Cat Game (1983)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Cat game |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1983 |
| length | 83 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | István Szabó |
| script | István Szabó |
| production | Hans Jürgen Niebuhr (Production Manager) |
| camera | Lajos Koltai , Gyula Kovacs |
| cut | Elke Niemietzek-Carmincke, Lutz Carmincke |
| occupation | |
| |
Katzenspiel is a German television film from 1983 based on the novel of the same name by István Örkény .
action
Erzsi Orban lives alone in Budapest , she speaks on the phone and often writes to her sister Gisa, who lives with her son and his family in Garmisch-Partenkirchen . Both are old, they grew up together in Hungary and haven't seen each other for a long time. While Gisa has accepted her age, Erzsi tries to look younger by wearing more elegant clothes and colored hair. She is also encouraged by her friend Paula and by her admirer Viktor, an aged opera singer who has dinner at Erzsi's once a week. From the phone calls and letters (which are spoken into the camera by the respective addressee in the film), one learns that Viktor and Erzsi were in love with each other when they were young and still had an affair when Erzsi was married to her husband Béla. After a serious accident with Béla, the contact between Erzsi and Viktor was limited to dinner together. Only now, at over sixty and after Béla's death, do they get in touch again. Viktor still seems to be in love with Erzsi.
Paula has also known Erzsi for a long time: when Béla and Erzsi had to go into hiding during the war, she ensured both of their survival. When Paula and Erzsi attend a Viktor concert together, Viktor then takes Paula home in a taxi. She later claims that he attacked her during the trip, which Erzsi refuses to believe. Erzsi cancels the next dinner for Viktor by telegram, only to change his mind shortly afterwards and cancel the telegram. In the evening Viktor cancels by phone at short notice, whereupon Erzsi angrily throws away the food. Erzsi's lodger, whom she calls Mäuschen, is increasingly worried about her nervous condition because of Erzsi's moody and unpredictable behavior and therefore writes to Gisa. When Erzsi goes to Paula and finds Viktor eating with her there, she throws the food from the table in jealousy and tells Viktor that she never wants to see him again.
Gisa reproaches Erzsi and is worried about her, which Erzsi takes as a resentment. Gisa tries to convince Erzsi to move to Germany with her, but Erzsi refuses. When she calls Viktor again, he lets himself be denied. Erzsi's daughter Ilona, a doctor, also reproaches her and believes that she is making a fool of herself through the naivete with which she chases after Viktor. Erzsi lets Ilona give him a sleeping pill and later kills himself with it.
After the funeral, a kind of alternative ending is shown, but it only happens in Erzsi's imagination shortly before her death: She is woken up by Gisa, who flew to Budapest to see her sister again after 16 years. Gisa suggests that they move back together to the small Hungarian town where they grew up and restore their parents' house there.
production
The film was produced in 1983 by Saarländischer Rundfunk and Telefilm Saar . The script is an adaptation of the novel Katzenspiel (Hungarian original title: Macskajáték ) by István Örkény , which was filmed in Hungarian in 1974.
The film was broadcast for the first time on June 29, 1983 on ARD . It was shown on Hungarian television on June 23, 1985.
reception
In a preliminary review in Die Zeit , Rolf Michaelis describes the film as unsuccessful, only the performance of Helmut Qualtinger is praised. Michaelis also criticizes that the political situation, especially the iron curtain that separates the two sisters, does not play a role:
“What agony to hear what these women [...] talk to each other on the phone, say to each other in letters, with the epistle writer pressing her contorted face against the screen from within. It is about the topic of “lack of communication”, which in the “West” has been worn down to the point where the audience is put to sleep. Beckett showed us the silence about it. In pieces that have to be wrested from “ Socialist Realism ”, dangling talk is unwinding. [...] Direction, soothing everything, and a camera that bathes every picture in a golden twilight, ensure a sleep-film of the highest valerian class. "
"A tragic-comic love story of a seventy year old, in which hopelessness and finding consolation compete with each other in a grotesque game."
Web links
- Cats game in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Cat game on YouTube
Individual evidence
- ^ Valerian from Hungary. In: Die Zeit No. 26/1983. June 24, 1983, accessed July 13, 2020 .