Monarch (documentary)

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Movie
Original title monarch
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1979
length 84 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Johannes Flütsch , Manfred Stelzer
script Johannes Flütsch (concept), Manfred Stelzer (concept)
production Regina Ziegler film production
music Archive recordings (Schlager)
camera Johannes Flütsch, Manfred Stelzer, Rainer March
cut Elisabeth Forster
occupation
  • Diethard Wendtland
  • Ilse Bahrs

Monarch is a documentary film from 1979. The focus is on Diethard Wendtland (* 1939), a professional player who is said to have systematically cleared the "Mint" slot machines from NSM at the end of the 1970s through a well-rehearsed technique .

content

Wendtland has u. a. worked as a salesman in the grocery department at Karstadt , but no longer has a normal job, but has specialized in touring Germany with his gold-colored S-Class Mercedes and playing slot machines of the "Mint" type (and its successor "Mint Super" ) to play and empty, or, as he puts it, "to sweep cucumbers" one by one. He has so-called 'vultures', young men who find pubs and bars for him that have “Mint” machines. The camera shows Wendtland playing in bars, but also buying a tailor-made suit, a date in a restaurant and other activities. In the interspersed interviews he explains his career and his playing nature, talks about his loneliness and the fact that at some point he has taken care of things and wants to turn his back on the “Mint”. He got the eponymous nickname Monarch because, according to his own statement, he had a good command of the “Monarch” machine type in the early 1970s.

Production and awards

The shooting took place between August 1978 and June 1979 (Berlin, Hamburg, Lorelei, Cologne, Rhineland, Braunschweig, Wolfsburg, Wolfenbüttel). The world premiere took place on October 26, 1979 at the Hof Film Festival. In a festival report of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit it was said at the time:

“The monarch, whose private life is Mr. Wendtland, was the absolute star of the 13th Hof International Film Festival. He arrived in time enough to visit three of the town's pubs before he got applause from the crowd in the as always overcrowded 'Central' cinema, as the authentic title hero of the film 'Monarch', with which the Flütsch / Stelzer documentary team came to Hof was. "

At the German Film Prize in 1980, the film received a film ribbon in silver and a prize of 100,000 DM in the category 'Full-program films without a game story'. In the same year, the film was awarded the title “particularly valuable” by the FBW .

The film opened in German cinemas on February 29, 1980. The first TV broadcast took place on February 23, 1983 on the station Nord 3 .

The protagonist Diethard Wendtland played after Monarch in other films by Manfred Stelzer ( Die Perle der Karibik , 1981; Schwarzfahrer , 1983).

effect

The director Christian Petzold stated that he was inspired by Monarch's “heavy coins, all those marks [...] in the trunk” for his film Jerichow (2008).

In the Sunday podcast Fest & Flauschig by Olli Schulz and Jan Böhmermann, short quotes from Monarch are regularly recorded after breaks.

It was discussed whether the figure of Diethard Wendtland is actually authentic or whether it is an invention of the filmmakers.

Contemporary reviews

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Production notes on filmportal.de .
  2. ↑ Hans C. Blumenberg : Festival of the players. The other face of German cinema. In: Die Zeit 45/1979.
  3. ↑ film-dienst , Volume 33, p. 514.
  4. ↑ To be twelve again. Interview with Christian Petzold. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 17, 2010.
  5. ↑ The monarch in his realm ( wayward-cloud.blogspot.ch , 2011)