Ripening summer
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Ripening summer |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1959 |
| length | 78 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Horst Reinecke |
| script | Helmut Brandis |
| production | DEFA |
| music | Hans Hendrik Wehding |
| camera | Horst E. Brandt |
| cut | Ursula Rudzki |
| occupation | |
| |
Ripening Summer is a DEFA German feature film directed by Horst Reinecke in 1959 .
action
In 1952, the former farmhand Erich Kattner from West Germany comes to a Mecklenburg village to take on a new farmer's position, which he originally planned together with his wife. She died shortly before, and so he is alone in front of the barely manageable work. His predecessor capitulated before that, the new house with barn is only half finished, tree stumps still have to be cleared in the fields and much more. He is skeptical of outside help. He asks Thekla, the maid of the richest farmer, whom he already met on his first day in the village, to start working with him, but she refuses. When, after her “master” tries to approach her, she starts to work at Erich's farm, he only sees her as his work partner. His agriculture is thriving, the house has become a neat home and the work in the fields is going on. First and foremost, he owes this to his “maid”. Even the intriguing farmer Fritz Büttner, who wanted to have the new farmer's property for himself, was unsuccessful.
While Thekla hopes that he will also see her as a woman, Kattner falls in love with the newly arrived teacher Sabine. Sabine also comes to the inauguration of the house, to which everyone who helped with the completion was invited. They come together and it doesn't take long and the whole village is talking about it. Of course Thekla cannot overlook the situation either and turns more and more away from Erich. However, it is only a matter of time before Erich gets into a conflict of hearts and has to make a decision. Sabine finally makes the decision. She leaves the village. Thekla also wants to leave the village, packs her things and goes to the train station. Erich is already waiting for them there and the two finally find each other.
production
The film is based on the novel Das Lied über dem Tal , which was written by August Hild in 1954 and premiered on May 8, 1959. Three years earlier, Gustav von Wangenheim made an attempt to film the material with Günther Simon in the lead role. The first day of shooting was January 10, 1956, but the script was still not complete by February. After 19 days of shooting in the studio and 148 takes, around a third of the film, filming was stopped in early February. There were too different views in the conceptions of Helmut Brandis and von Wangenheim. This was not the first attempt, however, because in October 1955 test recordings with Helga Göring (Thekla) and Wilhelm Koch-Hooge (Ernst) took place under the director Helmut Brandis .
criticism
HUE found in the Berliner Zeitung that it is not easy for the actors to fill the anemic constructions of the film with life. HU wrote in the Neue Zeit that you shouldn't argue with the script, as the death of the main actor Kleinau, a car accident during the filming, certainly caused some changes and adjustments. One has to look more critically at how theme and fable are linked in a not exactly happy way.
literature
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 477-478 .
Web links
- Ripening summer in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Ripening summer at filmportal.de
- A maturing summer at the DEFA Foundation