Romance with Amélie

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Movie
Original title Romance with Amélie
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1982
length 102 minutes
Rod
Director Ulrich Thein
script Ulrich Thein
Hartwig Strobel
production DEFA , KAG "Babelsberg"
music Günther Fischer
camera Hartwig Strobel
cut Use Peters
occupation

Romance with Amélie is a German novel by DEFA by Ulrich Thein from 1982 based on the novel of the same name by the writer Benito Wogatzki from 1977.

action

The film is preceded by a quote from the novel: "It was, I must say, a great love, and I would have loved to perish if I had only been let."

Jürgen Siebusch and his mother fled from the hail of bombs in Berlin to Hohengörse, a village in the Brandenburg region. Here he is experiencing the end of an era, living in a dangerous, life-threatening time in which the inhuman is particularly blatant; and he lives through the no man's land that divides and connects childhood and yet adulthood. In order to make himself useful he becomes the shepherd's assistant, whose tasks he, after his probably involuntary absence, takes over alone. A sexual adventure with the village girl Dorle in the sheepfold confuses him very much. He finds out that she is secretly looking after Polish refugees in their hiding place, but he does not reveal this.

Over time, a friendship developed with Amélie, the daughter of the countess who owned the estate. When letters in Russian are found in the manor house, Amélie flees to the shepherds' quarters in the fields. Only when it turns out that the letters come from a Russian nobleman who was persecuted by the communists is the danger over and Amélie can return to the village. The estate manager, who has not escaped the slight affection of the two, harassed Jürgen with the hardest work. In a final contest, Jürgen zum Volkssturm was drafted under the leadership of the teacher. He protects the Polish refugees who hoist a white flag from the church tower window. The teacher himself is later shot dead by the adaptable estate manager. Now the Red Army is getting closer and closer and is driving with tank columns on the main road, about a kilometer from the village, towards Berlin. Jürgen and Amélie flee the village to a barn in the middle of a field. This is where the two of them make love. When the gate opens, Jürgen calls out: "Now finally shoot!". He assumes that it is the Russians, but it is only his mother who is very upset about the situation. With a Count's sausage from the escape package, he silences them - first the food comes and then the morale.

After the end of the war, they both return to Hohengörse. Here the countess's estate is divided among the farm workers as part of the land reform. A piece of land is also planned for Jürgen. For Amélie, however, it is unthinkable to cultivate a piece of her own land and soil. She wants to leave again and convinces Jürgen to get her hidden valuables walled in in the manor house. But he is caught here, and when Amélie tries to take the things by force of arms, she is shot by the village policeman. Jürgen Siebusch drags himself exhausted to the Gutsglocke. For centuries she drove the servants to the farm. His pain and his call go unheard.

production

Romance with Amélie was shot on ORWO color by the Babelsberg Artistic Working Group and premiered on January 21, 1982 at the Berlin Kino International and was shown at the 32nd Berlin International Film Festival in 1982 as a competition entry . The first broadcast on the first program of GDR television took place on April 5, 1983. The film was shown on ZDF on September 30, 1984.

criticism

Günter Agde found in the film mirror that the flow of narrative often stumbled, that some fable elements necessary for the plot were reduced to mere information or seemed incomprehensible, and that clichés were greeted (which Thein had always guarded against). “The resulting inconsistency, even indecision, confuses. It amazes me with the otherwise courageously hands-on, experienced director. "

Horst Knietzsch wrote in the daily newspaper Neues Deutschland : “Ulrich Thein was not always able to maintain a stylistic balance. The poetically dense, exaggerated scene collides with a casual naturalistic narrative style that then suddenly culminates again in the eruptive. "

In the Neue Zeit of January 16, 1981, Helmut Ullrich came to the conclusion that the dramaturgical weakness could not be overlooked, “that one does not focus on the love story of Jürgen and Amelie, which is now definitely beyond itself, but also has ambition to capture a whole panorama of time in the milieu of a village. "

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Günter Agde in Filmspiegel No. 4/1982
  2. ↑ Horst Knietzsch in Neues Deutschland from January 23, 1982
  3. ↑ Helmut Ullrich in the Neue Zeit of January 26, 1982