Lost life
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Lost life |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1976 |
| length | 92 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Ottokar Runze |
| script | Peter Hirche |
| production | Ottokar Runze |
| music | Hans-Martin Majewski |
| camera | Michael Epp |
| cut | Marlies Dux |
| occupation | |
and Götz Kronburger , Uwe Dallmeier , Katrin Schaake , Wolfgang Spier , Helga Feddersen , Stefan Behrens , Heinz Schubert , Barbara Morawiecz , Eckart Dux , Arnold Marquis , Trude Breitschopf , Hans Kwiet , Henning Schlüter | |
Lost Life is a 1975 German fictional film by Ottokar Runze . Gerhard Olschewski and Marius Müller-Westernhagen took on the leading roles of two opponents .
action
In German Silesia, somewhere on a country estate from 1927. One day an eight-year-old girl is found dead there. There is no doubt: she was murdered. A sex crime. The prejudiced police commissioner Weber is sure that the Polish landscape gardener Siegfried Cioska, a beefy bear from a man, must have committed the cruel act. The only problem is: he can't prove it to him at all. And so Weber resorted to a trick. When Cioska, no longer able to withstand the allegations and abuse of the rural population, moves on to Berlin, Weber puts a compatriot Cioskas on him. Visually, he is completely the opposite of the gardener: a spindly linnet named Wenzel Sigorski, a Polish student, is supposed to win Cioska's trust as an informant in order to elicit a confession from him as soon as possible. In fact, the two dissimilar men gradually become friends in joint ventures and develop something like a male friendship. This cannot be nice to Sigorski, as it means that scruples are gradually spreading in him in view of his shabby double play. Wenzel soon believed in Siegfried's innocence, but Weber didn't care. He wants Cioska to be guilty, and he adheres to this belief with ever increasing, merciless fanaticism.
In order to finally come to a result that is satisfactory for him, Inspector Weber sets a trap for the gardener: He makes Sigorski pretend to commit a murder in which Cioska unintentionally witnesses. Sigorski pretends to have to flee because Cioska now has him in hand. Then Cioska finally confesses to the murder of the girl, in the hope that they will now be par. Weber is deeply satisfied; he arrests the perpetrator, who is later executed, even if, this is Runze's staging trick, the director, similar to the classic justice film Let me live! by Robert Wise , leaves it open whether Cioska actually committed the terrible bloodshed or whether he made this "confession" because he feared that he would otherwise lose his only friend here in Germany, his compatriot Sigorski. But this almost breaks after his betrayal of his friend, goes through a moral catharsis after the death of Cioska , turns away from worldly life and decides to become a priest. On a night of bombing during the Second World War , he tells his story, while a war is raging outside, which also broke out because of the collapse of the morality of which he and Cioska fell victim.
Production notes
Lost Life was filmed in North Germany in 1975 and was shown in German cinemas on March 12, 1976.
Three years later, Olschewski and Müller-Westernhagen were again film partners in another Runze production, The Murderer .
Awards
The film received several awards or was nominated for such:
- Gold film tape for Gerhard Olschewski
- Silver bear at the Berlinale for Gerhard Olschewski
- Nomination for the Golden Bear for Ottokar Runze
- Nomination for the film tape in gold for Marius Müller-Westernhagen
Reviews
“Ottokar Runze doesn't really fit into the German film landscape, which is currently polished to a high gloss. Runze has no aura, he's over 50 and doesn't fit into any group. Although his four films (including "Der Lord von Barmbeck", "In the Name of the People"), which he has shot since 1971, have been showered with awards, the great success did not come. In the honorable doggedness with which he tackles his issues, Runze is certainly just as of a German soul as Werner Herzog, wading in the mystical primeval mud. Thorough, precise and with a no-frills commitment to human dignity, reminiscent of the great films by Fritz Lang, Runze in "Lost Life", as in his prison film "In the Name of the People", takes action against a judiciary based on judgments falls from prejudice. (...) Usually this brooding seriousness, if it does not want to sell itself sensationally, comes along clumsy. Runze tries to avoid this through aesthetic sophistication. He had black-and-white film copied onto color material, and this gives his pictures a dark density that is sometimes almost too beautiful to be true. He would not have needed such calligraphy. It would also have been one of the most honorable, honest films of recent times. "
"Impressive in the picture and excellent in the drawing of the characters, the film lets you feel the intellectual climate of the Third Reich in the background."
“The following productions varied Runze's interest in the subjects of justice, crime and the people involved. His recurring motif was the confrontation with guilt and atonement, with the culpable entanglement of the individual in the context of his environment, society. Runze tried to uncover social backgrounds that provided information on the behavioral patterns of his protagonists. Again and again, the psychologization of the culpably entangled main characters was the focus of Runze's interest - so the director, whose in-depth productions moved further and further away from simply entertaining mainstream entertainment patterns in the course of the 1970s, gradually developed into the German André Cayatte . Above all, his two main actors Gerhard Olschewski and Marius Müller-Westernhagen (stars in "Verlorenes Leben" and "Der Mörder") ensured acting enjoyment. "
“Filmmaker Ottokar Runze uses this moral story to make the intellectual climate of the Nazi era tangible. (...) An impressive document from an inhuman time. "
Web links
- Lost life in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Lost life at filmportal.de