Katzgraben (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Katzgraben |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1957 |
| length | 95 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Manfred Wekwerth (theater) Max Jaap (film) |
| production | DEFA studio for newsreels and documentaries |
| music | Hanns Eisler |
| camera | Harry Bremer |
| cut | Ella Ensink |
| occupation | |
| |
Katzgraben is the 1957 DEFA studio recording for newsreels and documentaries of a production by Bertolt Brecht at the Berliner Ensemble based on a play by Erwin Strittmatter from 1953.
action
The Niederlausitz village of Katzgraben needed a new road in 1947. Großmann, the big farmer - all villagers have symbolic names - but don't want any. The poor farmers and new settlers, who have divided the land of the former Junker estate among themselves, want to build the new road to create a connection from their backward village to the city. The colliery near the village also needs the road to transport the coal to the city. Only the large farmer Großmann does not want them: because once the farmers have a road that helps them to manage their backwoods existence, they will soon have machines and tractors that help them to remove the economic pressure that he still has - with the rental of horses, feed and seeds - can exercise on them. He therefore uses all his authority to prevent the project.
The small farmers who would have needed the road also vote against the building project because they need Großmann's help, although they notice that he keeps cheating on them. So he gives them bad seed potatoes to take the good ones for themselves. Another trick: Großmann and his wife are into private property even in times of national ownership. You are unwilling to follow the given cultivation plans and prefer to grow tobacco for it. But they have that in common with the other farmers. Knecht Hermann is a willing helper for the large farmers who allows himself to be used to the full just by agreeing to inherit the farm one day. So he still has to butter in the late evening . So that nobody hears that, the farmer's wife plays Jesus, my confidence, on the harmonium . But this Hermann is also in love with the daughter of the small farmer. Elli Kleinschmidt has now passed the entrance exam to the workers and farmers faculty and is studying in the city. One day, farmer Kleinschmidt can buy an ox, but he has no feed for him. Since the ox almost collapses from hunger, it is already eating the laundry from the line and so they are again dependent on Großmann's support. Another problem is that Kleinschmidt cannot plow deep enough with the weak ox to break up enough earth. The fields in the area are much too dry for the mine due to the lowering of the groundwater.
But the miners find a way to raise the water table again. And as the poorer peasants see more and more of the big farmer's intentions, the number of people who consent to road construction increases. When the first tractor rolls over the finished new road, the dispensable large farmer's horse is carried past as a straw doll and even a HO ice cream van reaches the village, the village comes together for a big festival. Even Hermann has separated from his supposed patron and looks forward to a bright future with Elli.
production
The recording had its television premiere on October 20, 1957 on German television . The film was first shown in GDR cinemas on October 13, 1962 in the film theater of the State Film Archive of the GDR Camera in Berlin's Friedrichstrasse . With a few exceptions, the recording camera was rigidly installed in the middle of the first tier. Except for the final scene, the recordings were made in black and white. Erwin Geschonneck returned to the theater, which he had left because of a dispute with Brecht, especially for the recording in the Berliner Ensemble. In 1953, the author Erwin Strittmatter received the GDR National Prize for Art and Literature, III. Class.
criticism
Henryk Keisch found in the daily newspaper Neues Deutschland that the stage version of the work had received too little attention from the theaters at that time and up to the present day. That is why at least the film that documents the production of the Berliner Ensemble under the direction of Brecht should not only be kept in the archive. Lily Leder stated at the premiere in the monthly magazine Theater der Zeit that the author had failed to work out a real conflict.
literature
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 316 .
Web links
- Katzgraben in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Katzgraben at filmportal.de