Optimistic Tragedy (1971)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Optimistic tragedy |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1971 |
| length | 167 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Manfred Wekwerth |
| script | Manfred Wekwerth, Elisabeth Hauptmann , Isot Kilian |
| production | DEFA on behalf of East German television |
| music | Hans-Dieter Hosalla |
| camera | Hans-Jürgen Sasse |
| cut | Barbara Simon |
| occupation | |
| |
Optimistic tragedy is commissioned by the television of the GDR produced TV movie of the DEFA of Manfred Wekwerth from 1971 after the eponymous revolutionary play by Vsevolod Vishnevsky from the year 1932nd
action
It is the story of a young Bolshevik commissioner whose task it was at the beginning of 1918 to form an anarchist sailors division into the first regular naval regiment of the Red Army. She comes to a warship in Petrograd , on which everything is apparently regulated by majority vote. In reality, however, the leader determines what happens. That is why the Commissioner is only tolerated if there is opposition. The inspector shoots a sailor who tries to rape her without further ado and then has peace from the sailors. There is only one communist on this ship in the Baltic fleet, the Finn Waionen. A little later a former tsarist officer comes on board, who is to take command on behalf of the Bolshevik party. The anarchists do not agree with this at all.
After an old woman enters the ship and claims that her wallet was stolen by a sailor, a sympathizer of the inspector is immediately identified as the perpetrator and tied up and thrown overboard. But when the lady finds her lost piece, she suffers the same fate. The task of this newly formed sailors' department was to support the Red Army fighting the German troops on the southern front near Odessa. Large parts of this march went off without any problems. Although there were repeated demands to shoot the officer as a representative of the old order, the anarchists could not get their way. Only the announcement of reinforcement gives them new impetus. Two wounded officers returning from German captivity were shot only because of their rank.
But in the course of time the commissioner succeeds in getting sailor Alexej, one of the confidants of the opposing leader, to her side. When she is to give the order to shoot the officer, she reads the surprising verdict that the leader of the anarchists should be shot for multiple murders. The order to execute the order was given to the sailor Alexej, who thereby strengthened the position of the commissioner. When the announced reinforcements arrive, their position is already so solid that they follow their command. After a long and arduous march, they finally arrive at the front. Here Waionen was insidiously stabbed to death by the leader's helper, who was able to betray the Bolsheviks' intentions to the enemy. As a result, a large part of the regiment came into German captivity. Before the agreed time of attack, the prisoners try to prevent their execution with various measures, which they succeed in doing. The fight that followed now claims several dead, including the commissioner.
production
Optimistic tragedy was filmed on ORWO color and premiered on June 6, 1971 in the first program of East German television. On June 26, 1971, the color premiere took place on the big screen in a special screening at the Berlin Kino International . On November 6, 1971, the film was broadcast in color on television for the first time in the second DFF program.
Manfred Weckwerth remembered the shooting in the magazine Ossietzky : “In the DEFA studio for feature films in Babelsberg, which is hard to imagine today, we had two halls available for the duration of the six-month shoot. The large central hall, now the Marlene-Dietrich-Halle , was the endless expanse that the sailors had to cover on their march from Kronstadt to the Black Sea; In the somewhat smaller Hall 5 there was a constructivist structure, boldly designed by the set designer and painter Karl von Appen, suggesting a ship from the Baltic fleet. It gave the director plenty of opportunities for mass scenes of large choreographic moves. The film was only shot at night, because when the hall was fully lit, we used as much electricity as a medium-sized city - we couldn't get that much during the day. The night work had an advantage: We were able to put together an ensemble of actors who had many duties during the day at theater rehearsals or television recordings. "
criticism
Gisela Herrmann said in the Berliner Zeitung that Wischnewski already used the possibilities of adjacent art forms for his drama, but now a unique synthesis of visual art, stage aesthetics, music and color has emerged here. The entire ensemble knows how to fulfill the tasks set for them with astonishing meticulousness. It is from this - national award-worthy! - The film will still be talked about often!
Barbara Faensen writes in the Neue Zeit : “The best of the past week here first: Manfred Wekwerth's TV film 'Optimistic Tragedy' based on the play by Vsevolod Wischnewski. A good, stage-effective drama was not simply filmed here, it was rather characterized by a wealth of dramaturgical ideas and the excellent direction of a new genre that may one day be described as television theater, because it is much more than the original The transmission of a stage play can and works with much less optical refinement than the television games familiar to us. "
For Rainer Kerndl from New Germany , Wekwerth's film means a highly consistent transfer of the play into the medium of television, the means and possibilities of which are used with strict discipline. The deck of the ship and the open landscape are not photographed “naturalistically”; they are given by stylized studio buildings and associated with the actors, the rules and the image guidance. Mass scenes are composed, never aiming at optical effects, but rather aim for intellectual penetration with an optical impression. With the aid of film aesthetics, situations and their function for the story are clarified, and become pictorial in the best sense of the word.
Web links
- Optimistic tragedy in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Optimistic tragedy at filmportal.de