Fighter (film)

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Movie
German title fighter
Original title Борцы (Borzy)
Country of production Soviet Union
original language German
Publishing year 1936
length 75 minutes
Rod
Director Gustav von Wangenheim
script Gustav von Wangenheim
Collaboration: Joris Ivens
Idea: Alfred Kurella
Advice: Maxim Gorki
music Hans Hauska
camera Boris Monastyrski
cut Gustav von Wangenheim
occupation

Fighters is a film that was made in 1935/1936 with the participation of German filmmakers in exile in the Soviet Union.

action

The film is about the resistance of the workers against fascism, stimulated by the arrest of the communist leader Georgi Dimitrov . Two storylines are shown in parallel in the film; on the one hand the trial of Dimitrov, who is accused of having initiated the Reichstag fire (1933), and on the other hand the resistance of the workers against the fascists of the SA and SS. The workers are accused by the SA of having set fire to the Spörke factory . At the head of the resistance movement are mother Lemke and Anna, who made Dimitrov their leading figure in the fight against fascism. The trigger for mother Lemke's resistance is the death of her son Hans, who was murdered by the SA because he knew that the Spörkefabrik was producing poison gas - as a weapon of war - and not perfume.

Gradually, Dimitrov found supporters all over the world demonstrating for his release. And their son Fritz, a doctor and even former SA members join the resistance movement around mother Lemke and Anna.

The liberation of Dimitrov at the end of the film also raises hopes that fascism will soon end.

Film aesthetics

The film “Fighter” makes use of a heroic aesthetic in that it depicts the characters of the working class as the fighting subjects of themselves. This heroism is a characteristic of the cinematic avant-garde. The association and contrast assembly technique also reveals borrowings from the cinematic avant-garde of the 1920s. A reality is artificially represented here. However, the film already anticipates forms of socialist realism ; it is to be assessed as a transition from the cinematic avant-garde to socialist realism.

Contributors

Director Gustav von Wangenheim worked as an actor in numerous films during the Weimar Republic, including a. Nosferatu , with. Between 1928 and 1933 he was the founder and leader of the troop in 1931 . After the war, Wangenheim returned to the GDR and worked as a director and screenwriter for DEFA and was awarded the GDR National Prize.

Bruno Schmidtsdorf (1908–1938) only played a major role in this film, and was then killed in the Stalinist Terror because he was allegedly a member of a Soviet Hitler Youth. Alexander Granach , who played the role of Rovelli, was able to flee to the USA, and then played almost exclusively Nazis in films. (Actors with a German accent could not be popular in an American film.) Ernst Busch , who played the judge, played in Kuhle Wampe or: Who Owns the World? and the Threepenny Opera with. Almost all actors are exiled Germans. In the Weimar Republic they played in the left-wing theater groups Kolonne Links and Truppe in 1931 .

The composer of the film music, Hans Hauska , who had been a KPD member since 1929 and since 1931 together with Hanns Eisler the composer of the agitprop group “Kolonne Links”, wrote in a letter to Theodor Plivier on August 23, 1952: “The USSR was never that as what we German communists saw them ".

The shots by Henri Barbusse and Georgi Dimitroff, which are integrated into the film, are not documentary shots , but were shot with both of them in Moscow especially for this film.

Ernst Busch not only played the magistrate, but also recorded the moor soldiers' song for the film, which is sung in the concentration camp scenes.

The participating Soviet actors were dubbed by German actors, for example conductor Klebersbusch from Erwin Geschonneck and his wife from Hedda Zinner .

Reception and effect

The “film is strong. So strong and so powerful that I, as your colleague, have to thank you, ”wrote Max Ophüls to Wangenheim. He particularly emphasizes that he has succeeded in depicting the idea of ​​humanity instead of mere black and white painting instead of stirring up hero worship and mockery of perpetrators.

Josef Stalin did not share this enthusiasm for the film. Immediately after the film was completed, around half of all those involved were murdered or taken to camps. After a few weeks, the screening of the film was stopped. Even the production company, Meshrabpom , was dissolved.

criticism

The work can be seen as a successful contemporary historical document of a resistance against the growing National Socialism in Germany.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Günter Agde: Fighters. Biography of a film and its makers. Berlin 2001, research in NKVD archives, p. 48. Quoted from: Lutz Haucke: Antifascist films in the Stalinist country of exile. Tragedies for German filmmakers? Kulturation 1/2004 ( Memento of July 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ Günter Agde: Fighters. Biography of a film and its makers. Berlin 2001.

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