Locks and Katen
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Locks and Katen |
 | |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1957 |
| length | 203 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Kurt Maetzig |
| script |
Kuba Kurt Maetzig Willi Brückner (Dramaturgy) |
| production | DEFA studio for feature films |
| music | Wilhelm Neef |
| camera | Otto Merz |
| cut | Ruth Moegelin |
| occupation | |
| |
Schlösser und Katen is a two-part DEFA feature film (1st part: Der krumme Anton [102 min], 2nd part: Annegret's homecoming [101 min]) based on the novel and film scenario of Cuba about the changes in a Mecklenburg village between 1945 and 1956.
action
1st part: The crooked Anton
The first part deals with the first post-war years in Holzendorf in Mecklenburg. In June 1945 the count fled the Red Army with his property to the west. He leaves his farm workers and servants behind. The crippled former servant Anton Zuck, the "crooked Anton", married the pregnant Marthe 17 years ago. The father of this child was the then still young Count. Anton has the Count's certificate of inheritance for his illegitimate daughter Annegret. The East and West are intrigued to obtain the certificate of inheritance. Annegret falls victim to this game of intrigue and finally leaves the village because she believes that the machinist Heinz, with whom she has fallen in love, wants nothing to do with a count's daughter.
Part 2: Annegret's homecoming
The second part deals with the early 1950s. The land reform has now taken place. Years later, Annegret returns to the village as a certified zoo technician with a son in her arms. The big farmers are sticking to their negative attitude towards the new system. Anton comes back to the service of the large farmers as a servant and allows himself to be exploited by them.
The criticism of the situation in the GDR increased, on June 17, 1953 there was an uprising. As one of the causes of the uprising, the forced collectivization of agriculture is portrayed in the film with a remarkable openness for the circumstances at the time. Estate inspector Bröker becomes a murderer. With Anton's help, however, he can be caught. In the end, Anton finds understanding with his family and the LPG farmers who take him into their midst.
production
Schlösser und Katen was filmed in b / w under the working titles The Straight and the Crooked and The Note . Both parts premiered on February 8, 1957 in the Babylon cinema in Berlin .
The two-part series, directed by Kurt Maetzig and assisted by Bernd Braun and Frank Beyer in the DEFA studio for feature films, has a curiosity in its creation.
The main actor Raimund Schelcher suffered from alcohol problems and was therefore constantly absent, which almost caused the filming to fail. Kurt Maetzig therefore took the drastic measure of casting the main role for two weeks in parallel with Hans Hardt-Hardtloff .
"He [Maetzig] told me that he did it for purely pedagogical considerations, so to speak, to bring his alcoholic main actor back to the path of virtue, which is said to have succeeded somewhat." Andreas Dresen reported in an interview about the idea of his Films whiskey with vodka , which takes up this idea of the double cast and whose script by Wolfgang Kohlhaase is based on Maetzig's shooting of Schlösser und Katen .
Reviews
“Despite the good actors, the far-reaching village ballad does not always deal with the comprehensive theme; In addition to many humanly gripping scenes, there are also constructed and psychologically unbelievable moments of action. Politically, the film is of interest because it has dedicated itself entirely to building a socialist fatherland ... In addition, one of the few DEFA films in which the popular uprising of June 17, 1953 is thematized and SED party decisions are dealt with critically.
“But the representation of a great historical process, conveyed through a rich ensemble of figures, through the development of contradicting characters, has not been achieved again in terms of epic size and poetic expressiveness of the figures. The film culminates in the figure of Krummen Anton, who […] is one of the most important figures that DEFA films have produced. The prerequisite for this was the courage to take a clumsy, "completely caught up in the darkness of yesterday, the centuries-old world of masters and servants with internally and externally defaced people" as the starting point of the fable. "
literature
- KuBa: locks and katen. Novel. (Collected works in individual editions), Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle / Saale 1970.
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 507-509 .
Web links
- Locks and Katen in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Locks and Katen at Filmportal.de
- Locks and Katen in the DEFA Foundation's film database
Individual evidence
- ↑ KINO.DE: Interview with Andreas Dresen ( Memento from September 14, 2009 in the Internet Archive ).
- ^ Film-zeit: Schlösser und Katen - Part 1: Der krumme Anton ( Memento from March 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ ulrich-thein.de ( Memento from August 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive ).