrmann ,
Jan Mojto
music Laurent Petitgirard ,
Annette Focks
camera Jürgen Juerges
cut Hansjörg Weißbrich
occupation

John Rabe is a 2009 feature film by the German director Florian Gallenberger . The film drama is based on the true story of the "Schindler of China", John Rabe , who saved over 250,000 people in the Chinese capital Nanjing in 1937 . The film, which was produced for 18 million euros, premiered at the Berlinale 2009 and was shown in cinemas in 2009 with little success. A long television version was first broadcast on ZDF in October 2011 .

action

Autumn 1937 has just ended. The Hamburg merchant John Rabe has lived with his wife Dora in the then Chinese capital of Nanjing for over 27 years . He heads the Siemens branch there. The thought of handing over the management of the company to his successor Fliess and returning to Berlin is difficult for him. He has grown fond of the country and knows that he is a man with influence here, but at the Berlin headquarters he is just one of many. During its farewell ball, Nanjing is bombed by airmen from the Japanese army that had recently taken Shanghai . Panic breaks out and Rabe opens the gates of the company premises to bring the families of his workers seeking protection to safety. In a key scene, people pull a giant swastika flag over their heads, preventing the bombers from causing further damage (the German Empire was in the process of shifting its alliance from the Republic of China to the Japanese Empire ).

The following morning, while the fires are being extinguished and the damage is being assessed, the foreigners remaining in the city are discussing what to do in the face of the threat. The German diplomat of Jewish descent Dr. Rosen reports on Shanghai, where a security zone for civilians was successfully established. Valérie Dupres, director of the Girls College, is immediately enthusiastic and proposes John Rabe, as a German to a certain extent "ally" of the Japanese, as chairman of the International Committee for the Safety of Nanking . This meets with severe indignation on the part of Dr. Wilson, chief physician at the local hospital, who has a strong antipathy for the " Nazi " raven. Rabe actually wanted to start his journey home the next day. However, when he and Dora board the passenger ship with the escaping diplomatic corps, she looks into his eyes and realizes that he will stay. Rabe then witnessed an air raid on the ship after it casts off and was badly damaged. Since he has to assume that his wife was killed in this aircraft attack, he is desperate, but then throws himself into the task of organizing a security zone.

Meanwhile, Japanese troops have captured many Chinese soldiers during a battle outside Nanjing. Prince Asaka Yasuhiko orders the prisoners to be executed . A young major has concerns about this crime and is reprimanded for it. Nanking is then brutally overrun. However, John Rabe and the International Committee manage to get the Japanese authorities to recognize the security zone. Hundreds of thousands seek refuge, more than expected, and resources are overstretched. Chinese soldiers are not officially admitted. When a wounded soldier is carried to the hospital during the fighting, a group of Japanese searches for him and then shoots him together with some hospital staff, much to the horror of Dr. Wilson.

The situation worsened when the committee found that food supplies would only last three days. One wonders why girls college needs so much rice. Mme Dupres confides in Rabe that she is hiding many Chinese soldiers in the attic. Rabe is dismayed to realize that if these soldiers are discovered by the Japanese, it will mean the end of the security zone. But Mme Dupres explains to him that she would only hand these soldiers over to the Japanese on their corpses.

More atrocities follow: When a Japanese officer wants to march off a group of Chinese prisoners of war who were bound together from Girls College, he demands 20 more girls to take away. Mme Dupres resolutely refuses and as a consequence hears the prisoners being shot. Langshu, one of the girls from school, is an avid photographer and documents the atrocities. To the annoyance of Ms. Dupres, she often sneaks out of school, also to provide her family with food. One night she is caught by soldiers in her father's house. The soldiers shoot the father and try to rape Langshu , but her little brother shoots the soldiers to save them. After burying their father, the two secretly try to return to the security zone - Langshu disguised in a Japanese uniform. She is recognized, but only barely manages to escape and find refuge in her dormitory.

Another time, while Rabe, Rosen, and Dr. Wilson negotiate with the Japanese military command , there is a misunderstanding between Rabe's Chinese driver and a Japanese officer. When Rabe returns, the driver has been kidnapped. Raven arrives too late to save his driver from being beheaded in what is portrayed as part of a notorious killing contest between two Japanese officers . He is then allowed to choose 20 replacement drivers from among the other prisoners, knowing full well that the remaining men may not have long to live.

