Rivals at the wheel

Movie
German title	Rivals at the wheel
Original title	Rivals at the wheel
Country of production	GDR
original language	German
Publishing year	1957
length	101 minutes
Rod
Director	Ernst Wilhelm Fiedler
script	Günter Hofé , Manfred von Brauchitsch
production	Willi Teichmann
music	Manfred Nitschke
camera	EW Fiedler, Günter Marczinkowsky
cut	Ursula Kahlbaum
occupation
Axel Monjé : Manfred Falk Wilhelm Koch-Hooge : Hermann Seering Christa Fügner : Inge Thorwald Edelweiss Malchin : Manuela Alvarez Johannes Arpe : Altwirt Richard Lauffen : Roseiro Kurt Oligmüller : Dr. Schröter Hans Klering : Kuhn Jochen Thomas : Satulotti Mario Lerch : Gomez Harald Sawade : José Sidra Kurt Ulrich : Neumann Siegfried Weiß : Alvarez Paul Pfingst : Max Joe Schorn : Tünnes Wolf Lucas : Dr. Balcke Albrecht Bethge : Steinberg Will van Deeg : landlord Werner Haas : singer Gustav Püttjer : Gas station attendant Fred Ludwig : Sports President Otto Zedler : racing official Heinz Kammer : Reporter Gertrud Bergmann : Mother Seering Gustav Wehrle : Doctor Fritz Salm : Head of reception

Rivals at the wheel is a DEFA German feature film from 1957.

action

Manfred Falk is a successful and experienced racing driver in the racing collective of the Eisenacher Motorenwerke . He lets the beautiful Manuela entice him to the Alvarez works in South America. He leaves his racing collective and his girlfriend Inge behind in Eisenach . Falk's successes with the Americans are not recognized there. Again and again there are conflicts with the ambitious team manager Roseiro and so he soon returns to his home in Thuringia disappointed . He resists another attempt to poach the German Phönix-Werke and instead confesses to his old racing team by helping his team-mate Seering to an important victory. And he gets closer to Inge too.

background

AWE racing sports car used in the film in the museum automobile welt eisenach under a rival-at-the-wheel film poster

• The film is based on memories of the racing driver Manfred von Brauchitsch .
• The racing collective of the Eisenach automobile plant shown in the film successfully participated in international automobile races with the EMW / AWE racing cars from 1953 to 1956 . With the filming, the successes of the Eisenacher Motorenwerke (EMW) should also be shown on the screen as a real background to the fictional story of Manfred Falk. The AWE racing cars can be seen in the film alongside other original vehicles from the collective. A BMW 340 Sport, a racing car prototype that was built in 1950 at the BMW factory in Eisenach , was turned into scrap during the shooting. The racing collective was dissolved in April 1957, almost at the same time as the film opened in theaters.
• For the shooting, a then unused section of the autobahn near Staaken (now part of the federal autobahn 10 ) was made into a South American racetrack with artificial palm trees and cacti. Further scenes were created on East German racetracks at the time, including the motorway racetrack near Dessau . The grand finale will be held on a fictional race track at the foot of the Wartburg near Eisenach .
• In the driving and racing scenes, the actors were doubled by actual racing drivers . Well-known East and West German racing drivers of the time such as Edgar Barth , Ernst Klodwig , Heinz Melkus , Arthur Rosenhammer , Paul Thiel , Egon Binner and Hans-Friedrich Höftmann were in action .
• The film was released in GDR cinemas on April 26, 1957. It reached about three million viewers, but was taken after a short time from the movie theaters and finally disappeared into the archives of the DEFA because the government of the GDR was concerned that the representation of South American locations might be suitable with palm trees and cacti, the wanderlust of To wake moviegoers.
• In 2008 the film was released on DVD by Icestorm Entertainment . This includes the documentation Hunt for Seconds from 1953 as bonus material .
• The film appeared in 1957 a novel by Günter court in the Central German publishing house , Halle (Saale) .

reception

“In recent years DEFA has again produced excellent anti-imperialist , anti-militarist and anti-fascist films […] In contrast, the so-called ' socially critical ' films or the films that were supposed to shine ' behind the scenes of the western economic miracle ' ( millions of Yvette , Rivals at the wheel , casino affair and the most beautiful ), stuck completely in the lack of commitment or even served to belittle and praise capitalist conditions with extensive ethnic community ideology . "

- Anton Ackermann , SED functionary, 1958

"Artistically weak entertainment without atmosphere and tension."

- Kabel eins film lexicon

"The attraction of rivals at the wheel are the screeching, engine-howling, real racing scenes that are shown in documentary form."

- DigitalVD

Web links

• Rivals at the wheel in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• The film in the OfDB
• The film in the motor racing archive
• The film at DEFA-Sternstunden.de
• Rivals at the wheel at the DEFA Foundation

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Horst Ihling : Auto racing in the GDR: 90 years of racing car construction and motorsport, Delius Klasing Verlag , Bielefeld, October 2006, ISBN 978-3-7688-5788-8 , page 140ff.
2. ↑ Horst Ihling : Auto racing in the GDR: 90 years of racing car construction and motorsport , Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 2006, ISBN 978-3-7688-5788-8 , pages 105 and 142
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} DigitalVD.de ( Memento of the original from April 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ^ Anton Ackermann : On partiality in film art . In: Central Committee of the SED (Ed.): Unity . Journal of Theory and Practice of Scientific Socialism . 13th year, issue 4, April 1958, pp. 527-538, here p. 536.
5. ↑ Kabel eins Filmlexikon , accessed on April 28, 2014