My school friend
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | My school friend |
 | |
| Country of production | Federal Republic of Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1960 |
| length | 89 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Robert Siodmak |
| script | Robert A. Stemmle |
| production | Robert Siodmak for KG Divina-Film |
| music | Raimund Rosenberger |
| camera | Helmuth Ashley |
| cut | Walter Boos |
| occupation | |
| |
Mein Schulfreund is a German film adaptation by Robert Siodmak from 1960. It was based on the play Der Schulfreund by Johannes Mario Simmel .
content
Munich in 1944: The postal carrier Ludwig Fuchs has just witnessed his daughter's boyfriend being killed in an air raid . His apartment has been destroyed and the daily bomb alarm robs him of the last of his strength. So he writes a letter to Hermann Göring and asks him to finally end the senseless and already lost war . He and Göring used to be school friends. The letter is opened by Captain Sander and Captain Kühn in Goering's anteroom and Ludwig is arrested as a " political " person and later sent to a psychiatrist. Although Professor Strohbach classifies him as perfectly healthy, Ludwig is declared insane at Göring's behest, as this is the only way to save him from execution. Strohbach now makes the wrong diagnosis, whereupon his subordinate colleague Dr. Lerch files an official complaint against Strohbach. As a “mentally ill” Ludwig is no longer allowed to work as a mail carrier.
The war is over, and Ludwig wants to have the wrong diagnosis reversed and go back to work, after all he is in fact perfectly healthy. A first new report fails because the inexperienced psychiatrist does not dare to question the diagnosis of the proven specialist Professor Strohbach. Ludwig now needs a witness who was involved in the case at the time. Goering is dead, and Strohbach was sentenced to ten years in prison in the American Zone of Occupation for having numerous requests for the sterilization of the insane that Dr. Lerch had asked when his supervisor had to sign. He refuses to testify in Ludwig's case because he has to sign every statement, but based on his experience he can no longer do so. More years pass. Dr. Lerch returns home from a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp and refuses to give any testimony: At that time he stood up against Professor Strohbach and was transferred to the front as a punishment for this. The subsequent prisoner of war made him a cripple, so that he now sees no reason to revoke the cause for which he had to atone so much. Captain Sander, who had brought Göring's letter of intervention at the time and knows the real situation, would like to help Ludwig, but he suddenly dies shortly before he will testify. In 1958, Ludwig is close to suicide because even Sander's colleague Kühn does not want to help: Although he knows the truth, he does not want to endanger his own position with a discussion about his high position in the Nazi power apparatus and pretends that Ludwig's case is not to know. Ludwig cannot travel to America with his daughter either, as the country does not allow any mentally ill people to enter.
Only Ludwig's lawyer finds the solution: Ludwig actually goes crazy in his post office, spills ink and destroys windows. He is arrested and re-examined after the attorney presented the 1944 certificate. The examination reveals perfect sanity. The post office has been paying him the lost wages since 1944, and yet there is one downer: Ludwig cannot visit his daughter in America now, because he now has a criminal record and therefore does not receive a visa.
production
The film was directed by the production company Co. KG DIVINA-FILM GmbH & manufactured. The company belonged to Ilse Kubaschewski , who was also the owner of the first distributor Gloria-Film GmbH & Co. Filmverleih KG . My school friend was filmed under the working title Der Schulfreund from January to February 1960 in the Bavaria Ateliers in Munich-Geiselgasteig. The premiere of the film took place on July 22, 1960 in the Cologne Capitol .
criticism
Der Spiegel criticized my school friend , whose content "would have just been enough for a cabaret sketch". Simmel and director Siodmak would "roll out" the content by grafting on the "thin fable all sorts of marginal glosses about psychopaths, economic miracles, US immigration regulations and other temporal phenomena. The hero now appears less as a victim of political times than a chain of stupid coincidences ”. Overall, the first 60 minutes of the film would be better than the rest.
The Lexikon des Internationale Films rated Mein Schulfreund as a “time-critical attempt at comedy” that was “formally above the German average”.
The Evangelische Film-Beobachter describes the film as "not a weighty tragic comedy, but just an unbalanced mixture of seriousness and joke."
Web links
- My school friend in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- My school friend at filmportal.de