New German film

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The New German Film (also Junge Deutscher Film , abbreviated JDF ) was a film style in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1960s and 1970s . Formative directors were Alexander Kluge , Hansjürgen Pohland , Edgar Reitz , Wim Wenders , Volker Schlöndorff , Werner Herzog , Hans-Jürgen Syberberg , Peter Fleischmann , Werner Schroeter as well as Rosa von Praunheim and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. These filmmakers put social and political criticism at the center of their work, also in contrast to pure entertainment films. As auteur films , these productions were usually made independently of large film studios . The New German Film was influenced by the French " Nouvelle Vague " and the '68 protest movement .

From Joe Hembus to the Oberhausen Manifesto

In his 1961 pamphlet, Joe Hembus demanded that “German film cannot be better” for a reorientation of German feature films . In Germany from the 1950s, it was dominated by topics such as Heimat , Karl May , Schlager and Edgar Wallace films . The spokesmen of the JDF, on the other hand, called for a discussion of political, socio-critical and contemporary issues. The film should not be entertaining, but rather give the viewer food for thought. Filmmakers should become financially independent. 26 young filmmakers followed Joe Hembus on February 28, 1962 and read the so-called Oberhausen Manifesto at the Short Film Days . On February 1, 1965, the Kuratorium Junge deutscher Film eV was founded, which, with the support of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, supported numerous young German films with loans.

Beginning in the 1960s

The literary film adaptation of The Bread of the Early Years , produced by Hansjürgen Pohland , is considered the first film of the "New German Cinema". Heinrich Böll developed the dialogues himself, the young, promising Austrian Herbert Vesely was hired as a director, Wolf Wirth's camera shaped the new style and the jazz musician Attila Zoller provided the music in coordination with Joachim-Ernst Berendt . For the first time in Germany, improvised jazz will be played live with the film images and used as a soundtrack. Christa Pohland, the producer's wife, then as editor, as with most of her husband's films, puts everything together into a big whole. The premiere at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1962 is eagerly awaited, as four of those involved signed the Oberhausen Manifesto : producer, director, cameraman and leading actor.

“The past and the present interpenetrate,” explains Vesely, “the gaze is everywhere and at the same time. No action with flashbacks, but simultaneous processes: reflections, possibilities, realities. ”“ He seems to want to create a new impressionism, ”wrote Le Figaro after the performance. "The bread of the early years" marks the beginning of the "New German Cinema" within the German cinema history of the post-war period and marks a lasting break with the conventional aesthetics of the popular cinema industry. In Germany, the film was awarded 5 federal film prizes in gold.

Jean-Marie Straub's film Not Reconciled (1965) was one of the examples of New German Cinema that followed. Straub filmed the Böll novel “ Billiards at half past ten ”, showing a Brechtian lesson in the German past and present. Not reconciled, the criticism split into two irreconcilable camps: some were enthusiastic, others did not let the "newfangled concoction" take off.

Young Törless was noticed at the Cannes Film Festival in 1966 . Volker Schlöndorff interprets the novel " The Confusions of the Zöglings Törless " by Robert Musil against the background of German history. The pupil Törless observes the abuse of a Jewish classmate in a boys' boarding school, he does not agree, but he does not intervene either.

A young Jewish woman who fled the GDR to the Federal Republic, but was not accepted there either, is the protagonist in Alexander Kluge's film Farewell to Yesterday , which was awarded a special jury prize at the Venice Festival in 1966.

On January 1, 1968, the new Film Funding Act came into force and the Film Funding Agency (FFA) was founded in West Berlin .

May Spils achieved one of the greatest commercial successes of the New German Cinema with the comedy On the subject, sweetheart , which came to German cinemas on January 4, 1968. The author's film shows the philosophical outpouring of a Schwabing “dropout”.

At the 1968 Berlinale , Werner Herzog was awarded the Silver Bear for directing for signs of life . A young soldier fails with his rebellion towards the end of the Second World War.

From February 16 to 18, a group of young filmmakers is organizing the “1. Hamburger Filmschau ". A weekend that has gone down in the history of New German Cinema as a film happening.

In 1969, hunting scenes from Lower Bavaria by Peter Fleischmann sparked heated controversy and sparked a wave of critical homeland films. A homosexual attracts the hatred of the Bavarian rural population, is suspected of murder and hunted down mercilessly.

In the same year Rainer Werner Fassbinder made his debut with " Love is colder than death " at the Berlinale. His first film is based on the American genre film and Jean-Marie Straub , shows an alienated study of the Munich underworld: the foreground is clinically bright, with bare backgrounds.

Growing reputation in the 1970s

The next year, 1970, Michael Verhoeven's film ok caused a scandal at the Berlin Festival . American soldiers rape and murder a girl in Vietnam, Verhoeven relocates the plot to the forests of Bavaria - with Brechtian alienation effects. The Berlinale was canceled.

On April 18, 1971, the cooperative " Filmverlag der Authors " was founded in Munich to organize the distribution and production of the filmmakers.

In 1971, Berlin had learned from the scandal of the previous year and incorporated its own “International Forum for Young Films” into the Berlinale.

In 1972 director Werner Herzog and actor Klaus Kinski worked together for the first time in the film Aguirre, the Wrath of God . The plot goes back to a historical event in the 16th century: A Spanish conqueror fails when he tries to establish the ideal state on the Amazon . Herzog denounces imperialist madness and insane leadership ideas.

On April 15, 1973, the director Wolfgang Petersen and the author Wolfgang Menge triggered an environmental discussion with the fictional documentary Smog on WDR . Business representatives, local and state politicians feared for the image of the Ruhr area .

