Monologue for a taxi driver
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Monologue for a taxi driver |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1962/1990 |
| length | 37 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Günter Stahnke |
| script |
Günter Kunert Günter Stahnke |
| production |
DEFA , KAG “Solidarity” on behalf of the DFF |
| music | Karl-Ernst Sasse |
| camera | Werner Bergmann |
| cut | Thea Richter |
| occupation | |
| |
Monologue for a taxi driver is a DEFA television film by Günter Stahnke from 1962 that was commissioned by GDR television and was banned shortly before it was broadcast.
action
The action that takes place on Christmas Eve can be seen from the explanations below. It's about the experience of a taxi driver driving a young, heavily pregnant woman who collapsed in a shop to a hospital. This film shows the encounters during the subsequent search for the future father so that he can bring her things to the hospital for the mother-to-be. But even more important and interesting is the GDR leadership's argument about the ban on film.
Kurt Hager , member of the Politburo of the SED , at the consultation of the Politburo of the Central Committee and the Presidium of the Council of Ministers with writers and artists, judged the film on March 25, 1963:
“One of the most important tasks of our literature and art is to convey the optimism of our socialist worldview, filled with genuine joie de vivre. With this in mind, we take a stand on the television opera 'Fetzers Flucht' and the television film 'Monologue for a taxi driver'. The text of both works comes from Günter Kunert, but one must also take into account the roles of the director and the composer when assessing them. Both films are permeated by a deep skepticism, alien to our socialist worldview, about people and their ability to change the world and themselves. In the 'monologue for a taxi driver', a taxi driver helps a girl who is about to give birth. He takes it to the hospital but does not take payment for it and tries all day to reach the child's father. He constantly encounters obstacles. Although the piece is set in the GDR, people are on their own. He appears outside and without society as 'a person in himself'. The relationships between the taxi driver and his wife, the relationships with his colleagues, the relationships between the people involved in the plot are all distorted.
In this television film in particular, there are clear tendencies that call the worth of human beings and their dignity into question. The taxi driver, who is to be understood here as the common man, constantly has pessimistic and nihilistic thoughts that are neither canceled nor refuted by the action or the thoughts of other people. When the taxi driver gets into an argument with a passenger who wants to report him, the taxi driver thinks: 'Report. Man, always report. A people of prevented and unhindered police officers, we are and we always have been. Heil uns 'At another point the taxi driver thinks:' What are you doing here, taxi driver, average consumer, average person, average rivet, average failure? Why don't you crawl under your Christmas tree, by the warm stove, in the comforting bed? Why do you care for those who don't care for you? ' The discrediting and falsification of our society is intensified by the fact that, as already said, the taxi driver - 'the hero' - always encounters incomprehension, resistance and hostility in his attempt to help another person. The taxi driver is in contrast to his time, which puts 'shackles' on him. Exactly it says at this point as follows: 'No more suicidal decency now. With the insight into ever new necessities that are not. Consideration, insight, caution, forbearance: all shackles, chains that 'never sound sweeter', chains like snakes, tighten more and more and squeeze your life out of your body. Stop it get free. Say no. No no!' The norms of life in socialist society - decency, consideration, mutual help, comradeship, etc. - which are recognized and striven for by an ever larger number of working people as their moral norms, are thus discredited. Man is challenged to rebel against these shackles of 'suicidal decency', the insight into the need to show consideration for other people. So he should free himself from all moral rules of living together in a socialist society. Did Kunert mean to say that it is necessary to return to the morality of an exploitative society based on selfishness and competition? We can only see it as an insulting, intellectual arrogance towards the working people of our republic, when they call it a “people of prevented and unhindered police officers” as “normal consumers, average people. Average riveting 'average failure' is spoken of. In content and form, both works contradict the basic demands on the art of socialist realism. Instead of socialist partisanship for our republic and its people, we find skeptical distancing, contempt for work and the struggle of working people. Instead of the truth and beauty of our life with all its conflicts, we find the distorted primitive. schematic picture of a life without warmth, without human size. Under the pretext of taking up human problems from our everyday lives, especially in the 'Monologue for a taxi driver' of the socialist community, the cult of loneliness is confronted, the existentialist philosophy of hopelessness is opposed to the optimistic attitude towards life of socialist people. Word, music and image work together to visually and acoustically hammer into the listener a hard, loveless, gloomy world in the shadow of the atomic bomb, in which people, deprived of all individuality, act like figures from a panopticon. "
production
Although the broadcast date of December 23, 1962 was already published in the newspapers, the film was banned for a short time and could only be shown on GDR television on April 26, 1990 .
The outdoor shots in Berlin were made at Alexanderplatz , the Frankfurter Tor , the Prenzlauer Berg water tower , the Warschauer Strasse , the Gertraudenbrücke , the Friedrichstrasse with the Tränenpalast , the Auguststrasse , the Tucholskystrasse, the Kleine Auguststrasse, the Treskowbrücke and the St. Hedwig Hospital .
The music was played by the quintet 61 , the predecessor of the later Klaus Lenz sextet.
criticism
“In the dramatic structuring, Kunert committed himself to media-specific narration in television art, to the strictly observed narrative perspective. Stahnke and cameraman Werner Bergmann followed him by choosing extreme angles in the cinematic design. Everyday history was thus removed from its everyday life, alienated and made an example. "
Web links
- Monologue for a taxi driver in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Monologue for a taxi driver at filmportal.de
- Monologue for a taxi driver in the online lexicon of television in the GDR