On the way to see Lenin
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | On the way to Lenin ( На пути к Ленину ) |
| Country of production |
GDR USSR |
| original language |
German Russian |
| Publishing year | 1970 |
| length | 107 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Günter Reisch |
| script |
Helmut Baierl Yevgeny Gabrilowitsch |
| production |
DEFA , KAG "Babelsberg" Mosfilm , Group "Lutsch" |
| music | Karl-Ernst Sasse |
| camera |
Jürgen Brauer Valery Vladimirov |
| cut | Monika Schindler |
| occupation | |
| |
On the way to Lenin ( На пути к Ленину ) is a German-Soviet film adaptation of DEFA and Mosfilm by Günter Reisch , with the collaboration of Lucia Ochrimenko, from 1970, based on motifs from a memory book by the writer Alfred Kurella .
action
A train travels through the vast expanses of Russia , a train with returning German prisoners of war , and together with them Viktor Kleist, a young German communist from an intellectual family in Munich, drives back to his homeland. During the journey, the stations on his way to Lenin wake up again.
It begins in Munich, in the days after the murder of USPD politician Kurt Eisner . He could only avoid a subsequent wave of arrests because he was able to win over the examining magistrate through his previous membership in the Wandervögel . He found his first accommodation on his subsequent escape with his fiancée Lore, who worked as a teacher in a girls' boarding school with Frau von Roettger. Here he is tracked down by his old friend and comrade Martin Schenzinger and together they make their way to Berlin. Here they discover an anarchist revolutionary bohemian and the fighting working class. The KPD instructs you to personally deliver two letters and two newspaper parcels to Lenin in Moscow as a courier. At the request of the friend of Viktor's mother, a Tsarist widow general living in Potsdam, they should take her son George, who is supposed to collect the missing pension for mom in the new government in the Kremlin , with them. Since he speaks the Russian language, they agree and the three of them set off. The first problems arose at the German border with Lithuania and the two newspaper packages had to be left behind. In Lithuania, the contact addresses no longer existed, but they continued to get through, even though they were followed by the police. When they come to a farmhouse one night and are welcomed in a very reserved manner, the question is whether you have anything against them or can they expect betrayal? No, Viktor and Martin “only” spoiled the wedding night for the young couple.
When they finally arrived in Russia, they were first arrested by the Red Army. After clarifying the situation, Viktor is immediately flown to Moscow by plane. Here he meets a commissioner in a hotel who wants to take him to Lenin, but does not succeed. Now the leading comrades of the Moscow Komsomol are taking care of him and he is working with the revolutionary Lena to appeal to the Communist Youth International . A tender affection develops between the two. But when he found out that the still young Bavarian Soviet Republic had been broken up, Viktor decided to return to Germany soon.
Finally there was an encounter with Lenin himself, who placed Viktor's revolutionary romanticism on the ground of facts and gave him a program for the struggle in Western Europe.
On the train full of soldiers returning home from captivity, he sits next to a Mecklenburg farm worker who believes that the revolution is good for him too, and whose old submissiveness is still deep in his bones. Under the impression of approaching Germany, the revolutionary insight that has just been gained disappears again - an experience that illustrates the challenge of the time for Viktor.
production
The film, shot in black and white, was produced on the occasion of Lenin's 100th birthday and had a double premiere on April 16, 1970 in the Kosmos and International cinemas in Berlin .
criticism
Renate Holland-Moritz found in the film mirror that the film is bursting with funny, self-deprecating, pointed passages and thus conveys the feeling of insurmountable power and superiority. HU wrote in the Neue Zeit : This film is without pathos, but poignant, without didactics, but haunted by the philosophy of history; he does not lose himself in the external adventurousness of his plot, but is quite exciting, and he very often has an overwhelming comedy without ever engaging in amusement as an end in itself. This film makes you laugh and encourages reflection; it is a film without clichés, a film of great immediacy. In the Berliner Zeitung , Dr. M. Jelenski concludes that the scene of Viktor's personal encounter with Lenin is relatively small in the overall structure of the film, but is the most important scene in terms of its content.
Awards
- 1970: XVII. Karlovy Vary International Film Festival : Special Jury Prize
- 1970: National Prize III. Class (Jürgen Brauer)
- 1970: National Prize III. Class (Günter Reisch)
- 1970: National Prize III. Class (Helmut Baierl)
- 1970: National Prize III. Class (Herbert Fischer)
- 1970: National Prize III. Class (Yevgeny Gabrilowitsch)
literature
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 649-650 .
Web links
- Heading to Lenin in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- On the way to Lenin at filmportal.de
- On the way to see Lenin at the DEFA Foundation