Pole Poppenspäler (film)

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Movie
Original title Pole Poppenspäler
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1954
length 84 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Artur Pohl
script Artur Pohl
production DEFA
music Alfred Strasser
camera Joachim Hasler
cut Hildegard Tegener
occupation

Pole Poppenspäler is a German film adaptation of DEFA by Artur Pohl from 1954. It is based on the novel of the same name by Theodor Storm .

action

Craftsman-journeyman Paul Paulsen is currently in his third year of wandering and lives far from home in northern Germany in a small village in central Germany. In the winter storm, he sees a young woman near his door who wants admission to the prison, but is turned away by the prison guard. Paul runs after the woman and takes her to his landlady's apartment. He realizes that it is Lisei, the daughter of a puppeteer, whom he met twelve years ago. He looks back.

At that time he was still a schoolboy and made friends with Lisei. He had got her fabric for the dolls and was allowed to watch a performance for free. He was particularly fascinated by Kasper and so one day Lisei led him secretly to the dolls. Although he was not allowed to touch the dolls, he tried the Kasper and destroyed its mechanics in the process. Although father Tendler, who only noticed the damage during the game, succeeded in replacing the doll with a replacement casper, Lisei suspected that her mother would call her to account at home. So she and Paul stayed in the theater after the performance and both tried to sleep in the doll's box, but were found by their concerned parents. When Paul's father had repaired the puppet, the good relationship with Lisei's parents was restored. Despite the mockery of his schoolmates, Paul stood by Lisei and saying goodbye to her was painful.

Now, twelve years later, Paul learns from Lisei, whose mother has long since passed away, that the father has been thrown into prison for allegedly stolen funds. Paul stands up for Father Tendler and the real culprit is actually found the very next day. Father Tendler soon fell ill. Since Paul's wandering years are over and he is needed at home, he asks Lisei to come with him - as his wife. She agrees that Father Tendler will also live with them.

In the small town in northern Germany, Paul's marriage to a puppeteer is viewed with suspicion. Above all, the Schmidt family is hostile to the Paulsen family, as the respected craftsman Paul draws customers away from their husband. Lisei fights for social recognition and wants nothing more to do with puppetry. Father Tendler, on the other hand, is already planning new performances in the town hall. Since Lisei will no longer speak the female roles, the old Kröpellie helps him out. She was once at the theater and gives her best at the first performance, but with her deep voice she cannot convincingly bring the young heroine onto the stage. The performance ends in ridicule and scorn. Father Tendler gives up. He sells his dolls, which parents buy for their children and which the street boys now drag across the street. Paul also buys valuable pieces for him, but has to lock them up because Lisei no longer wants to confront her father with them. Father Tendler broke the loss of his dolls. He dies a short time later. At the funeral, the Schmidt boys throw Kasper into his grave. As a punishment, their mother slaps them in the face. The pastor, however, sees it positively, since Lisei's past can also be buried with the punch in people's heads.

production

The Marienkirche in Barth, scene of the wedding between Lisei and Paul

Pole Poppenspäler was filmed on the Baltic Sea, in Barth and in Quedlinburg . The film premiered on December 25, 1954 in the Babylon cinema in Berlin and in the DEFA film theater Kastanienallee.

With Heliane Bei and Heinz Höpner, two actors living in Germany took on the leading roles. In the FRG, the film was shown in cinemas from March 16, 1956 under the title Das Dorf in der Heimat .

Pole Poppenspäler was the first color film that Artur Pohl shot. Like many of his films, including Die Brücke (1949), Die Junge von Kranichsee (1950) and Die Unbesiegbaren (1953), Pole Poppenspäler also dealt with the topics of “the own and the foreign, dealing with the 'other'. His films advocate solidarity, human warmth and reason. [...] Pohl's sympathies are in any case with those who are used to feeling tired and exhausted, the individual, the lonely. "

Reviews

Contemporary critics criticized the fact that the film appeared like a “poetry album from the 'good old days'”, “the people in the film sometimes seem a bit clumsy, not entirely understandable, not entirely alive - as if they had stepped out of the poetry album”. In contrast to the novella, the dialogues are "a bit modest in their soulful simplicity."

"Artur Pohl's adaptation of Storm did not go beyond an appealing film adaptation and suffered from the pale representation of the two main roles," said Frank-Burkhard Habel in summary. Other critics called the film "leisurely, but definitely atmospheric" and referred to Artur Pohl's "penchant for dignified literature adaptation".

For the lexicon of international film , Pole Poppenspäler was a "partly leisurely, partly wistful literary film adaptation that captures the atmosphere of the original and offers good entertainment."

Previous film adaptations

This Pole Poppenspäler film was already the third attempt to bring the Storm fabric to the screen. In autumn 1935 Curt Oertel shot the medium-length (42-minute) film Pole Poppenspäler in Lemgo and Lipper Land for Kurt Rupli's Mars film with Gerhard Hasselbach in the title role, which the Nazi censorship on December 17, 1935 without any problems (grade : youth-free, popular education, holiday-free) happened.

On November 4, 1944, shooting began on the second (and for the first time intended as a full-length feature film) Poppenspäler film entitled The Puppeteer . Directed by Alfred Braun and production (production executive committee) of Veit Harlan , who wrote the screenplay with Brown, portrayed Max Eckard alongside famous colleagues such as Eugen Klopfer , Maria Koppenhöfer , Elfie Mayerhofer , Paul Bildt and Albert Florath the Paul Paulsen. Due to the heavy bombing of Berlin and the approaching Soviet troops in the spring of 1945, the shooting of the half-finished film made in the UFA studios had to be stopped before the end of the war. This never-finished Poppenspäler version was, together with the Hans Albers crime film Shiva and the gallows flower , the last color film of the German Reich.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, pp. 138-139.
  2. ↑ All quotations: Carl Andrießen: Pole Poppenspäler . In: Weltbühne , No. 1, 1955, pp. 29–30.
  3. ↑ Habel, p. 457.
  4. ^ Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 139.
  5. ↑ Pole Poppenspäler. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 27, 2016 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used