Karl May (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Karl May |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1974 |
| length | 187 (TV version, two parts) 135 (shortened theatrical version) minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Hans-Jürgen Syberberg |
| script | Hans-Jürgen Syberberg |
| production | Hans-Jürgen Syberberg |
| music |
Gustav Mahler Frédéric Chopin Franz Liszt Johann Sebastian Bach Charles Gounod |
| camera | Dietrich Lohmann |
| cut |
Ingrid Broszat Annette Dorn |
| occupation | |
| |
Karl May is a prominent German film biography from 1974 by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg . The title role is played by Helmut Käutner .
action
Germany at the turn of the century. The writer Karl May is planning a trip around the world. In schools he reports on his alleged previous trips through the American continent and the Orient. And he always claims to have experienced all the adventures he wrote down himself. His popularity has reached such unimagined heights, numerous fan letters reach him from people whom he has inspired with his stories. But May got problems above all with Pauline Münchmeyer, the widow of the publisher Heinrich Gotthold Münchmeyer , and the radical journalist Rudolf Lebius , who fought him massively, slandered him and wants to put his writings on the index.
Nevertheless, May begins his world tour, which should take him to Cairo via India to Ceylon and Sumatra . Postcards to publishers and friends should prove that he actually visited these places. But none of it helps - he is believed to be a boor and a liar. May is accused of not having experienced the adventures told in his writings himself, but of having copied them elsewhere. In addition, it is revealed that May wrote texts under a pseudonym. In addition to Lebius, widow Münchmeyer, who is particularly active in this matter, proves to be the driving force. When May reaches the allegations from home, he breaks off his trip around the world. But the publisher Fischer knows of Mays pseudonymized colportages and tries to put the Saxon author under pressure. A litigation avalanche begins.
Lebius, meanwhile, does everything in his power to completely destroy Karl May's reputation by attempting to reveal his past. Lebius is defeated in one process, but he does not give up in his fight against May. In a series of lawsuits, May's past is brought to light in detail and used against him. May's life also gets into severe turmoil privately. He divorces his wife Emma in order to marry his secretary Klara Plöhn . Emma is also a childhood friend of Pauline Münchmeyer's, with whom she now allies in the fight against her ex-husband. As a result of the lawsuits, May's house is searched, and May's will, contracts and receipts are brought to light.
Between the individual processes, May writes a new book with the programmatic title Et in terra pax ( And peace on earth ). But the publisher, who has a national and colonialist history in mind for the glory of Germany, is extremely dissatisfied with the work. He has it finished by a co-author who remains anonymous. May has a special friendship with the painter Sascha Schneider . May feels kindred with him, and he paints the covers of his books. After many years, May wins his trials and his worst enemy, Rudolf Lebius, is convicted at the end of 1911. Shortly before his death, May gave a lecture in Vienna's Sophiensaal entitled “Up into the realm of noble people”. The audience is enthusiastic, including a certain Adolf Hitler . A little later May dies in his Saxon homeland.
Production notes
Karl May was filmed in Vienna from April 4 to May 17, 1974 and premiered in Munich on October 18, 1974 .
The film received the rating particularly valuable. Karl May ran in two parts on television . Part 1 was subtitled Bloody Dark Grounds , Part 2 The soul is a vast land to which we are fleeing .
In Karl May , a crowd of former UFA stars and other top interpreters of Reich German film up to 1945 are called up in a way that German film has never shown before and never since. In addition to Helmut Käutner, there are legendary mimes with several hundred years of stage and film experience such as Lil Dagover , Käthe Gold , Kristina Söderbaum , Rudolf Fernau , Mady Rahl , Attila Hörbiger and Rudolf Prack .
Nino Borghi designed the impressive Belle Epoque film structures, for which he was awarded a gold film tape . Syberberg took care of the construction himself. Theo Nischwitz took care of the optical special effects. Bernd Eichinger was the film's production manager.
The total costs amounted to DM 1.1 million, of which the co-producing ZDF contributed DM 700,000.
criticism
Der Spiegel dissected Syberberg's sweeping staging in its issue 38 of September 16, 1974 on page 131 in detail: "His" Karl May ", extended to three hours, is supposed to offer something completely different: a kind of dream game about the poet's psyche, in which Syberberg, rightly presumed to be a relay station of the German people's soul. A German national melodrama, a May-fair one, that's what it should be. And that he comes up with veterans from distant Ufa times [...] that just testifies to Syberberg's cineastic logic. After all, he thinks, Karl May was an ancestor of Ufa and his biography was "real Ufa material" anyway - hence the echoes of Greater Germany's "Robert Koch" art: the pathos boomed hollow in the courtroom, prophetic that Words on the "Preludes" fanfare, the bad guy booming in a strange way, this time an early fascist, of course, who panted against "this ulcer" Karl May, "this poison for the German people". Syberberg loves such bonds, he copies, parodies and quotes, he takes what he needs right now. He also likes to benefit from the panopticon, from the "archaic cinema that, like Karl May, came from the fair". And smartly he puts the Orient traveler May in a "dream stambul" suitable for cinema, in a yellowed studio paradise. "
Kay Wenigers Das Großer Personenlexikon des Films saw Syberberg's opus as “a cumbersome, three-hour portrait of the controversial popular poet” and found the film to be “an extremely tough and lengthy lesson on historical and social contexts. But instead of decoupling Wilhelmine Muff, as intended, and granting insights into German mental and emotional life and his definitions of Germanness through the person of May, Syberberg surrendered to lengthy pathos and thus worked counterproductive to his own intentions ”.
The lexicon of international films judged: “A film highly stylized into a mythical drama of the soul, which develops the heroic myth of Karl May's famous fictional characters from his own purification process and understands himself and his work as a message of national German ideals and soul dreams of humanity. Staged by Syberberg with critical irony against the Wilhelmine zeitgeist as elaborate entertainment and interestingly cast with an impressive ensemble of actors. "
Web links
- Karl May in karl-may-filme.de
- Karl May in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Karl May at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ according to Der Spiegel of September 16, 1974, p. 131
- ↑ Karl May in Der Spiegel
- ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 7: R - T. Robert Ryan - Lily Tomlin. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 573.
- ↑ Klaus Brüne (Red.): Lexikon des Internationale Films Volume 4, p. 1967. Reinbek near Hamburg 1987.