Hit movie

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The hit film is a German-language film genre that belongs to the music film . It is characterized by the extensive use of hits in a film plot that often only forms a frame. The action is mostly dominated by young people in love. Comedic elements also regularly have their part in the film scene.

history

Even with the beginning of the sound film era, music and singing were often integrated into a film, but initially it was mostly the films with titles composed especially for them that made the hits and not the other way around. The music film Die Drei von der Gasstelle, with Lilian Harvey and Willy Fritsch in the opening credits, was also called an “operetta”. The real era of hit films only came in the 1950s when they gradually supplanted the revue film . In contrast to this, the hit film did without major stage appearances with the usual backstage problems. The adequate integration of the vocal parts into the plot, as it is characteristic for the filming of operettas or musicals, was neglected. Peter Alexander , Caterina Valente and Vico Torriani were the most important representatives of those films that were often set in Italy.

Willy Zeyn was one of the first producers to put a pop singer at the center of his films. Vico Torriani received his first leading role in Street Serenade (1953). The success led directly to the color film Guitars of Love (1954). The basic theme, the rise of a penniless Italian to a singing star, was only slightly changed in Santa Lucia (1956). In collaboration with Artur Brauner, I wrote 7 times a week (1957). A successful title became a film title. His last film with the singer was Dreams of the South Seas (1957). In Fred Bertelmann the producer found a new leading actor. Its successful hit was the inspiration for The Laughing Vagabond (1958). Chris Howland appeared in a supporting role in the successors The Blue Sea and You (1959) and Gauner-Serenade (1960) , whom he also helped to lead in a leading role in That I learned in Paris (1960). Then Willy Zeyn ended his independent production activities.

In the mid-1950s, the Munich distributor Ilse Kubaschewski became aware of the hit film genre. After the distribution program of the Gloria Verleihs, whose founder and owner was Ilse Kubaschewski, so far mainly light entertainment in the form of homeland films , the Kuba, as it was also known, tried to expand its program. Music has always played an important role in her previous films. With the genre of the hit film, it was even brought to the fore. A first hit film that Kuba awarded was The Great Star Parade , which was released in 1954. Atze Brauner was the producer.

Around 1960, after the decline of the Heimatfilm and the revue film, the hit film had its heyday. The emergence of vinyl records, which strongly promoted the spread of pop music, was of particular importance during this period. Peter Kraus , Cornelia Froboess , Gitte Hænning , Rex Gildo and Freddy Quinn were now the most famous pop stars that could be seen in the films. In the GDR, too, there were some productions with a similar focus, especially with Frank Schöbel . At the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies, Roy Black , Chris Roberts and Heintje were able to help the hit film achieve new successes, but in the course of a general cinema and hit crisis, the end of this genre was heralded. The film Zwei im 7. Himmel from 1974 with Bernd Clüver and Peter Orloff is the last classic hit film. Later German music films deal with historical events (such as Die Roy Black Story ) or are parodies (such as Der Trip - Die nackteuitar 0.5 , with Dieter Thomas Kuhn and Johnny Flash with Helge Schneider ).

criticism

The contemporary film critics either ignored hit films or, especially in the later phase, dismissed them with scornful words such as "stupid hit-rock" or "on the verge of idiot comedy". However, they later proved to be quite popular on television and are broadcast frequently.

Fritz Göttler found in the history of German film about the hit film that the constant singing and the permanent happiness of the hit film was no longer coordinated with the plot and integrated into a story, but gained a ghostly life of its own: “This phantom cinema lacks the inner context, is a cinema of external appearances: that knows no inner involvement. "

List of hit films

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Schlagerfilm" in the dictionary of film terms . University of Kiel. Retrieved May 28, 2012.
  2. ↑ Michael Kamp: Glanz und Gloria. The life of the grande dame of the German film Ilse Kubaschewski 1907-2001 . August Dreesbach Verlag, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-944334-58-5 , pp. 141 .
  3. ↑ Reviews from the Catholic Film Service ; based on Manfred Hobsch: love, dance and 1000 hits . 1998, p. 36.
  4. ↑ Fritz Göttler: Postwar Period , in: History of German Films , Verlag JB Metzler; Stuttgart, Weimar, 2nd edition 2004, p. 205.