Ottokar the do-gooder
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Ottokar the do-gooder |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1977 |
| length | 86 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 0 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Hans Kratzert |
| script | Gudrun Deubener |
| production | DEFA , "Red Circle" group |
| music | Günther Fischer |
| camera | Wolfgang Braumann |
| cut | Ruth Ebel |
| occupation | |
| |
Ottokar der Weltverbesserer is a GDR comedy from 1977 produced by the DEFA studio for feature films. The children's film , directed by Hans Kratzert , is based on various Ottokar stories by Otto Häuser .
action
Eleven year old Ottokar is in fifth grade and can't stand one thing: injustice. He always interferes, wants to help and is reprimanded for it. When he came home from fishing with his best friend Sigi on the last day of the holiday, he saw a crying child who had just dropped his toy boat into the water and drifted away. Ottokar wants to borrow a rowing boat from a private jetty to get the toy out of the water, but is insulted by the boat owner. So he jumps fully dressed into the water. Although the bystanders now turn against the boat owner, as Ottokar intended, he has to explain the cause of the wet things to his parents.
School begins and Ottokar gets a new class teacher in Mr. Burschelmann. Ottokar is a good student, but the teachers always suspect him of making nonsense. Most of the time, however, it is Heinz “Pillenheini” Pilgrim who acts unfairly and is therefore stopped by Ottokar. When Pillenheini throws stones into a puddle when the school children start their school roll call, Ottokar tries to stop him, but is now seen as a stone thrower himself. When Ottokar slides down the banister as a test of courage, another student imitates him and has a serious accident. The supervising teacher is suspended. Other things also go wrong for Ottokar. After the accident, the directorate introduced pupil supervision and the older pupils now want to oblige the younger ones to wash their hands before lunch. Ottokar demonstratively refuses to eat, later pretends to be sick of hunger because he was not allowed to eat because of the older students, and the teacher sends him to the canteen. Another teacher promptly met him on the way there and criticized him. And so the mishaps continue: Ottokar tries to stop a student from smoking and is beaten by him. With a nosebleed he is sent home to change clothes and causes chaos in his nursery there, because he wants to dress particularly well. An offensive drawing that Ottokar hides from the teacher does not come from him, but he is promptly reprimanded as a draftsman. And even when Ottokar worriedly brings a drunken youth home, he is not thanked. Rather, the mother thinks that he encouraged her son to drink.
Mr Burschelmann, however, has long since recognized that Ottokar always only has good intentions. At the parents' day he announced that he wanted to direct Ottokar's energy in the right direction. In fact, Ottokar is about to be elected to the class group council and even supports the current group council in writing the annual report. In the end, he is elected to the group council as helpful, committed and active, even if Pillenheini and four other students in the class vote against him. The next morning, Ottokar is on the way to school with Sigi. Sigi has just received a ticket from a policeman because of a missing light on his bike; a young teacher who drives over the traffic light when it is red only gets away with a warning. Ottokar has to ensure justice again and confronts the police officers. When the matter is resolved, he runs to school and is promptly late. New trouble is inevitable.
production
The stories about the pupil Ottokar von Otto Häuser were "one of the favorite readings in the GDR". In a review of the film in 1977 , Renate Holland-Moritz ironically reconstructed the possible origins of the film, since the dramaturges in Babelsberg would normally close themselves off to the cheerful genre at all costs:
“But sometimes small mishaps happen. For example, a dramaturge gets hold of a book from Eulenspiegel-Verlag , reads it and doesn't fall asleep laughing. He shares this worrying circumstance with a few colleagues, and suddenly, out of the blue DEFA sky, it is decided to turn private reading pleasure into a visual mass event. This is the only way to explain that Ottokar the do- gooder [...] got onto the screen. "
Ottokar the do-gooder was shot in 1976 within three months. Lars Herrmann, a student who had previously played supporting roles in films for children and young people, was cast as the main actor .
Ottokar the World Improver had its premiere on July 7, 1977 on the open-air stage of the children's holiday camp Dresenower Mühle on Plauer See and was shown in the GDR cinemas the next day. As a result, it also ran at numerous international children's film festivals. In the FRG it was shown on October 13, 1977 at the Mannheim IFF. With over a million viewers, the film was one of the most successful films by director Kratzert.
criticism
The contemporary criticism of the GDR praised Ottokar the do- gooder as “a very amusing contemporary film, something that you don't see every day. And because it is well done, sensitively photographed [...] and lovingly cast, the adults can also get their money's worth. ”The differentiated drawing of the teachers, who in the film“ no black and white, no infallible, all-knowing pedestal Figures, but very truthful and not always very pleasant appearances from our school environment ”.
Renate Holland-Moritz called the film “a successful work”, with which “another persistent DEFA thesis - 'Our people don't like satire!' - successfully gone overboard ”.
For the lexicon of international film , Ottokar the World Improver was a “cheerful children's film about an eleven-year-old who always wants to help everyone and falls into numerous traps. Overall, a little too well-behaved and slow-moving children's film based on a volume of short stories by the satirist Ottokar Domma that was widely read in the GDR. "
Awards
At the VII Children's Film Week of the GDR in Gera in 1977 , Ottokar the World Improver received the diploma of the Minister for Culture and the diploma of the children's jury. The film was shown at the 1978 Berlinale as part of the Children's Film Festival.
literature
- Ottokar the do-gooder - Lars Herrmann . In: Knut Elstermann : I used to be a film child. DEFA and its youngest actors . Das neue Berlin, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-360-02114-4 , pp. 120-133.
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 725 .
- Ottokar the do-gooder . In: Ingelore König, Dieter Wiedemann, Lothar Wolf (eds.): Between Marx and Muck. DEFA films for children . Henschel, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-89487-234-9 , pp. 232-234.
Web links
- Ottokar of do-gooders in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Ottokar the do-gooder at filmportal.de
- Ottokar the do-gooder at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ↑ König, Wiedemann et al., P. 233.
- ^ Renate Holland-Moritz: Summer Cinema Owl . In: Eulenspiegel , No. 32, 1977. Quoted from: Regine Sylvester (Ed.): Renate Holland-Moritz: Die Eulen im Kino. Movie reviews . Eulenspiegel Verlag, Berlin 1981, pp. 168-169.
- ↑ See defa.de
- ↑ Ottokar the do-gooder - Lars Herrmann . In: Knut Elstermann: I used to be a film child. DEFA and its youngest actors . Das neue Berlin, Berlin 2011, p. 131.
- ↑ Ursula Fröhlich: Of course, the Ottokar . In: Wochenpost , No. 30, 1977.
- ↑ Ingeborg Zimmerling: An uncomfortable hero . In: Filmspiegel , No. 17. 1977, p. 14.
- ^ Renate Holland-Moritz: Summer Cinema Owl . In: Eulenspiegel , No. 32, 1977. Quoted from: Regine Sylvester (Ed.): Renate Holland-Moritz: Die Eulen im Kino. Movie reviews . Eulenspiegel Verlag, Berlin 1981, p. 169.
- ↑ Ottokar the do-gooder. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed November 7, 2017 .
- ↑ See progress-film.de ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
