The Good German - In the ruins of Berlin
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Good German - In the ruins of Berlin |
| Original title | The Good German |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English , German |
| Publishing year | 2006 |
| length | 108 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK 12 JMK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Steven Soderbergh |
| script | Paul Attanasio |
| production |
Ben Cosgrove , Gregory Jacobs , Steven Soderbergh |
| music | Thomas Newman |
| camera | Steven Soderbergh (as Peter Andrews) |
| cut | Steven Soderbergh (as Mary Ann Bernard) |
| occupation | |
| |
The Good German - In the ruins of Berlin (original title: The Good German ) is a black and white - thriller from Steven Soderbergh from the year 2006 , which on the novel by Joseph Kanon based. The film opened on December 15, 2006 in New York City , Los Angeles and Toronto , and a week later in all of North America. The European premiere was in February 2007 at the 57th Berlinale , and the German theatrical release was on March 1, 2007.
The tagline of the film is in the original sentence: "If war is hell, then what comes after?" ( English for: "If war is hell, what comes after?")
The term Good German ( English for good German ) has a negative connotation in the Anglo-Saxon-speaking area and has been used since the end of the Second World War to describe people who, for example, behave inconspicuously under a political regime and are not perpetrators but followers.
action
The plot revolves around the American journalist Jake Geismar, who is sent to the Potsdam conference in post-war Berlin and there tries to find his lost love Lena Brandt. His driver Patrick Tully is keen on his own gain, he does business at all costs and plays all sides against each other. Every situation is turned to advantage; Patrick steals Jake's wallet the first time they meet and even offers him money afterwards so that he doesn't end up without means of payment.
Patrick also has a German lover whom he would like to take with him to the United States. For Jake's help, Patrick offers him a lunchtime with his girlfriend. It soon turns out, however, that Patrick's lover is Jake's old friend Lena - a German Jew with whom Jake had a relationship before the war and who survived the Holocaust . But since their last meeting, the horrors of war and life in ruined Berlin have changed her a lot.
When Patrick wants to visit his girlfriend one day, she is not there. He is beaten up and asked about the whereabouts of a certain Emil Brandt. Patrick quickly finds out that the man he is looking for is his girlfriend's husband, who was involved in the V2 rocket project as a mathematician . Since both Russians and Americans are looking for the German missile specialists, he smells a deal. Shortly afterwards, Patrick is found murdered in the Soviet occupation zone ; he carries 50,000 Reichsmarks with him, which, as it later turns out, had been printed by the American occupation forces.
But the case again seems to arouse little interest from the American and Soviet authorities, who prefer to suppress the death that occurred at a politically unfavorable time. Jake therefore continues to research on his own. All traces lead him to Lena again and again. He finds out that Lena is married to the missing German Emil Brandt, who, as a former SS officer, has knowledge of the inhumane conditions in Dora-Mittelbau and the involvement of German scientists.
Emil Brandt is ultimately murdered, despite Jake's intervention, and Lena is shot. Jake realizes that the people in Berlin have been so changed by the war that all of them can no longer lead a normal life. Many Berliners therefore resort to similarly corrupt or brutal methods as Patrick, although they are only concerned with survival. During the war, for example, as a Jew, Lena helped track down twelve Jews living in hiding so as not to be deported herself.
The film ends with a quote from the final scene of the film Casablanca from 1942, in which Lena boarded a ready-to-fly plane alone in the rain after confessing her informing Jake, who was about to flee with her, to the tarmac in front of the plane.
background
David Holmes composed the entire score , which was also recorded. However, it was rejected by the filmmakers . Thomas Newman made the second attempt, for which he received a nomination for an Oscar 2007 in the category of best film music .
The Good German was comparatively little successful at the box office. With an estimated 32 million US dollar production costs, he played in the United States , a US $ 1.3 million worldwide, the film came to 6 million US dollars.
The technical means are modeled on those of the late 1940s: Soderbergh dispensed with zoom lenses and had all scenes (all of which were shot in Los Angeles except for historical documentaries) illuminated with lightbulbs. By dispensing with portable wireless microphones, the dialogues were recorded with an overhead microphone ("Angel"), which forced the actors to speak clearly and loudly - a whisper would not have been recorded. As was customary at the time, the actors' playing style should also be theatrical, facing the camera. So that the film could be shown in the usual film format of the 1940s "Academy" ( 35 mm film , aspect ratio 1.37: 1), black bars had to be attached to the sides of the picture for the cinema screening during post-production. The 1940s version also features the Warner Brothers logo in the opening credits.
Reviews
“Highly stylized noir ballad with echoes of Michael Curtiz 's classic Casablanca , which uses the classic love story as a foil for a bitter reflection on the end of World War II, how the Nazi crimes were dealt with and American involvement in Europe on the eve of the Cold War while questioning the myth of the US Liberation and Democratization Mission. - Worth seeing"
Felicitas Kleiner also sees alienation effects in film-dienst in the “offensively exhibited artificiality”, the “retro look and sound” and the “iconic” acting style of the actors , and places the film closer to Germany in the year zero or The Third Man .
" The Good German is not only a nostalgic homage to cast shadows and dangerously alluring women, but it confronts the Noir style with everything that was at the time, as it were, under the surface - which, in short, was missing in the cinematic discourse."
"[...] A politically serious revision of the Hollywood noir of the forties."
According to Rüdiger Suchsland's publication in Telepolis on March 3, 2007, the moments in this experiment somehow don't come together: “Everything is also shaped by the sadness about the disappearance of the old gestures and narrative styles. A pastiche , completely postmodern and in this respect already a bit outdated, a painting over of the new with the old, a masked ball. So it doesn't have any depth because it doesn't have an abyss, but visually it still works. [...] A film for lovers. "
Awards
- Academy Awards 2007 : Nomination for Best Film Music
- Berlinale 2007 : Nomination for the Golden Bear
- Alliance of Women Film Journalists 2006: Female Focus Award Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in the Film Industry for Cate Blanchett (also for Babel and Notes on a Scandal )
- Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards 2007: Nomination for Best Score
- International Film Music Critics Award (IFMCA) 2006: Nomination for Best Film Music
- 2006 Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards: Best Score for a film
- Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards 2006: Nomination for Best Score (second place)
- Sant Jordi Awards 2008: Best Foreign Actress (Mejor Actriz Extranjera) for Cate Blanchett (also for Elizabeth: The Golden Age and Notes on a Scandal )
The Wiesbaden film evaluation agency awarded the title “particularly valuable”.
Web links
- The Good German - In the ruins of Berlin in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- The Good German - In the ruins of Berlin atRotten Tomatoes(English)
- The Good German - In the ruins of Berlin by Metacritic (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Age designation for The Good German - In denüsten von Berlin . Youth Media Commission .
- ↑ Trivia in the IMDb (English)
- ↑ The Good German on Box Office Mojo
- ↑ various subject areas in the IMDb (English)
- ↑ a b epd Film 3/07 p. 32.
- ↑ Play it again, Steve… , film review by Rüdiger Suchsland in Telepolis , accessed on March 4, 2007
- ↑ Assessment of the film evaluation agency (online resource), accessed on April 18, 2014