With Lina Braake or the interests of the bank rather than the interests may be that Lina Braake has succeeded Bernhard Sinkel 1975, the first public success. On October 9, 1975, the box office success of Volker Schlöndorff's Die Lost Honor of Katharina Blum led to a new euphoria in the JDF. In the film adaptation of the story of the same name by Heinrich Böll , Katharina Blum becomes a victim of the tabloid press and a heated public through a chance acquaintance with an alleged terrorist, harassed by the one-sided investigative judiciary.

The report films , Lederhosen films , Edgar Wallace films and Lümmelfilme produced at the same time seemed to confirm the contrast between commercial film and artistically valuable film. While these films were denied any artistic claim and especially the sex films were used in public debates and social discussions against the film industry, ARD and ZDF made a place available for artistic film - still without private competition and quota printing. The German feuilletons were also on the side of the “young filmmakers”. The mostly low audience response had no consequences, since art and commerce were considered to be downright incompatible, and so “many of these films underlined their claim to high culture, especially in their financial failure”.

Documentaries

In 1976 Klaus Wildenhahn showed the strengths of the JDF in documentary film with Emden goes to USA and Eberhard Fechner with Die Comedian Harmonists - Six CVs .

In the summer of 1975, the East Frisian region around Emden was threatened with a serious crisis because VW wanted to set up a branch in the USA . Wildenhahn observed how the workers react and think about countermeasures. The critics praised the excellent camera work.

The Comedian Harmonists were very popular with their a cappella pieces (“My Little Green Cactus”) in the 1920s . In 1935 they were dissolved by the National Socialists because three of their members were Jews. The film of the same name by Eberhard Fechner does not primarily show how popular artists lived, but rather aims to encourage viewers to reflect on the German past.

  • Nives Konik: Berlin May Festival. Documentary, Vitri film production, Berlin, 2004

International breakthrough

Wim Wenders achieved his international breakthrough in 1977 with The American Friend . The film adaptation of a novel by Patricia Highsmith is more interested in the psychology of the protagonists than in the external moments of tension. After a Hamburg craftsman learned of his fatal illness, he committed murders for a fee.

In 1978, under the leadership of Alexander Kluge Deutschland im Herbst , a film by several directors of the JDF was made, which dealt with the political situation in Germany at the time of the terrorist hunt and received a lot of international attention.

In the same year, Reinhard Hauff's knife in the head was created , which dealt with the same topic. A scientist is shot in a raid and temporarily loses his language and memory. He searches for the truth and finds out that fear was the main motive for the policeman's hasty act.

In 1979 the marriage of Maria Braun by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff received the Golden Palm , the German film award and the first Oscar for a German film for his Günter Grass film adaptation of The Tin Drum .

Decline

In September 1979, Munich filmmakers tried to revive the JDF again in the “Hamburg Declaration”, but without lasting success. In 1981, the state of things, a film by Wim Wenders about a director (Friedrich Munro) and his film, which cannot be produced for lack of money, was released.

During the 1970s, “young filmmakers” and the ruling SPD on the one hand, and “old filmmakers” and the opposition CDU / CSU on the other . The takeover of government by Helmut Kohl (CDU) in 1982 could therefore not remain without consequences. Interior Minister Friedrich Zimmermann (CSU) implemented essential changes in the award of the federal film prizes in 1983, triggered by Herbert Achternbusch's film Das Gespenst . In the Bundestag session on October 24, 1983, Zimmermann declared that he would not finance any films that no one except the producer wanted to see. Due to the public controversy, over 150,000 viewers saw the film.

Many films produced as Achternbusch directly for the numerous cinemas , which certainly had their core audience in the university towns, such as Percy Adlon , Vadim Glowna , Oliver Herbrich , Klaus Lemke , Rosa von Praunheim , Christoph Schlingensief or Rudolf Thome . At this time, however, there was also a general change in the understanding of film. In 1983, Reinhard Munster's Dorado - One Way was another metafilm that began in black and white in the manner of a typical author's film, but then came closer and closer to the aesthetic of advertising.

The Junge Deutsche Film had no more outstanding successes, the majority of the audience turned to the American blockbusters . The domestic entertainment film with international participation also experienced a comeback , in which the producer Bernd Eichinger played a significant role. The directors of New German Films continued to work, but they went to Hollywood ( Roland Emmerich , Wolfgang Petersen ), worked for television ( Hans W. Geissendörfer , Dominik Graf , Edgar Reitz ) or made experimental films for a minority audience ( Werner Nekes , Jörg Buttgereit ). Eric Rentschler summed up: "For many young German filmmakers, the polished commercial cinema has become the new El Dorado ."

The death of the main representative Rainer Werner Fassbinder in 1982 is often seen as the end of the New German Film.

The films of the New German Film, especially those by Fassbinder, were received very positively by the filmmakers of the Berlin School with the multi-part exhibition Hands on Fassbinder in 2012. In this sense, the tradition of the New German Film has been revived by the Berlin School since around 2004. The theater director and filmmaker Christoph Schlingensief described his film Die 120 Tage von Bottrop as the last new German film.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "The view is simultaneously and everywhere": - WORLD. In: THE WORLD. Retrieved January 7, 2017 .
  2. ↑ ray | Viennale - search and departure. In: ray film magazine. Retrieved January 7, 2017 .
  3. ^ Archive German Film Prize: German Film Prize. In: www.deutscher-filmpreis.de. Archived from the original on December 10, 2015 ; accessed on January 7, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Jürgen Kniep: No youth approval! , P. 197
  5. ↑ www.vitri-film.de
  6. ↑ Eric Rentschler: Film of the eighties , in: Geschichte des Deutschen Films, 2nd ed. 2004, p. 286
  7. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001202/bio
  8. ^ Revolver newsletter , accessed December 17, 2012.
  9. ↑ The 120 Days of Bottrop (1996) - The Last New German Film