Stronger than the night

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Movie
Original title Stronger than the night
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1954
length 117 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Slatan Dudow
script Kurt Stern
Jeanne Stern
production DEFA
music Ernst Roters
camera Karl Plintzner
Horst E. Brandt
cut Johanna Rosinski
occupation

Stronger than the night is a German DEFA film by Slatan Dudow from 1954.

action

At the beginning of 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor. The Hamburg communists Hans and Gerda Löning know that they now have to become active in the resistance, even if Gerda is about to give birth. Hans organizes a leaflet campaign . Shortly after the Reichstag fire , Hans went into hiding, fearing a wave of arrests that would affect all communists. In fact, he was arrested on the street with his friend Erich Bachmann and mistreated during the subsequent interrogation, during which the Gestapo wanted to find out where the leaflets were. At the same time, Gerda gives birth to their son, who is called Klaus-Peter. At her side is Erich's friend Lotte, who, however, meets Eddi Nohl in the years that follow after Erich's imprisonment in the concentration camp, who was once a communist but wants nothing more to do with the party. The leaflet campaign also takes place without Hans, but many workers initially react with wait and see, and people like Löning's neighbor Globig are happy that they never flagged for or against the NS and want to remain apolitical.

After seven years, Hans Löning was released from the concentration camp in 1940. He gets to know his son, whom he has only seen in one photo so far, and holds Gerda in his arms. He initially stays away from political activities, knowing that further arrest would mean his death. A little later, Erich is also released, but soon learns that Lotte has not been waiting for him. Eddi Nohl, on the other hand, is recruited by the Gestapo as a spy to provide them with information about Hans. He pretends to cooperate, but initially stays away.

When the Wehrmacht attacks the Soviet Union , Hans becomes active again in the resistance. He gathers former comrades around him and soon a new leaflet campaign will start. Leaflets from Hamburg find their way to the front and the Gestapo is losing patience. When leaflets appear in Eddi Nohl's company and Eddi puts one of them in his pocket, he is arrested. He betrays active communists of the Gestapo, who are now shadowing various members of the resistance. They soon found all the ways and people connecting - everything comes together at Hans Löning. Eddi confesses to Lotte that he betrayed the communists and she can just save Erich Bachmann from arrest. He flees to Berlin, where he informs the liaison officers there of the events in Hamburg. Dozens of comrades are arrested here, including Hans. When Soviet troops march into Germany, the captured communists are sentenced and executed in a fast-track trial. Gerda reads Hans's farewell letter in front of her friends, in which, among other things, he invokes a better future Germany. In the ruins of Hamburg, Ms. Globig, whose son died at the front, now realizes that there can be no non-political action.

The film ends with pictures of the reconstruction.

production

Stronger Than the Night was filmed in 1954 in the Babelsberg studio with exterior shots from Berlin and the surrounding area. Oskar Pietsch and Gerhard Helwig created the buildings, Adolf Fischer was production manager.

Stronger than Night saw its premiere on September 24, 1954 in the Babylon cinema in Berlin . The film had a budget of 2,300,000 East German marks . It subsequently ran at various international events, including in Poland (Week of German Culture, 1954 and 1955), Bulgaria (Week of German Film, 1955) and Great Britain (DEFA Film Week in London, 1959). In 1983, Stronger Than Night was the opening film of a Berlin Dudow retrospective on the occasion of the director's 80th birthday.

The film constructions come from Oskar Pietsch .

criticism

Contemporary critics praised the film. It contains images “which serve the idea of ​​the film with compelling force, images in which the entire charge against fascism and the human greatness of its opponents is captured. [...] The drama of the individual scenes is supported by the camera through clever and organic, completely unobtrusive pans. […] Capturing the unmistakable historical and scenic atmosphere of the world in which these people live, these situations arise, is still often neglected. Karl Plintzner and Horst Brandt also took this indispensable side of the film into account and largely solved this task. Buildings and costumes naturally play a major role in this. " Looking back, Frank-Burkhard Habel wrote that" through the deep humanity in the implementation of the topic [...] a moving film [succeeded], which only tended towards a certain pathetic at the end. "

The film-dienst named Stronger Than the Night “[e] in a contemporary document that goes beyond the exemplary individual case and gives insights into the way of life and behavior of those years. In addition to its interesting, albeit tendentious, subject matter, the film impresses with its quality and the good, emotionally charged acting. "

Awards

On October 6, 1955, Slatan Dudow, Wilhelm Koch-Hooge and Jeanne and Kurt Stern were awarded the National Prize, Second Class, as a film collective by Stronger than the Night .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alfred Bauer: German feature film Almanach. Volume 2: 1946-1955 , p. 469
  2. ↑ Heimann, Thomas. Pictures by Buchenwald: The visualization of anti-fascism in the GDR (1945–1990) . Böhlau, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-412-09804-3 . P. 53.
  3. ↑ Klaus Wischnewski: Stronger than the night . In: Deutsche Filmkunst , No. 6, 1954.
  4. ↑ F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 580 .
  5. ↑ Stronger than the night. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed August 3, 2018 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  6. ↑ See defa.de