Tell the Truth (1946)

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Movie
Original title Say the truth
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1946
length 95 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Helmut Weiss
script Ernst Marischka
production Helmuth Schönnenbeck
E. Hasselbach for Studio 45 Film GmbH, Berlin
music Werner Eisbrenner
camera Walter Pindter
Hans Hauptmann
cut Anneliese Schönnenbeck
occupation

Tell the truth is a film amusement game from 1946. It was the first post-war German feature film produced with a Western Allied license.

action

The architect Peter Hellmer and his still-wife Vera want to divorce tomorrow, because Vera has fallen in love with the wealthy bank director Viktor, while Peter has already become engaged to the beautiful Maria. Everything would be ideal if Maria did not have one glaring flaw: she lies incessantly and usually for no reason. After another lie, Peter has enough: he wants to part with her. Maria then makes a bet with her fiancé: She bets that he himself is not able to tell the truth for even 24 hours without a break. Peter believes that this is not a problem for him, but he soon realizes that the pure truth and nothing but the truth brings some problems with it. Soon he was offensive and even insulted by his honesty. Others take advantage of Peter's love of truth to coax professional secrets from him.

The truthfulness even leads to the fact that the divorce petition is rejected by the court, because Peter has to admit that he spent the previous night with his wife, which the court interprets as an act of reconciliation. But it gets worse. Peter has to pay off his business partner, because his love of truth let him pass internal business matters to the competition. Since he does not have the necessary money, he tries again to pump Maria's father. When Peter arrives, another lady present, besides Maria, is introduced to him as an ex-lover of Peter. The old man is very angry.

The consequences of the bet soon lead to a nervous breakdown of Peter, since everything threatens to go wrong in his life. In the end he gets a serious fit of rage and is admitted to a mental hospital. Institute director Prof. Kiekebusch takes on this strange case personally. First Peter's friend, the lawyer Dr. Klimm can, before everything gets completely out of hand, through his courageous intervention, put things back in order and clear up misunderstandings, so that Peter can properly divorce and is now finally free for Maria. Both recognize that sometimes a lie has its right to exist.

Production notes

Tell the truth was filmed in the still-preserved UFA studios in Berlin-Tempelhof with a license from the British military authorities . The film was filmed from October 7th to November 14th, 1946. The world premiere took place on December 20th, 1946 in western Berlin.

This production is the second attempt to film this material. Director Helmut Weiss had already started in the winter of 1944/45 to film the comedy for Terra based on a template by Johann von Vaszary and turned into a script by Ernst Marischka . At that time, Terra-Star Heinz Rühmann , in whose production group Sag 'die Truth emerged, and his wife Hertha Feiler were available to him. As with all of Rühmann's late war productions, the editor Helmuth Schönnenbeck was intended to edit this film. This did not happen, however, because the near end of the war meant that the original film, only three quarters of which had been shot, remained unfinished. Thereupon Schönnenbeck founded his own production company, the extremely short-lived Studio 45 Film GmbH, in the same year of peace in 1945, and set it up at his own risk and with the financial help of the former producer Artur Brauner , who had just made it out of Szczecin Berlin came up with a new version of this film based on the old script. The director of the unfinished film was also engaged for this film, but the cast, apart from a few supporting actors such as Aribert Wäscher and Else Reval , was largely different.

For the 64-year-old acting veteran Max Gülstorff , Sag 'die Truth was the farewell performance, Bully Buhlan made his debut in front of the camera with a vocal performance .

Erich Holder was in charge of production, Ernst H. Albrecht designed the film structures.

The basic idea of ​​the film was reused in 1996 for the Hollywood production The Dummies with Jim Carrey as a truth fanatic.

criticism

As Curt Riess reports in his souvenir volume That's Only One Time, the contemporary reviews in 1946/47 were devastating: “The press is foaming: So much nonsense in such a serious and meaningful time! The American-licensed 'Neue Zeitung' can be heard as follows: 'Protest! There is a clear protest against the first film by "Studio 45 Film GmbH". You rub your eyes and think it's impossible. To be allowed to make a film now, be it a serious or a cheerful one, is an obligatory business. Those who are given the scarce celluloid strip should proliferate with it in the camera. Nobody will demand that we should insist humorlessly on fixing the mess in which we are sitting. That cheerfulness is necessary - not a word about that. But what is this here? People populate the screen who are stranger to us than the Stone Age inhabitants. Sanding varnish gents in tennis wear. Club ladies with slight moral flaws. Nobody and none that even remotely reminded you of work. ”And:“… it is inadmissible today to make films at great expense. The guilty conscience grips us today in front of the smooth comedy faces ”. At the same point, Riess reminded that despite the Verrisse Tell the truth, "an excellent deal" became.

Further criticisms of this period (1947) read: “Certainly some will tell us: 'You made things very easy for yourself. With films like “Tell the truth”, which have always been made, one would meet the tastes of the audience. But they imagined the new German film to be completely different. ”[…]“ The viewer is lured into elegant club rooms and boudoirs between bored sports snobs and entertained with little married couples. ”[…]“ In this film gulk full of salary served with speed and verve and tangible situation comedy ... is not always logically proven, but eagerly proven, like a man who intends to tell the pure truth ends up in the - highly comfortable - madhouse. It doesn't exactly go back to the Stone Age, but it is certainly a lot from yesterday, this loud encouragement to lie and illusion. For the time being, the quiet tones would suit us better, the fine humor and a true way of illuminating our new lifestyle and our arduous, extraordinary, exciting world, in which - admittedly - not only rubble, but hardly perfumed boudoirs, not only Suffering, but not a loud joke either, but here and there there are still joys that can make you happy. "

For Heinrich Fraenkel's Immortal Film , Sag 'die Truth was a “harmless comedy film”, and it was pointed out: “The film mentioned is noteworthy for two reasons: first, because it was the very first and the first film produced under a British license; But above all because, in addition to the tendency to choose 'up-to-date' fabrics, it was a no less understandable wish to offer the audience sufficiently satisfied with the misery of war and human hardship a little cheerful relaxation. "

The Lexicon of International Films writes: "The first West German film production after the Second World War - a penetratingly silly comedy from the dream factory no man's land - was artistically and morally a false start."

Kay Wenigers The film’s large personal dictionary calls the film a “banal comedy”.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In Curt Riess' There's Only One Time. The book of German film after 1945 , Hamburg 1958, can be read on page 120 of this complex: “Somebody comes up with the idea to speak to Artur Brauner. Lo and behold: the young man from Lodz is able to finance the film to the end. "
  2. ↑ That's only available once , p. 120.
  3. ↑ Review overview in zeit.de
  4. ↑ Immortal Film: The Great Chronicle from the First Sound to the Colored Widescreen , Munich 1957, p. 152.
  5. ↑ Klaus Brüne (Red.): Lexikon des Internationale Films , Reinbek 1987, Vol. 7, p. 3205.
  6. ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 8: T-Z. David Tomlinson - Theo Zwierski. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 311.

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