Colonel Redl (1985)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Colonel Redl |
| Original title | Redl ezredes |
 | |
| Country of production | Hungary , Austria , Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1985 |
| length | 144 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | István Szabó |
| script | Peter Dobai , István Szabó |
| production | Manfred Durniok |
| music | Zdenko Tamássy |
| camera | Lajos Koltai |
| cut | Zsuzsa Csákány |
| occupation | |
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| chronology | |
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← Predecessor |
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Colonel Redl is a film by István Szabó from 1985, which was made as a German - Austrian - Hungarian co-production. The film, which is about the life of Colonel Alfred Redl from Austria-Hungary , premiered on February 20, 1985 in Hungary and in Germany on March 29 of the same year. The production received good reviews at international level and was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe in the category of Best Foreign Language Film .
action
Alfred Redl comes from a poor background, but thanks to his hard work, manages to be accepted into the military school of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy . There he quickly made friends: Baron Kristof Kubinyi and his sister Katalin. Redl ambitiously wants to join this upper class and makes a career as an officer. Shortly before the beginning of World War I , he was stationed as a captain on the Austrian-Hungarian border. He receives support from his superior, Colonel von Roden. Back in Vienna, Katalin becomes his lover, to whom he confesses that nothing can come of their relationship because he has fallen in love with her brother.
The empire is on the verge of collapse, and Redl wants to prove himself. In his ambition he puts unpleasant opponents aside, but new ones appear. After being promoted to colonel, he believes he has reached the goal of his dreams, but his enemies are intriguing against him.
However, the film is not an authentic representation of Redl as a person or historical events. This is expressly made clear in the opening credits, where it says:
“We don't tell Colonel Redl's story based on authentic documents. All actions of the people are fictitious. Our work was inspired by John Osborne's piece A Patriot for Me and the historical events of our century. "
Reviews
According to the lexicon of international films , the "model case of a fictional political biography [...] serves to create a multi-layered filmic discourse on political morality, career addiction, power, loss of identity, subservience, trust and betrayal under the conditions of military hierarchies and authoritarian systems." At the same time, Colonel Redl after Mephisto and before Hanussen “the centerpiece of a trilogy in which director István Szabó deals with related topics from European history. In all three films, Klaus Maria Brandauer impresses in the leading role. "
Film critic Wolfram Schütte already called István Szabó a "brilliant Traditionalists of the classical European narrative cinema", who is also here, "the charm of the old cinema and its history spell knows how to handle with elegance and loving soft spot for atmospheric effects [...]." As in Mephisto go there The director is not concerned with the historical figure and its reality, but with the "type who makes a career in political systems of compulsion and is confronted with the inhuman price." It is not only his sovereign narrative style that captivates, but also the "sensitive attention to the finest nuances of the." Power, for the structure and system of signs of an uptight, because unresolved male universe of mutual violence. ”Based on self-denial, adaptation and loyalty to power, gradations of a paternalistic divide et impera reveal an ambition“ that goes over corpses and produces them en masse. “With recognizable bond hen in Joseph Roth's literary swan song Radetzkymarsch, the director in his film broadens “the historical ambience, the rites of the military and bureaucracy, the class, race and caste thinking in the k. u. k. Monarchy ”, and indicate in the historical model“ the physiognomy of social mechanisms ”, which by no means disappeared with the dual monarchy, writes Schütte in the Frankfurter Rundschau .
“Redl plays, like 'Mephisto' in Szabo's last film, Klaus Maria Brandauer. And very slowly, quite sure of his means, behind the dull, domineering, dismissive mask of a person who has decided to be feared rather than loved, he lets the gruesome pathology of self-hatred emerge: the ever greater, ever more yawning vacuum fills him only the Kaiser madness. "
Director Franz Antel , who himself directed a Redl film with espionage in 1955 , strongly criticized Szabó's film in the Wiener Zeitung : “Historically, nothing is right. That is a complete alienation, and I think that historical personalities cannot simply be alienated or completely re-motivated. If you do something like that, then you have to name the film differently. "
Awards
- At the 1985 Cannes Film Festival , István Szabó was awarded the Special Jury Prize. In addition, the film ran in the competition for the Golden Palm .
- At the 1985 German Film Prize , the film was awarded the Gold Film Ribbon for Best Feature Film . Klaus Maria Brandauer also received an award for Best Actor .
- In 1986 the film won a BAFTA Award for Best Non-English Language Film .
- Colonel Redl was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in the same year , but was subject to Luis Puenzo's The Official Story .
- The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.
Others
The German TV premiere of the film was on July 6, 1986 at 9:15 p.m. on ZDF .
Web links
- Colonel Redl in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Colonel Redl at filmportal.de
- Colonel Redl at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Colonel Redl. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed July 22, 2017 .
- ↑ a b Wolfram Schütte: The blackmail of the career. Classic narrative cinema: Istvan Szabo's “Colonel Redl”. In: Frankfurter Rundschau . April 3, 1985, accessed on May 30, 2013 (article in filmportal.de ).
- ↑ Urs Jenny : Faithful to the emperor until death . In: Der Spiegel . No. 13 , 1985, pp. 200-203 ( online ).
- ^ Franz Antel: Twisted, in love, my life , Munich, Vienna 2001, p. 103
- ^ Filmdienst.de and Spiegel.de .