My son, the Minister

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Movie
Original title My son, the Minister
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1937
length 81 minutes
Age rating FSK none
Rod
Director Veit Harlan
script Karl Georg Külb
Edgar Kahn
production Production group Erich von Neusser for UFA
music Leo Leux
camera Günther Anders
cut Marianne Behr
occupation

My son, the Minister is a satirical comedy film, shot in 1937, about parliamentarism in a democracy with a tendency towards Nazi politics. Directed by Veit Harlan .

Today it is a reserved film from the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation . It is part of the foundation's portfolio, has not been released for distribution and may only be shown with the consent and under the conditions of the foundation.

action

Paris during the interwar period. In French politics things go haywire. The Minister of Culture, Baroche, has just had to resign due to a piquant affair, and people make fun of him. The chansonette Betty Joinville mocks him in cabaret with her singing lectures. A successor to Baroche was quickly found, the young politician from the moderate left Robert Fabre-Marines, who has been specifically sponsored by his ambitious mother Sylvie for years. The dignified handover is nothing new for the veteran official Gabriel, as he has already seen seven ministers come and go in his house.

When the chansonette Betty is once again supposed to be banned from appearing because of overly cheeky, politically suggestive songs, she promises the director of her establishment to fix this matter in her own, so far always successful manner. Gabriel promises the blond Chanteuse to give her access to the ministerial sanctuary for a fee in the form of a Japanese fishing rod. Before the spicy rendezvous between the singer and the minister can come, the clerk recognizes his former wife Sylvie on the street, who left him head over heels 35 years ago and ran off to America with another man. When Gabriel asks about their son, she at first evades.

The next day Robert Fabre-Marines is amazed to find his mother behind his desk. She is currently working through "his" files and otherwise seems to be deciding very clearly how he should conduct official business. Fabre-Marines turns away, shaking her head, when his mother rings for the clerk. This one enters ... and to her great surprise it is her ex-husband! Gabriel is no less amazed that the Minister should be his son. However, both parents are silent about Gabriel's fatherhood to the young minister. Sylvie quickly runs after Gabriel, who is disappearing from the ministerial room, and begs him to continue to remain silent.

In the meantime, the singer Betty has not been idle. She has assured herself of the loyalty of the radical left MP Vaccarés, on the grounds that the left will stand up for the freedom of art “suppressed” by the establishment. Gabriel gritted his teeth and let the siren go to his boss and son. She unwinds her usual and so far always successful program on how best to wrap a minister around your finger. Gabriel cannot and does not want to watch any longer - even if he had only obeyed at the keyhole so far - and rushes into his son's office. Betty Joinville, already in full action, runs screaming out of the room and into Robert's political opponent Vaccarés, who, seconds later, overhears the clerk taking his boss to his chest in moral indignation.

In view of such far-reaching insubordination , the young minister throws his unknown father out on edge. A scuffle is prevented by the appearance of Sylvie. Vaccarés, who senses the opportunity for a political scandal and thus an opportunity for his political machinations, hypocritically congratulates the fired official for his "revolutionary act". Sylvie can no longer avoid making her son familiar with the fact that the clerk who has just been dismissed is none other than his father. But she asks, for the sake of his career, not to say anything about it. Robert's wife Nannette, who noticed everything outside the door, affectionately calls Gabriel in the anteroom 'Papa-in-law'.

Vaccarés had nothing more urgent to do than feed the left press with the new Betty Minister scandal. Since Betty couldn't achieve her goal this time, her singing career also seems to be nearing its end. However, Vaccarés is already planning the next coup. One evening, when the minister invites to a large soirée, appears on Vaccarés' arm: Betty Joinville! A scandal is looming, but Robert Fabre-Marines defused the conflict sparked by his political opponent, in which he dances with the singer in a relaxed manner and promises her en passant that he naturally intends to drop the performance ban against her. This public staging in turn drives jealousy in the minister's wife, which in turn leaves Gabriel in no mood.

