Roses bloom on the heather grave (1952)

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Movie
Original title Roses bloom on the heather grave
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1952
length 82 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Hans H. King
script Hans H. King
production Königfilm GmbH, Munich
( Richard König )
music Werner Bochmann
camera Heinz Schnackertz ,
Bertl Höcht
cut Lisbeth Neumann-Kleinert
occupation

Roses bloom on the Heidegrab is a German feature film by Hans Heinz König from 1952. It was shot in black and white . The world premiere took place on December 25, 1952 (mass start).

action

The young Dorothee Aden is repeatedly courted and harassed by the irascible heather farmer Dietrich Eschmann. But she rejects him. When she falls in love with her old friend Ludwig Amelung, who has returned from the city to his home village, Eschmann is furious with jealousy. After going to church, he lies in wait for the unsuspecting Dorothee and rapes her near a grave of heather entwined with roses.

It is precisely at this point that a similar incident is said to have occurred during the Thirty Years' War : A Swedish officer assaulted the girl Wilhelmina, an ancestor of Dorothees. Then she led him into the moor, where they both died. The tomb, made up of boulders, reminds of the fate of Wilhelmina.

Completely traumatized by the rape, Dorothee remembers the legend and also lures Eschmann into the moor. Both sink into the morass. In a dramatic rescue operation, both Eschmann and Dorothee can be rescued at the last second. Ludwig can hug his lover again, but it remains to be seen whether she will ever be able to forget the terrible events.

background

The silent film Roses bloom on the Heidegrab was made in 1929, directed by Curt Blachnitzky . Although von Moltke claims that the König production is a remake of this silent film, the content of the two films clearly has nothing to do with each other.

The outdoor photos were taken in the area around Bremen ( Worpswede , Teufelsmoor ) and near Diepholz ( Wietingsmoor ). A tavern in Worpswede served as a makeshift studio. The music was composed by Werner Bochmann using melodies from the Löns songbook Der kleine Rosengarten . The Eplinius Ballet dances in Hanover, the Rudolf Lamy Singing Group sings and the Kurt Graunke Orchestra plays . Max Mellin was responsible for the buildings, while Edgar Röll was in charge of production .

The actor Konrad Mayerhoff is announced in the opening credits as "Konrad Meyerhoff". The world premiere took place on December 25, 1952 in Dortmund and Oberhausen . The film was shown in Austria from March 1953 under the title Dorothee . In the United States , roses bloom on the heather grave only started on November 20, 1957 in New York under the title Rape on the Moor .

Producer Richard König had submitted roses blooming on the Heidegrab to the film evaluation office in Wiesbaden, in the hope of being able to present it as a German contribution at the International Film Festival in Cannes . The joint selection committee rejected the film as "extremely embarrassing". The examiners allegedly slept during his demonstration and cried when he woke up.

Roses bloom on the heather grave is undoubtedly one of the most interesting works in the work of Hans H. König. Nevertheless, the film is largely forgotten today and is hardly mentioned in the numerous publications on German film. It has rarely been shown on television. In many ways it is reminiscent of Frank Wysbar's film Ferryman Maria, which is also set in the north-west German heather and moorland, and of Niklaus Schilling's Nightshade .

Voices and reviews of the film

  • The lexicon of the international film was initially not impressed by the film: “Good camera work in a pompous homeland drama with blurred nature mysticism and dull eroticism.” In the new edition of 2002, however, the work was reassessed: “Thanks to its by no means idyllic, but gloomy, fatalistic mood ” , the “ dramatically photographed drama ” has meanwhile been recognized as “ an interesting outsider in the West German Heimatfilm of the 50s ” .
  • “The title sounds cheesy, the film isn't. The unconsumed freshness of the actors (even in the smallest roles, yes, especially there) and an atmospheric visual poetry create an atmospheric density that does not reveal any trace of “Heimatmache”. The creditable effort and cinematic quality, however, apply to a plot that proves to be questionable both in terms of the script and the sense of style of the director. " Werner Jungblodt in: Film-Dienst of February 1, 1952

literature

  • Deutsches Filmmuseum Frankfurt: Between yesterday and tomorrow. West German post-war film 1946–1962. Exhibition catalog. Frankfurt am Main 1989, p. 365.
  • Gero Gandert (ed.): The film of the Weimar Republic. A Handbook of Contemporary Criticism. Volume 1929. Berlin 1993.
  • Illustrated film stage No. 1798. Munich.
  • Johannes von Moltke: The Heimatfilm as a horror film: Roses bloom on the Heidegrab (1952). In: Werkstatt Geschichte , No. 33, pp. 82–99.
  • Claudius Seidl : The German film of the fifties (= Heyne film library . Volume 100). Munich 1987, pp. 77-82.

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ von Moltke, p. 89
  2. ↑ See: Gero Gandert (Ed.): The film of the Weimar Republic. A Handbook of Contemporary Criticism. Volume 1929. Berlin 1993. There is also a short synopsis of the 1929 film
  3. ^ Alfred Bauer: German feature film Almanach. Volume 2: 1946-1955 , p. 289
  4. ↑ See the article: Cannes. Cried when I woke up. In: Der Spiegel, 4/1953 from January 21, 1953
  5. ^ For example, on July 24, 1985 on RTLplus. See [1]
  6. ↑ See the 1990 edition, p. 3160
  7. ^ Lexicon of International Films. Edition 2002, p. 2598