Jonas (1957)

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Movie
Original title Jonas
Country of production Germany
Publishing year 1957
length 81 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Ottomar Domnick
Director's advice: Herbert Vesely
script Ottomar Domnick
Comments: Hans Magnus Enzensberger
production Ottomar Domnick
music Duke Ellington
Winfried Zillig
camera Andor from Barsy
cut Gertrud Petermann
Ottomar Domnick
occupation

Jonas is a German avant-garde film by the psychiatrist , film writer and art collector Ottomar Domnick from 1957 .

content

Jonas, a typesetter in a printing company, buys a hat, which he loses shortly after in a restaurant. He steals another hat. The readable initials "MS" remind him of a friend whom he had abandoned in a life-threatening situation ten years earlier. Plagued by guilt, he tries in vain to get rid of the hat.

Production backgrounds

financing

His brother Hans Domnick , a successful film producer, tried to dissuade Ottomar Domnick from his film project by pointing out the great financial risks.

The production costs of the film amounted to around 300,000 DM. The state of North Rhine-Westphalia granted film funding of 100,000 DM.

Emergence

Domnick had initially not wanted to direct it himself. He had spoken to Géza von Radványi , Peter Pewas and Gerard Rutten , but then Herbert Vesely had been assigned to direct. Due to artistic differences, Vesely was only supposed to work as a director's consultant, but during the filming the cooperation was completely stopped and Domnick directed alone.

The shooting took place from the end of July to the end of August 1956 in Stuttgart. With the exception of Robert Graf, the actors were actors from the Stuttgart State Theater .

As a film score, Domnick used the Liberian Suite , which Duke Ellington composed in 1947 and recorded on record with his orchestra. On the other hand, he commissioned Winfried Zillig as composer. His pieces, composed at the end of 1956, were recorded on February 9, 1957 in the Villa Berg of the Süddeutscher Rundfunk . Zillig himself played the piano , celesta and harpsichord , Willy Glas played the flute, four other musicians played solo timpani, drums, saxophone and Hammond organ .

Performance and reception

In terms of form and content, Jonas anticipates some of what years later would shape the New German Film . First performed during the Berlinale in Berlin's Zoo-Palast on June 26, 1957, it stood out as an experimental essay film about lonely people in the big city from the majority of West German post-war films .

It was shown in West German cinemas from autumn 1957, received some excellent reviews and also found an audience at the box office. Domnick's other cinematic work received little attention and "Jonas" was largely forgotten. To this day, the film is little known and is rarely mentioned as a forerunner of the New German Film.

background

  • The actor Robert Graf died in 1966 at the age of 42. He was the father of the director Dominik Graf .
  • Hans Magnus Enzensberger wrote in a letter to Domnick about the desired influence of your film on German cinema : “You will probably not follow the hint and continue to make penny films; then the German film industry will be completely delivered in six years at the latest. " Michael Althen comments on this in retrospect in the FAZ : "He didn't even know how right he should be in both. It is all the more important today to remember how modern the Federal Republic could be if it only wanted to."
  • Domnik had previously made two documentaries and is self-taught in film.

Awards

Republication

  • The Stuttgart "Filmgalerie 451" released "Jonas" for the first time on DVD on June 29, 2007 for the 100th birthday of Ottomar Dominik.
  • On February 8, 2010 "Jonas" was released as one of 10 selected German films in the FAZ Filmedition - Moments of German Films.

The new releases led to a number of recent reviews, as well as to a reassessment of the film in its film historical importance.

Reviews

“Experimental fictional film about a disturbed and lonely worker who, full of fear and obviously burdened by a debt that cannot be removed, wanders between concrete walls and the crowds of the modern city. A study of the problems of fear of life and the inability to make contact, influenced by depth psychology, told in fragmentary, almost abstract visual language. A formally ambitious work that also deserves attention as a cinematic experiment. "

- Lexicon of international film

“'Jonas' will go down in film history - as the bravest, loneliest and most unrepeatable German film of our day. No other German film for years has had similar visual art. "

- Gunter Groll in the Süddeutsche Zeitung , 1957

“The great and early deceased Robert Graf plays a city citizen in the young Federal Republic, eaten away by guilt trauma. The Stuttgart arena becomes an anonymous threat backdrop to the economic miracle of the FRG with echoes of George Orwell, Kafka and the German cinema expressionism of the 1920s. 'Jonas' anticipated much of what Alexander Kluge and the other intellectuals of New German Cinema later invented in the 1960s. "

- Jochen Kürten for Deutsche Welle on October 8, 2007

“Jonas” shows a Stuttgart from 1957 that is as close to Michelangelo Antonioni's later Italian cityscapes as this city was possible. Because Domnick and his cameraman Andor von Barsy captured the yawning emptiness of this post-war modernity, and even if the film pushed the loneliness, alienation and indomitable people somewhat, “Jonas” lives from a poetic, almost tender look at the other side of the Economic miracle, which from today's perspective looks almost undisguised. "

- Michael Althen in the FAZ , February 28, 2010

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Guntram Vogt, Ottomar Domnicks “Jonas” , 2007, pp. 65–82
  2. ↑ Guntram Vogt, Ottomar Domnicks “Jonas” , 2007, pp. 115–119, 44f
  3. ↑ Guntram Vogt, Ottomar Domnicks “Jonas” , 2007, pp. 83–91, 102f
  4. ↑ Guntram Vogt, Ottomar Domnicks “Jonas” , 2007, p. 106
  5. ↑ Guntram Vogt, Ottomar Domnicks “Jonas” , 2007, pp. 123-131
  6. ^ "Jonas": You have to be absolutely modern. Review by Michael Althen FAZ, February 28, 2010
  7. ↑ cf. Jonas in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used
  8. ^ Post-war cinema between experiment and comedy Jochen Kürten for Deutsche Welle
  9. ^ "Jonas": You have to be absolutely modern. Review by Michael Althen FAZ, February 28, 2010