He asks his former boss to go outside, claiming that the president would like to speak to him on the phone. The sensation-hungry pack of journalists secretly follows him. But instead of a political dispute, the press representatives witness how the hunted official slaps his boss in his father's anger. Vaccarés grins with satisfaction and the press world has another tangible scandal. With Gabriel, a new “revolutionary folk hero” is born, and the masses celebrate him as the “liberator of the proletariat”. Annoyed, the Minister gives up and finally announces his resignation. In order to avoid risky new elections, the new people's tribune is quickly made his son's successor. Gabriel does not agree with this at all, his slap in the face was only used for educational purposes. He had never had any further ambitions. But Vaccarés set the course a long time ago and had Gabriel grandly proclaimed the new "People's Minister".

After Gabriel got a drink of courage with an old colleague, he now wants to show it to all those out there who have only chosen and used it as a pawn for their dirty interests. He throws ex-wife Sylvie, who would also like to become his advisor, out of his office, and he also lets singer Betty, who wants to “take care of” a new minister again, be denied. After all, he takes back her performance ban, if only to have some peace from this nuisance. When Vaccarés visits his protégé in order to reap the political benefits of his machinations, Gabriel breaks the cord. He's really fed up with being pushed around by everyone and seen as a plaything of other people's interests. And so all his pent-up anger against the left-wing extremist pulling the strings is discharged. Gabriel not only threatens to have him kicked out, but he even announces the ban from his party.

Vaccarés is now doing all it can to get rid of this uncomfortable new minister who he “made” very quickly. The political left pulls out all the guns, and soon the new minister will be history again. “A few days later, the whole family is sitting peacefully on the Seine in the sunshine while fishing, surrounded by the secure calm that a double state pension for two retired ministers provides as the best solution to the social question. And Betty, who is allowed again, sings a new chanson in cabaret on the merits of - democracy! "

Production notes

My Son, the Minister was based on the play Fiston by André Birabeau (1890–1974) and was the second Nazi propaganda staging by Veit Harlan, the most famous star of the regime among the film directors of the Third Reich. The shooting took place in March and April 1937, the exterior shots were taken at the Drewitzer mill.

My son, the Minister is the only Nazi propaganda film in which Hans Moser and the good German-speaking Frenchwoman Françoise Rosay participated. Paul Dahlke as the unscrupulous, left-wing radical puller Vaccarés plays a propagandistically strongly distorted figure with whom the principle of parliamentary democracy is mocked and who appears to be decadent and depraved.

The film, which premiered on July 6, 1937 in Berlin , received the Nazi rating “artistically valuable” and was banned from young people.

The film structures were designed by Walter Röhrig and Franz Koehn , the costumes by Manon Hahn .

Due to its political tendencies, the showing of the film was banned by the Allied military authorities after 1945.

criticism

With a view to the fact that the film was made at the time of the Populaire Front in France, Erwin Leiser states that he equates parliamentarism and communism . When the communists act as masterminds behind the democratic scenes and only rhetorically appropriate democratic ideals, these ideals are ridiculed. In the conversation between the outgoing minister and the incoming minister, the verbose helplessness of parliamentarism is contrasted with the effectiveness of the National Socialists.

The film's large personal encyclopedia called the film a "work that ridiculed the institution of democracy."

The German film 1938–1945 saw a "glossing of parliamentarism - a desirable tendency in the Third Reich"

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Parliamentary democracy is depicted in numerous individual scenes as decadent, depraved and mendacious. What is a piquant, amusing (and yet rather harmless) satire in four acts in the French original from 1936 penned by Birabeau, is misused and falsified in this Nazi film production to despise democratic institutions. Democratically elected politicians like Vaccarés are scheming and unscrupulous in the implementation of their political goals, the public speeches always the same and without life or credibility. The entire political system of democracy - here using the example of France - is disavowed as corrupt, ailing, full of intrigue and without any morality.
  2. ^ Original quote from the program booklet of the Illustrierte Film-Kurier, No. 2649.
  3. ↑ Erwin Leiser : "Germany, awake!" Propaganda in the film of the Third Reich. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1968, pp. 37, 44.
  4. ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 1: A - C. Erik Aaes - Jack Carson. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 539.
  5. ^ Bogusław Drewniak: Der deutsche Film 1938–1945, p. 562, Düsseldorf 1987.