Our daily bread (1949)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Our daily bread |
 | |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1949 |
| length | 105 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Slatan Dudow |
| script | Slatan Dudow, Hans-Joachim Beyer , Ludwig Turek |
| production | DEFA |
| music | Hanns Eisler |
| camera | Robert Baberske |
| cut | Margarete Steinborn |
| occupation | |
| |
Our daily bread is a German DEFA film by Slatan Dudow from 1949. After Der Biberpelz , it was the second film that DEFA released after the GDR was founded .
action
The year 1946 in Berlin : The Webers family moved together in times of need. Father Karl, who worked there as a treasurer for 20 years until the Renner & Co. machine factory was destroyed, lives with his second wife Martha and their twins in a large apartment. In addition, the grown-up children Harry, a cynic, the socialist Ernst with his pregnant wife Käthe, and the secretary Inge still live with their parents. The cheerful Niki, the silent rubble woman Ilse and Karl's niece Mary occupy the remaining rooms. Everyone contributes his or her part to the livelihood, procures bread or other things. Seriousness alone cannot contribute anything. Although he is working with numerous volunteers to rebuild the destroyed Renner factory, he is not paid any wages. Father Karl sees Ernst as a dreamer who will get nowhere. Harry, on the other hand, who looks down contemptuously at the socialists and earns his living from black market and other illegal business, has his father's respect. However, since he feels disadvantaged within the shared apartment, Harry moves out first. After differences of opinion with Karl, Ernst also leaves and moves into a small house with his wife.
Inge loses her position as a secretary because she protests against her low pay. She cannot keep a second job as a whipped cream saleswoman. On the mediation of Ernst she was hired as a secretary at Renner & Co., especially since she had already seen and learned to appreciate the manager of the company Peter Struwe several times on her daily commute. Because she seems to be on Ernst's side, Inge falls out of favor with her father. She moves out. Rubble woman Ilse, whom Karl looks down on for her job, also leaves the family. In turn, niece Mary earns her living with prostitution and is expelled from the apartment by Martha. It has now become quiet in the house. With Mr. Bergstetter, the Webers family is assigned a new sub-tenant who is roughly Karl's age.
The factory is being rebuilt through the combined efforts of the workers, who temporarily forego their wages. The first machines start up and produce saucepans and bowls. The workers receive unbranded food. When the planning of manufacturing machines for tractors began, the two engineers of the factory flee to the West. Peter Struwe thinks of giving up, but Ernst encourages him to keep going. Ernst, Harry and Inge get together again for Karl's birthday. While Harry gives his father cigarettes, chocolate and alcohol, Ernst and Inge bring bread with them. However, Karl refuses to eat “socialist bread”. Only the new sub-tenant Bergstetter relativized the disputes. He had been looking for his daughter for three years and promptly learned of her death that day, so that none of his family survived the chaos of war. When Inge found out that he was a trained engineer, she successfully recruited him for Renner & Co.
Harry, meanwhile, is in dire straits. His client has been exposed, other people involved in the illegal business have already been arrested. He has no more money and has to leave his apartment. He keeps his need a secret from Martha, who asks him to get some bread. He can't buy bread and so he attacks an old man who has just bought one - his own father. Harry brings the bread to Martha. A little later, the injured father is brought to the apartment where Harry's cigarette mouthpiece was found. He does not betray Harry to the police officers, but renounces him. Harry commits suicide a short time later.
Since Bergstetter, a man his age, started at Renner & Co., Karl had doubts about his attitude, especially since he had also turned down a job offer from Peter Struwes, who wanted Karl to become treasurer. He goes to Renner & Co, where Ernst has meanwhile been promoted to operations manager. Although they can only offer him one job as an accountant, Karl accepts this gratefully, as his family needs money. Thanks to Bergstetter's hard work, the tractors finally go into production. A little later, the first tractors leave the factory grounds to the cheers of the workers. They will bring bread to people in the future.
production
Our daily bread was created in the Atelier Berlin-Johannisthal with exterior shots from Berlin and had its premiere on November 9, 1949 in the Babylon cinema in Berlin . After Der Biberpelz , which was released on October 31, 1949, it was the second DEFA film to be released on October 7, 1949 after the GDR was founded.
With Our Daily Bread , Dudow continued "the tradition of proletarian German film before 1933 ...", which he himself had significantly shaped with Kuhle Wampe, among others . The conflict that takes place within the family and essentially at the kitchen table is characterized by clear contradictions in the sense of a didactic piece: “Between the good and the bad son stands the old father, who too late behind the imposing behavior of one of the moral ones Abyss and recognizes the unselfishness behind the apparent ineptitude of the other person. ”It is considered the first DEFA film to show a crowd scene with cheering workers in the finale. He thus became a model for numerous other political DEFA films between 1950 and 1953.
Herbert Ihering particularly praised Hanns Eisler's film music, who wrote a suite of the same name and the pieces Hungerzug and Die Soup for our daily bread . It is in the tradition of Russian and German film music before 1933, grab hold of it and concentrate: "The usual illustrative film music that we have in our ears from hundreds of films has been wiped away."
criticism
Contemporary critics praised the film as “true and honest”: “By not adding a 'time color' to a conventional plot from the outside, as is so often the case, but instead takes its dramatic idea anew and directly from the time and its tensions, it helps to raise democratic film production to a higher level. "
On the occasion of the premiere of the film, Spiegel dealt with the figure drawing, among other things. “In the film, Webers' former treasurer [...] sits in the kitchen, capitalistically obstinate. Son and niece perish as a slide and American friend. The other children, fighting for their daily bread, organize a pile of rubble for their own tractor factory, without payment, just out of love for their work. "
The film service wrote about Our Daily Bread :
“One of the first productions of the then newly founded East German DEFA, which, in front of the ruins of the destroyed city, constructs the strongly tendentious contrast of East Berlin workers willing to rebuild on the one hand, sluggers and prostitutes on the other. While the ideologically toned scenes appear pathetic and naive, the film is convincing in terms of milieu and atmosphere and is a remarkable document. "
Other critics criticized the fact that the overemphasis on the word pushed the visual language into the background and, above all, the political discussions at the dinner table were unimaginatively arranged and photographed.
In 2000, Frank-Burkhard Habel wrote that the film works “through a controversial plot set in the present, carefully observed and provided with casual ironic tones”.
literature
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 642-643 .
Web links
- Our Daily Bread in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Our daily bread at filmportal.de
- Our daily bread at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Ralf Schenk (ed.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (ed.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 38.
- ^ Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 61.
- ↑ Herbert Ihering quoted from: Ralf Schenk (ed.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (ed.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 38.
- ↑ Heinz Lüdecke: A film from our reality . In: New Germany . November 11, 1949.
- ↑ A girl has to wait a long time . In: Der Spiegel , No. 47, 1949, p. 34.
- ↑ Our daily bread. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 643 .