Meals

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Movie
Original title Meals
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1967
length 94 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Edgar Reitz
script Edgar Reitz
production Edgar Reitz Filmproduktion, Ulm
music Herbert Prasch
camera Thomas Mauch
cut Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus
Anni Giese
Elisabeth Orlow
Maxi Hainka
occupation

Meals is a German fiction film by the director Edgar Reitz from 1967 with Heidi Stroh and Georg Hauke in the leading roles. In the Federal Republic of Germany it was first released on March 21, 1967.

action

The 20-year-old photography student Elisabeth meets the somewhat older medical student Rolf in Hamburg and immediately falls in love with him. She is fascinated by everything he does. She accompanies him to the lectures and to his dissection courses . Both feel like they are in a romantic romance novel . It doesn't take long before the couple marries and Elisabeth becomes pregnant. The young family moves into an attic apartment . Rolf works alongside his studies to finance life together.

Elisabeth has a large group of friends who often visit her. She likes to rave about to her guests how happy their marriage is. When Irina, one of her friends, condemns marriage, Elisabeth gently rebukes her.

Soon Elisabeth will be a mother for the second time. In order to be able to feed the now larger family, Rolf is forced to give up his studies and throw himself into work. Under these circumstances, however, he feels extremely uncomfortable. He needs some time off and leaves the family. In Rotterdam he finds a job as a laborer in a shipyard . However, his wages are not enough to generate savings. He returns home shortly before the birth of the third child. Elisabeth's father supports the family financially.

The fourth child is not long in coming either, and the fifth is soon to come. Rolf now works as a representative at a pharmaceutical company . But because he shows no particular sociability, he is fired. He gets his next job with a cosmetics company.

One day, the couple learns a missionary of the Mormon know and become friends with his faith. The married couple receive baptism in a river according to the Mormon rite. In the course of time, Rolf can no longer cope with his life. In a clearing in the forest, he leads the exhaust gases into his VW and thus finds death. His widow mourns him as intensely as she loved him. She now sees the meaning of her life in her love for the fine arts . In an exhibition she met the American Brian, he was a Mormon like her. Friendship soon turns into love. After marrying him, she follows him with her five children to his homeland.

Award

Reviews

“The large marriage between a medical student and a photographer is crumbling due to the inability of the two young people to subordinate themselves to that of the other and to find a harmonious partnership. [...] The hard-working but somewhat uncertainly designed film (his first feature film) was staged by Alexander Kluge's colleague [...] Edgar Reitz, who later succeeded in creating a masterpiece of the description of time with "Heimat" [...]. "

“In terms of the approach, the idea is interesting and debatable material, but it is not mastered mentally or cinematically, as the events lack the absolute necessity, the credibility. Only to be recommended to a mature and critical audience for discussion. "

source

Program for the film: Illustrierter Film-Kurier , Vereinigte Verlagsgesellschaft Franke & Co. KG, Munich, No. 175

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. http://www.kino.de/kinofilm/mahlzeiten/28618
  2. rororo-Taschenbuch No. 6322 (1988), p. 2410
  3. Critique No. 127/1967, Evangelischer Presseverband München