Black rusks
Black rusks ( Russian Чёрные сухари is) a German-Soviet literary adaptation of DEFA and Lenfilm by Herbert M. Rappaport from the year 1972 , based on motifs of experience report of the same name by Elizabeth Drabkina from the year 1962nd
action
A group of German soldiers released from captivity is traveling west by train. Shortly before Moscow they are stopped at a small train station and the remaining passengers are checked by a detection team to see whether they are carrying more than the permitted one kilogram of flour or grain. Everything that is above it will be confiscated and should be made available to the entire population. The person in charge of this control team is the deputy commissioner Tanja, who here meets the German Kurt for the first time, who is not yet able to fully understand the severity of this struggle for bread, the relentlessness with which the revolution has to defend its right to life. But Tanja, too, doubts the justice in carrying out her task, because many of the bags of food that were collected were exchanged to provide for their own starving families. Worst of all, the barn in which the things were stored was set on fire by counter-revolutionary gangs. Kurt's offer to help the communists was turned down by Tanja.
In Moscow, the former prisoners of war were waiting to be transported to Germany and had to be registered at the embassy. Kurt, who could not hide his sympathy with the new Russian form of society, is advised not to show up at the embassy again anytime soon. So he finds himself in the middle of the celebrations for the first anniversary of the October Revolution. Here he meets Tanja for the second time and slowly a certain affection develops between the two. When it became known that there was also a revolution in Germany, Kurt and other like-minded people went to the embassy and hoisted a red flag on the balcony.
Tanja has a new task and, following an appeal by Lenin, collects bread, grain and flour for the starving population in Berlin. But it is only when a mother, whose daughter has died of starvation herself, campaigns for the donations, does the consent slowly begin and several wagons come together. Tanja is used to accompany the solidarity train and meets here for the third time with Kurt, who is on his way home to Germany. Also on the train are several European communists who are on their way back from the celebrations for the 1st anniversary of the October Revolution. During the trip Tanja and Kurt fall in love and decide to stay together forever. At the German border station, the goods are forbidden to travel on because the new SPD government in Berlin is afraid of the solidarity of the Russian workers. But when a development emerges that the train can continue, the station commander calls a troop of counter-revolutionary German cavalry. This destroys the valuable cargo and places burning fuses on the wagons with the sacks full of “black rusks”. In the fighting that followed, Tanja is badly wounded and Kurt can just bring her to safety to the locomotive returning to Russia. Kurt goes to Germany to support the revolution here.
By the way: "Black rusks" are sliced bread that has been baked to keep.
production
The film, shot in color and total vision , premiered on March 15, 1972 in the Mir cinema in Moscow and on April 13, 1972 in the Colosseum cinema in Berlin . The first broadcast in the 2nd program of the television of the GDR took place on April 30, 1973.
The Soviet actors were dubbed by Katharina Lind , Kurt Goldstein , Erhard Köster , Werner Ehrlicher , Dieter Wien , Brigitte Lindenberg , Kaspar Eichel , Rainer R. Lange , Gudrun Jochmann , Norbert Christian , Hans J. Entrich and Klaus Nietz , among others .
The scenario was in the hands of Mikhail Bleiman .
criticism
Margit Voss found in the film mirror that for today's viewers the solidarity procession covered with slogans and drawings are just as strange as the scenes posed during the demonstration procession on the occasion of the first anniversary of the revolution.
HU wrote in the Neue Zeit : The rhythm of the whole film is more static than dynamic. Most interesting are the passages from the celebration of the first anniversary of the October Revolution in Moscow, with their bright colors dominated by red: the agitation painting in the futurist style, the naive symbolism of allegorical pantomimes and living images, the enthusiasm of demonstrators.
The lexicon of international film describes the film as a conventionally designed revolutionary drama full of sentimentality and declamatory pathos.
literature
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 524-525 .
Web links
- Black rusks in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Black rusks at filmportal.de
- Black rusks from the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ^ Margit Voss in Filmspiegel No. 10/1972
- ^ HU in the Neue Zeit from April 17, 1972
- ↑ Black rusks. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .