Knife in the head
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Knife in the head |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1978 |
| length | 108 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Reinhard Hauff |
| script | Peter Schneider |
| production | Wolf-Dietrich Brücker (Editor WDR) |
| music | Irmin Schmidt |
| camera | Frank Bruhne |
| cut | Peter Przygodda |
| occupation | |
| |
Messer im Kopf is a German feature film drama from 1978 by Reinhard Hauff with Bruno Ganz and Angela Winkler in the leading roles.
action
During a raid in a youth center classified as “conspiratorial” by the police, which is to be evacuated, the 35-year-old biogeneticist Berthold Hoffmann, who wants to visit his wife Ann, who is separated from him, is shot and seriously injured in the head , into a coma. When he wakes up again after some time, he has lost memory, is a man without memory and language. A significant part of his motor skills has also been lost, and Hoffmann, who is paralyzed on one side, has to learn completely new to walk. He is quickly confronted with accusations. The police and the media call him an allegedly dangerous terrorist who only uses his profession as a perfect disguise. Immediately before the accident, Hoffmann is said to have threatened an officer with a knife and injured him several times. Berthold's friends and relatives contradict this, calling him a prime example of a scientist turned away from the world in the ivory tower of his research and trying to stylize him as a victim of police arbitrariness. The left scene instrumentalizes him as a martyr and victim of state violence. Everyone pulls at the injured man, who strives for nothing other than to finally regain his memory. What concerns him first of all is the fact that he has lost his own self, his identity, through amnesia.
With the recurring memories, Berthold Hoffmann becomes clear that he was not only “shot away” but also catapulted out of his well-worn tracks, giving him the opportunity to gain new insights and new attitudes. In order to no longer be instrumentalized, no longer used and abused by the opposing poles, Hoffmann begins to search for truth on his own with his possibilities as a memory-lost person and to carefully examine the society of which he is part and his own role in it dissect and question. He plays the confused man, leaves his counterpart in the dark about his current state of mind and now begins to pursue the person to whom he “owes” his condition: the police officer Schurig, who fired his service pistol out of a moment of fear. His "life-threatening" stab wound, which Hoffmann allegedly inflicted on him with a knife, according to the police, turns out to be a harmless scratch on the side of his stomach. The extreme injustice done to Hoffmann by being shot in the head is converted into extreme energy, which is no longer willing to stop at one's own violence. In Schurig's apartment, Hoffmann places his tormentor, who lives there with his wife and the dog Wotan, and both begin to watch each other in exchanged roles. Hoffmann takes Schurig's service weapon out of the holster and aims at him: “I am you,” he says, and for the first time a slight smile appears on his face.
Production notes
Messer im Kopf was strongly influenced by the events of the so-called German autumn surrounding the terror of the RAF and the state countermeasures in 1977. The shooting of this film-television co-production took place between March 28th and May 11th 1978 in Munich and the surrounding area. It was completed on September 24, 1978, and Messer im Kopf was premiered on October 6, 1978 at the Paris Film Festival. The German premiere took place on October 27, 1978 during the Hof Film Festival. The German mass start was November 17th of the same year in Munich, Stuttgart and Cologne
Eberhard Junkersdorf took over the production management. Heidi Lüdi designed the film structures, Monika Altmann the costumes. Peter Fratzscher was Hauff's assistant director, Barbara von Weitershausen assistant editor.
Awards
- "Particularly valuable" rating
- 1978 FIPRESCI Prize and Antenne d'or
- Messer im Kopf was awarded the silver film ribbon in 1979 .
- Cameraman Frank Brühne received the gold film tape for his performance .
- Hans Christian Blech received the Bambi for his acting performance in 1979
- Messer im Kopf received the NBR Award in 1980.
Reviews
“Based on a linguistically extremely precise and sensitive, cleverly constructed script by Peter Schneider, Hauff traces Hoffmann's arduous path back into consciousness of himself and society. Although the parallel to Rudi Dutschke is of course obvious, Hoffmann's fate is quite different. He is still unconscious as a game material between the escalating fronts of counter-violence and violence, a victim of police terror for some, a terrorist who is said to have stabbed an officer with a knife, for the official public. (...) The most astonishing thing about Hauff's film is the almost casual coherence and the laconic, humorous sarcasm with which he illustrates this insight. Peter Schneider's subtle book caught him where Hauff used to slip into theses. The way Bruno Ganz also plays this Hoffmann is a unique achievement. The development, which is extremely difficult to represent, from slurping cripple hanging on all sorts of hoses to eccentric, despairing of the impossibility of leading a normal life succeeds completely convincingly. He has a congenial instinct for the stuttering logic of Schneider's texts and, thanks to Hauff's clever direction, he uses a defiance instead of pathos, which doesn’t allow any obscurity. "
“Exciting cinema with a story from our own reality. Not only an exciting, but above all a shocking thriller. "
“'Messer im Kopf' is obviously the film of the moment, a classic 'sleeper', whose success nobody had really expected. This phenomenon can certainly not be explained with international prizes (at the Paris Festival) and anthemic reviews (from the FAZ to Konkret), because many films by Fassbinder, Herzog or Wenders that do not remove their popularity could come up with such mostly useless blessings from 'Messer im Kopf'. So does it finally exist, the miracle film that has been requested over and over again for years, which combines artistic level, political sharpness and audience appeal? (...) The fact that there is so much talk about 'knives in the head' at the moment that the whole world is curious about this film, which was launched without much advertising expenditure, denotes a deficiency that the director Reinhard Hauff and the author Peter Schneider have recognized: a lack of films that engage concretely and excitingly with German reality, that react in a similarly radical manner to current annoyances and fears, such as Francesco Rosi's 'Power and its Price' in Italy. But the success of 'Messer im Kopf' has less to do with polemical strength or even political radicalism ... than with the daring feat of declaring indecisive conformism as critical vigor, serving the liberals just as perfectly as the left to be clear Press statements. 'Messer im Kopf' is the most advanced product of our public television culture: a film that is guaranteed not to make anyone angry ... "
"A ray of hope on the German film scene."
“People can develop tremendous energy under the impression of events that threaten their very existence. This is not only danger, it is also the hope that lies in this film. We too have to lose consciousness first to find our real one. The hope we can have is that this will be the case in less threatening circumstances. What is clear, however, is that we, like Hoffmann, can only overcome our powerlessness if we rediscover our own interests and needs and there begin to be active. Reinhard Hauff's film 'Messer im Kopf' continues the important discussion of questionable tendencies in the German state apparatus, which Volker Schlöndorff began with 'Die lost honor of Katharina Blum' and which Trotta continued with 'The second awakening of Christa Klages'. "
"Actually convincing, dramaturgically occasionally bumpy attempt to depict the dubiousness of new police regulations using a fictitious individual fate."
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for knives in the head . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , November 2007 (PDF; test number: 50 245 V / DVD / UMD).
- ^ German Institute for Film Studies (ed.): German Films 1978, compiled by Rüdiger Koschnitzki. P. 140
- ↑ Knife in the head. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 5, 2017 .
Web links
- Knife in the Head in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Knife in the head at filmportal.de
- detailed criticism on poenack.de