Wide streets - silent love

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title Wide streets - silent love
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1969
length 76 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Herrmann Zschoche
script Ulrich Plenzdorf
production DEFA , KAG "Berlin"
music Peter Rabenalt
camera Roland Graef
cut Rita Hiller
occupation

Wide streets - silent love is a German road movie of the DEFA of Herrmann Zschoche from the year 1969 .

action

The truck driver Hannes Kass is on his way to Rostock when a rattle in the truck forces him to stop on the open road. During the repair he is approached by the young Herb Schneider, who also wants to go to Rostock. Hannes takes him with him. Herb tells him that he left school after six years, took on this and that occasional job, and otherwise to live in the day. He's also made a living as a truck driver. He wants to go to Rostock because he has never been to the port. Hannes reacts critically because even a young man who left school early could find work at any time. In addition, Herb is chatty and pseudo-philosophical.

In Rostock, Herb realizes that he wants to go back to Berlin after all, and Hannes finally leaves the lively Herb standing in the rain, slightly annoyed because of an alleged piston damage, and holding a nut in the engine compartment. Herb got severe pneumonia and had to go to the hospital. Hannes visits him there contrite, as the piston damage was a typical joke that is played with newcomers. Herb, however, was already familiar with this sample, as he once actually worked as a passenger to a coal supplier. Otherwise nothing was right about his biography. So he actually finished high school and, at the request of his parents, began studying German as a teacher, which he broke off. He pretended to be Hannes, because he thought that Hannes would think he was a fool.

In the hospital, Hannes offers Herb to become his regular second driver in the future, since his actual co-driver Heinrich has received his own car. From now on both of them do tours together and Herb learns from Hannes' colleagues that he is one of the most experienced and respected colleagues in the company. On a return trip to Berlin, both take Johanna and her daughter Rieke with them. Johanna has separated from her boyfriend, the child's father, and now wants to stay with friends in Berlin who are on vacation. When Frau Beutel, an acquaintance of Hannes', cannot help either, Johanna and her little daughter find accommodation with Hannes, where Herb also stays overnight. Since Hannes and Herb always have to go on tour, Johanna is allowed to stay in Hannes' apartment until she has found something of her own. The trained zoo technician also wants to look for work. Both men soon fall in love with Johanna, who initially rejects Herb when he gives her a kiss. Hannes is even thinking of getting married, but Johanna has already moved on with a spontaneous marriage proposal in the great outdoors without Hannes noticing.

Hannes and Herb have to go on tour again and arrive at one of their usual resting places in the evening. However, a wedding is currently taking place in the restaurant, so the evening is going to be longer than planned. When Hannes sleeps in the bunk of the truck in the morning and cannot be woken up, Herb sits at the wheel, sleepily. While he slept for a second , he found himself on the wrong lane, then tore the steering wheel and breaks through a guardrail with the truck - the driver's cab comes to a stop over a precipice. Getting out through the doors is unthinkable, and both men think about the last time. Herb wants to change his life when he gets out of the situation safely. Hannes, in turn, tells Herb that he really proposed to Johanna and that she was rejected. He still wants to try a second time. In the end, both men save themselves from the truck using a rope that has been lowered to the ground. In Hannes' apartment, however, only Johanna's farewell letter is waiting: She has returned with her daughter to her previous boyfriend. Herb is now enrolling at the university again, and one day Hannes visits him there. He has a diary with him in which he has processed the experiences with Herb in the form of a novel. He reads from it to Herb, and Herb is astonished not to have had this idea himself.

production

Wide streets - silent love is based on the story Endlose Straßen by Hans-Georg Lietz . The film was shot in 1969 under the working title Endless Streets in Rostock and Thuringia, among others. It had its premiere on December 4, 1969 in the Berlin Kino International and was shown in GDR cinemas the following day. On June 18, 1971, it ran for the first time on DFF 1 on television in the GDR and was also broadcast on ARD on January 28, 1973 .

Ulrike Plenzdorf, who plays the child Rieke in the film, is the daughter of the screenwriter and writer Ulrich Plenzdorf . She was three years old at the time of shooting. Manfred Krug repeated the role of the truck driver in 1973 in the film How to feed a donkey .

criticism

Contemporary critics saw the film, among other things, in relation to the development of a “socialist human community” recently called for by Walter Ulbricht and emphasized that “in this self-evident wanting to help one another, the existence for one another [...] is part of what [shows] in of our republic has become a reality, a part of our socialist human community ”. Direction and camera create "optimistic basic values". The Frankfurter Rundschau found that the film plays in everyday life "which is totally lacking in West German, Western films in general". "It is pleasant how the film describes our everyday life as a matter of course, that it communicates itself through a cheerful tone, through simplicity as well as through optimism," wrote Hans-Dieter Tok in the Berliner Wochenpost . However, he criticized the film's lack of action; Long shots of the moving truck are also monotonous in the long run.

Christoph Prochnow called Wide Roads - Silent Love a “two-man piece with the temporary participation of a woman”, whereby the roles of both men initially seem to be clearly distributed and it seems to be clear who will win this fight factually and morally, who will re-educate whom. “In the end, however, the viewer's expectations are only partially fulfilled:“ On the whole, both figures constantly challenge and relativize each other, make each other aware of their limits and unused possibilities, and enrich each other ”. The undermining of the audience's expectations, also in relation to the triangular story between Hannes, Herb and Johanna, “makes the film's ending so special”.

For film-dienst , Weite Straßen - silent love was an "thematically and formally interesting, episodic entertainment film that depicts everyday life with a love of detail, even if it is a little tense." Cinema called the film a "lovingly staged everyday story".

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wide streets - silent love on defa.de
  2. ^ Friedrich Salow: With soft tones . In: Filmspiegel , No. 1, 1970, p. 8.
  3. ^ Walter Schobert in: Frankfurter Rundschau , January 29, 1973.
  4. ^ Hans-Dieter Tok: Everyday life from a DEFA perspective . In: Wochenpost , No. 52, December 19, 1969.
  5. ^ Christoph Prochnow: Herrmann Zschoche . In: Rolf Richter (Hrsg.): DEFA feature film directors and their critics . Volume 1. Henschelverlag, Berlin 1981, pp. 226-227.
  6. ↑ Wide streets - silent love. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  7. ↑ See cinema.de