With all the stress, Dr. Wilson and Rabe are friends. They drink, sing and play the piano. The committee celebrates Christmas together. Some packages have come through from the outside world. Rabe even gets one without a sender. It's a bundt cake . Rabe passes out when he realizes that his wife must have sent him his favorite cake as a secret message that she is well. His friends come to his aid. Dr. Wilson discovers that Rabe is diabetic and is out of insulin . The doctor then manages to get some vital insulin from the Japanese authorities.

The situation becomes more and more desperate after Christmas. Raven donates the last of his savings to buy supplies. The Japanese military plans to break into the security zone after learning about the hidden Chinese soldiers. The young major, however, secretly reveals this to Rosen and that the diplomatic corps will return soon. When Japanese troops march at the gates of the zone, Chinese civilians work with the international committee to form human shields. Two Japanese tanks are still being positioned, but before a shot can be fired, sirens signal the return of Western diplomats and journalists. The Japanese have to give up, but Rabe also has to leave China shortly afterwards.

The film ends when Rabe says goodbye. With a small suitcase in hand, a Japanese escort takes him through the ruins of Nanking to the port. There he is recognized and cheered by the Chinese. Eventually he is reunited with his wife on the pier.

background

production

John Rabe was filmed on location in China from October 2007 to February 2008. It is a production by Hofmann & Voges Entertainment , EOS Entertainment and Majestic Filmproduktion in coproduction with Pampa Production, Paris and Huayi Brothers, Beijing and ZDF . It was funded by the FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, the Bayerischer Bankenfonds, the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg , the Filmförderungsanstalt , the German Filmförderfonds , the Center national de la cinématographie and the MEDIA program of the European Union. The film was produced by Mischa Hofmann , Benjamin Herrmann and Jan Mojto .

Historical and political influences

Most of the main characters are historically accurate. However, Rabe's important colleague in the committee for the security zone for civilians, Minnie Vautrin , principal of the Ginling Girls College , is replaced by a fictional Valérie Dupres of an International Girls College .

Radio China International reported on its Japanese-language website on April 1, 2009 that the film would not be shown in Japan because the Japanese film distributors were not showing any interest. The Japanese actor Teruyuki Kagawa , who plays Prince Yasuhiko Asaka in the film , is criticized by the public opinion in Japan. Kagawa said it was difficult for many Japanese to admit the Nanking massacre . Gallenberger is said to have been suggested by a Japanese distributor to remove all scenes with Prince Asaka, which he refused.

Florian Gallenberger said in an interview that working with the Chinese censors was laborious. The result was still satisfactory. International Sino-Japanese politics were more of a disruptive factor. Once, for the sake of good relations, production was stopped because of a major joint natural gas research project. But when a Japanese textbook was published without mentioning the Nanjing massacre, it was allowed to continue. Despite the threat of professional discrimination against the actors and the refusal of the cinemas, the film was able to be shown sporadically in Japan with the support of Japanese university professor Kazuhara Arakawa.

publication

The film had its world premiere on February 7, 2009 at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival , where John Rabe was shown in the side series Berlinale Special . It started in cinemas on April 2, 2009 at Majestic Filmverleih . By the end of 2009 the film had around 175,000 viewers in Germany. With manufacturing costs of 18 million euros, the production lost several million euros.

On October 31, 2011, ZDF showed a two-part television version of the film, which was extended to 172 minutes with additional scenes. The show achieved market shares of 10.2% and 12.2% with 3.28 million and 3.22 million viewers respectively.

criticism

The film magazine Cinema wrote: “This film, which was successful in all respects, tells its little-known story - with moving fates, with the show values ​​of the war, but above all with great actors. Even if “John Rabe” falls short of the urgency of Spielberg's masterpiece “ Schindler's List ”, the two films can definitely be compared. People who surpass themselves at the decisive moment are always perfect movie heroes. Conclusion: A gripping story about courage and morals right up to the sappy end: With this, director Florian Gallenberger succeeds in creating a piece of great cinema from Germany ”.

