Levin's Mill (film)

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Movie
Original title Levin's Mill
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1980
length 118 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Horst Seemann
script Horst Seemann
production DEFA , "Berlin" group
music Horst Seemann
camera Hans-Jürgen Kruse
cut Bärbel Bauersfeld
occupation

Levins Mühle is a German film drama directed by Horst Seemann from 1980 . It is a literary film adaptation of the 1964 novel Levins Mühle: 34 sentences about my grandfather by Johannes Bobrowski .

action

In the village of Neumühl on the lower reaches of the Vistula in West Prussia, mainly Germans lived in the 1870s, but also Poles, Gypsies and Jews, such as the Jew Leo Levin. The richest man in the village and village elder is the nationalist German Johann, who runs a wage mill . Levin, on the other hand, runs a commercial mill, buys grain from the farmers, processes it into flour and sells it again. As the farmers have increasing financial worries, over time they sell their grain more often to Levin than to Johann, who has Polish workers grind grain for wages. Johann has built a weir above Levin's mill. One morning he breaks open the weir locks unobserved and the tidal wave destroys Levin's mill, who just got away with his life with his fiancée Marie. Since Johann has always threatened Levin in the past that something would happen to Levin, Levin sued Johann at the court in Briesen.

Johann is outraged by the lawsuit and begins to use his influence. When his brother Gustav's child was baptized, Johann made a pact with the Protestant pastor Glinski, who made contact with the judge commissioned to deal with the case and referred to Johann's German sentiments. One day the Scarletto circus appears in the village, and during the performance it also sings a song that seems to address the events surrounding Johann and Levin. The Jews present, Poles, but also Josepha, the wife of the Baptist preacher Feller, join the song. Johann leaves the performance angry. The next day, he fired his workers who participated in the song. Since Levin is staying with Habedank's future father-in-law after losing his mill, Johann now wants to get rid of Habedank. Through his contacts he was able to obtain a postponement of the court hearing, which Levin is not informed of. This arrives at Briesen with great difficulty, only to have to turn back without having achieved anything. In the meantime, Johann Habedank's house is on fire and a short time later Josepha is in despair in front of Habedank's burning house. She accuses her husband of participating in the injustice, but he weighs it down. Habedank, in turn, was briefly arrested for arson on his return.

The trial in Briesen begins and Johann is confident of victory. The judge is German-national and rejects numerous statements of the prosecution. Johann claims the weir broke down. There are no witnesses for his deed, even if everyone knows that it was Johann. Josepha is outraged about the injustice that is happening and says that Johann was the culprit after all. When he laughs, she escapes the courtroom and drowns herself a little later. Levin, on the other hand, does not get any rights in court and has to bear the costs of the proceedings. In Neumühl there is resistance to Johann and the Baptist church to which he belongs. When the Baptists want to celebrate their summer festival in the village jug, as always, Poles, Gypsies and Jews are already there. After a fight, the Baptists, including Johann, are thrown out of the village jug. Higher authorities react and send the gendarmerie to Neumühl to restore calm. The men are led by Sergeant Plontke, who is not intimidated by Johann's national sentiments and a little later reports to his superiors that it is Johann who is causing trouble in the village. Johann initially wants to complain in Briesen, but then decides to leave Neumühl entirely and move to Briesen. He sells his mill.

In 1895 he lived as a reindeer with his wife in Briesen and was enthusiastic about Otto Glagau's anti-Jewish articles in the gazebo . This outraged the painter Philippi, who until then had regularly drunk beer with Johann. He publicly mocks Johann and wants to make his wrong behavior clear to him. When Johann asks him to leave him alone, Philippi vigorously calls out "No!"

production

Bobrowski's novel Levins Mühle: 34 sentences about my grandfather were considered impossible to film. Horst Seemann, who by then had already made literary adaptations such as Shots under the Gallows (based on RL Stevenson), not only worked as the director of the film, but also wrote the scenario. In doing so, he adhered closely to the literature and took some dialogues in the original. He also contributed the film music and wrote the song about the great water, which is used as a leitmotif in the film. He was also seen as Swist Powist in a small supporting role as an actor.

The film was shot from 1979. Inge Kistner created the costumes, Georg Wratsch designed the film . The premiere of Levins Mühle took place on November 13, 1980 in the Berlin Kino International . The cinema release in the GDR was the following day. The film was shown for the first time on German television on September 30, 1982 on S 3 and was shown for the first time on GDR television on April 1, 1983 on GDR 1 . As part of the GDR Film Week in London, the film was shown in England in April 1982 along with five other DEFA films. In addition to the almost two-hour theatrical version, a 173-minute television version was also produced, which was shown in two parts on GDR television in 1983. In October 2006 the theatrical version of Icestorm was released on DVD.

Reviews

Renate Holland-Moritz saw knowledge of the novel as indispensable for understanding the film and doubted whether the film "would be readily available even for discerning viewers [...]". Knowing the book, Levins Mühle is "an aesthetic pleasure of an unusual kind", so the "arrangements and picture compositions [...] are simply gorgeous [...] I can't remember ever seeing such fascinating living illustrations for a wonderful book." “Heinz Kersten found that Seemann had“ created a poetic genre image of a sunken world in the East ”. Klaus Wischnewski, on the other hand, wrote that the film turned out to be a “vital optical-mucical [!], Albeit sometimes confusingly overloaded adaptation”.

The film service described Levins Mill as a "caustic attack on religious hypocrisy and German national feelings". Although the film adaptation was only partially successful compared to the literary model, above all "the implementation of the pictorial elements of the novel, the atmosphere and the people's attitude towards life" are remarkable and the actors' performances are excellent. Even Günter Agde emphasized the acting performances. He also called Levins Mill in the Filmspiegel an "important film on an important topic. May it not be the last contribution our art makes to it. "

Awards

Levins Mill received the state title "valuable". At the 2nd National Feature Film Festival of the GDR in 1982, Käthe Reichel was honored as the best supporting actress. Horst Seemann received the special prize for his commitment against intolerance and chauvinism .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 357 .
  2. ↑ Helmut Ullrich: The words and the pictures. “Levin's Mill” - example of a literary film adaptation. In: film mirror . No. 10, 1980, p. 5.
  3. ↑ Film mirror. No. 9, 1982, p. 2.
  4. ^ Renate Holland-Moritz: cinema owl. In: Eulenspiegel . No. 1, 1981. Quoted from Levins Mühle. In: Renate Holland-Moritz: The owl in the cinema. New movie reviews. Eulenspiegel, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-359-00734-4 , pp. 18-19.
  5. ↑ Heinz Kersten in: Tagesspiegel . December 14, 1980.
  6. ↑ Klaus Wischnewski: Dreamers and Ordinary People 1966 to 1979. In: Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Ed.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992. Henschel, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-89487-175-X , p. 245 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  7. ↑ Levin's Mill. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  8. ^ Günter Agde: Guilt, told for today. In: film mirror. No. 25, 1980, p. 15.
  9. ↑ State titles awarded. In: film mirror. No. 25, 1980, p. 2.
  10. ↑ Levin's Mill. Film database. In: DEFA Foundation . Retrieved August 25, 2019 .