Moss on the stones
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Moss on the stones |
| Country of production | Austria |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1968 |
| length | 82, 79 (ZDF version) minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Georg Lhotsky |
| script |
Gerhard Fritsch Georg Lhotsky |
| production | Wolfgang Odelga |
| music | Friedrich Gulda |
| camera |
Kurt Junek Walter Kindler |
| cut |
Liselotte Klimitschek Irene Tomschik |
| occupation | |
| |
Moos auf den Steinen is an Austrian social film drama from 1968 by Georg Lhotsky with the debutante Erika Pluhar in the leading role. The film, which at the time was regarded as the central work of a new Austrian film, is based on the novel of the same name by Gerhard Fritsch , who was also involved in the script.
action
The film tries to take stock of contemporary Austria and to act as a reflection of a society that is torn apart. The focus is on two opponents, the rather silent writer Petrik and the extraordinarily talkative businessman Mehlmann. While the young Petrik has retained his idealism, but has always been both literary and commercially unsuccessful, the saturated Mehlmann is extremely business-minded and has thus achieved some success. Both men are intimately connected in “friendly enmity” and spend a weekend in a crumbling, baroque castle in Marchfeld , where their very different worlds collide. They get caught up in semi-intellectual discussions and verbal battles about the status quo of modern Austria. Their points of view manifest themselves in their also very different relationship to the castle and its residents.
There is, for example, the old baron, a relic from the Austro-Hungarian era, to whom the "new world" with its peculiarities ultimately remained alien, if not to say suspicious. He really just wants some peace and quiet and plans to write a novel about a Galician soldier from the fallen imperial era. He is massively disturbed by his streamlined son-in-law, who urges him to finally clean up the ruinous castle again. Or there is the baroness, the old man's daughter, who feels pushed back and forth between yesterday and today due to the family tradition and who drifts through the dilapidated rooms of the castle so that she can still feel herself. In front of her husband, she finally gives in to the apparent loser Petrik. And so, despite all the philosophizing about the need for changes, nothing changes in the end. The moss on the stones of the ruined castle becomes a symbol of standstill, a metaphor for the inability to change. The crumbling castle continues to grow. Few of the protagonists accept at the end of their weekend of knowledge that they are doomed to finally arrive in reality, the present.
Production notes
The main filming locations for Moos auf den Steinen were Park and Schloss Niederleis and Schloss Ladendorf in the Lower Austrian Weinviertel . The film was first shown on September 19, 1968 at the Cork Film Festival . The German premiere took place late in the evening on September 22, 1972 on ZDF .
Xaver Schwarzenberger was involved in this film as a camera assistant.
Reviews
On filmtipps.at it says: "A little" La Dolce Vita ", a little" The Leopard ", a little Nouvelle Vague, but still completely Austrian in its nostalgia and sentimentality, especially of the supposedly" good old monarchy " across from."
"The clash of traditional culture and convention with the increasingly flattening lifestyle in Austria in the 1960s is described in embellished images."
At film.at you can read: “... it's reality, children” is the core half-sentence of the film, in which the hybrid, paradoxical reality of the cinema of the seventies is hidden. It is fitting that Georg Lhotsky made television for around a decade after this manifesto of an Australian cinema renovation. "
On Schnittberichte.com it says: "The literary film adaptation based on Gerhard Fritsch's novel of the same name is regarded in film studies as the first exhibit of the New Austrian Film because of its content and style clearly differentiated from earlier films."
Individual evidence
- ↑ Moss on the stones at filmtipps.at
- ↑ Moss on the stones. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 8, 2018 .
- ↑ Moss on the Stones on film.at
- ↑ Moss on the stones on schnittberichte.com
Web links
- Moss on the stones in the Internet Movie Database (English)