Michael Kohler wrote in the Frankfurter Rundschau on March 31, 2009: “At no point in time does the screenwriter and director find adequate answers to John Rabe's contradicting character: He stops portraying Rabe as a self-sacrificing man of action after the Japanese bombing. In this way, the historical hero story becomes an escape into genre conventions. However, as some colleagues write, Gallenberger is far from being at Hollywood level. Of course the film was produced with some effort and has an international cast. But Gallenberger's bumpy dialogues overseas would not have got beyond the first script conference, just as the extremely unfortunate gallop of Nazi emblems, which are supposed to introduce the time and place of the film as establishing shots. It may still be enough for an Oscar nomination and for one or the other German Film Award anyway. Incidentally, we now know that even a bad film can do no more harm to the legacy of John Rabe than it was half a century of disregard. "

The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote: "A great film about a great person ... An impressive drama with an outstanding Ulrich Tukur".

On the other hand, Harald Eggebrecht - also in the SZ - said on April 2, 2009: "With the intention of" filming "as much as possible, Gallenberger quickly gets into the ostensible mapping and preparation of tableaux, which one can see too much of the ambition to make great cinema want. In addition, the film gets lost in side episodes [...]. All of this may be more or less correct, but it still softens the narrative consistency and cinematic stringency unnecessarily and makes the whole thing more and more a bigger television game. […] This leaves the ambivalent impression of a film that wanted much more than land in the Guido Knopp trap. At least he ought to have the merit of really making the name of John Rabes known. But since there is a variety of stories in this material, one can hope for more dramatic, deeper and politically more explosive films. "

Rüdiger Suchsland wrote in the FAZ on April 2, 2009: “A good story doesn't make a good film if the ideas are missing and the director's head is full of the well-worn images of industrial history cinema. You would have to touch such a material with kid gloves and carefully unfold all its contradictions. Gallenberger lacks the courage to do so. [...] There it is again, this strange, misguided idea of ​​the "big" cinema, which unfortunately happens again and again in the same type of historical film - as if it would be great if only enough extras were walking around on the screen. But in his small, unbroken, clean pictures, in the absence of any breaks and surprises, this is stylistically closer to bad television than to what one would like to see on the big screen. "

Peter Sandmeyer wrote on March 26, 2009 in Stern under the heading “The Schindler of China”: “Great cinema! … In his film, Gallenberger not only went to spectacular lengths to reconstruct the events in Nanking and tried to achieve the greatest historical authenticity, but also developed many quiet, intense and clever scenes that characterize this hero and his change. And he found a brilliant actor in Ulrich Tukur. ... a Nazi? A hero? Simple truths are lost in this film. Black and white become multi-layered gray. "

Awards

literature

  • Erwin Wickert (Ed.): John Rabe. The good German from Nanking . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1997 (Rabe's diaries). 443 pages. ISBN 3421050988 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for John Rabe . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2009 (PDF; test number: 117 009 K).
  2. ^ Age rating for John Rabe . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ a b Markus Ehrenberg: Rabe, Kelly, Rommel , Der Tagesspiegel online from October 30, 2011
  4. ↑ CRI online 日本語 「ジ ョ ン ・ ラ ー ベ」 、 日本 で 上映 で き ず
  5. ↑ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127482829
  6. ^ "John Rabe": Florian Gallenberger ( Memento from March 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Florian Gallenberger's "John Rabe" premiered in Japan. In: SPIELFILM.de. Spielfilm.de, May 19, 2014, accessed on September 20, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Film hit list of 2009 (PDF; 236 KB) In: FFA . P. 4 , accessed on September 25, 2018 (see place 36).
  9. ↑ Jens Schröder: “John Rabe” film fails on ZDF. In: MEEDIA . MEEDIA GmbH & Co. KG, November 1, 2011, accessed on September 25, 2018 (English).
  10. ↑ John Rabe. In: Cinema . TV Spielfilm Verlag GmbH, accessed on September 28, 2018 .
  11. ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau : 'John Rabe' - The burden of the good man , accessed on Friday, April 10, 2009
  12. ↑ Christian Wulff and "the good German from Nanjing". In: The world . Axel Springer SE , April 10, 2013, accessed on October 1, 2018 .
  13. ↑ Harald Eggebrecht: Naive Nazi. sueddeutsche.de GmbH / Süddeutsche Zeitung GmbH, April 2, 2009, archived from the original on April 5, 2009 ; Retrieved April 10, 2009 .
  14. ↑ FAZ.NET: Video film review "Under a false flag: 'John Rabe'." Retrieved April 10, 2009.
  15. ↑ stern.de: [1] , accessed on July 27, 2009.
  16. ↑ cf. Golden Lola for "John Rabe" - Loriot's honorary award on faz.net, April 24, 2009