When you grow up, dear Adam

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Movie
Original title When you grow up, dear Adam
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1965
length 70 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Egon Günther
script Helga Schütz
Egon Günther
production DEFA , KAG "Red Circle"
music Wilhelm Neef
camera Helmut Grewald
cut Monika Schindler
occupation

When you grow up, dear Adam is a German film comedy by DEFA directed by Egon Günther and filmed in 1965. The film was banned before its completion in 1966 and the sound track was partially destroyed. After its reconstruction, the so-called “ basement film ” had its premiere in 1990.

action

Adam is a smart boy who is often alone. The mother studies in Schwedt , while the father Sepp Tember works as an engineer in an electrical company in Dresden . Above all, the family friend, Pastor Constantine, promotes Adam's spirit through philosophical writings. One day Adam and Sepp are followed by a swan into a train. When he is about to be thrown off the train because he doesn't have a ticket, Adam buys a ticket for him. A little later, father and son are rowing on a Moritzburg pond when the swan throws a flashlight into the boat. At home Adam cleans the lamp and Sepp lies again that he smoked a lot less cigarettes than Adam thinks. Adam lights him up with the lamp and Sepp hovers in the air for a few seconds. They both try the lamp on the housekeeper and soon know that its light makes liars float - the stronger the lie, the higher the liar floats.

Sepp is now planning to put the lamp in series production. The original causes some chaos, so it destroys the love relationship between the employees Erasmus and Caroline, since Erasmus does not love Caroline according to Lampe. For a while, Adam still has fun walking around town making people float randomly on the street. When the lamp was reproduced in several copies, however, two things became clear: Nobody had pre-ordered a lamp, so it does not seem to be used or is not wanted. In addition, the reproduced lamps do not work like the original, they just shine. Adam has become a normal lamp rather than a lying lamp. He exchanges the original for a copy, which in turn is stolen from him by Sepp's boss, as he suspects it to be the original. The boss destroys the lamp. Later the minister receives the same lamp and "accidentally" pushes it from a bridge into the water. The lamp hits a swan and goes down. Shortly afterwards Adam and Sepp see their mother walking along the banks of the Elbe , who is visiting the family for almost two days. They walk away together.

production

When you grow up, dear Adam was shot on location in Dresden and Moritzburg in 1965 and was in final production at the 11th plenum of the SED Central Committee at the end of 1965. Following the meeting, the unfinished film, as well as numerous other films from 1965 and 1966, was banned. Even before the ban, some scenes contained in the script had not been implemented, such as a scene in which Adam attends an oath of oath at the NVA with his flashlight . "Just imagine the picture: a company of soldiers rises into the air because they internally disagree with the oath", says film scholar Rolf Richter looking back.

The main administration for film justified the ban in early 1966, the film propagated an "undialectical, relativistic view of the truth" and had to objectively openly question "the integrity and honesty of our fellow human beings, but also of leading forces in our society." Egon Günther tried in vain to save the film by changing the incriminated areas.

The banned film was stored with the video and audio tracks on separate tapes. When the film was to be reconstructed in the fall of 1989, it was found that the most critical points in the dialogue had been removed from the tapes. The corresponding notes in the reconstructed version have been replaced by the text of the script after the now silent scene. The scripts of originally planned but not realized scenes were also included in the reconstructed version. This highlights the parts that are the subject of the complaint. The reconstructed film had its premiere on October 18, 1990 in the Babylon cinema in Berlin .

When you grow up, dear Adam , in retrospect, was referred to as an advance “in a different way and in a different direction”: Director “Günther is looking for a comedy.” Other critics compared the film in terms of moral standards, satirical wit and lightness with Erich Kästner's children's books as well as Czech and French comedies.

criticism

At the time of the premiere in 1990, the critics wrote: “No other DEFA film that was bunkered in 1965/66 is as cheerful as this - an attitude that we - we GDR - were unable to adopt. And the text and staging are touching naivety. […] Günther tells […] cheerfully, carefree, with cheerful naivety, a touch of neo-romantic mocha-milk-ice-cream-bar poetry, the aftermath of which blew into my wide-open pubescent heart. "" There was never again DEFA film such relaxed and innocent comedy, ”said Erika Richter looking back.

The lexicon of international film called When you are tall, dear Adam, “a poetically exaggerated film fairy tale” and found it to be “a not all-round successful, but brazen and funny film against the petty-bourgeois mendacity of functionaries and party bosses, playful and benign in terms of staging provocative, brilliant in dialogue. ”For Cinema , the film was a“ charming, cheeky social criticism ”.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Rolf Richter: Shrewd waking dreams . In: Filmspiegel , No. 1, 1991, p. 30.
  2. ↑ F.-B. Habel: Cut up films. Censorship in the film . Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Leipzig 2003, ISBN 3-37801069-X , p. 105 ff.
  3. ↑ F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 686 .
  4. ^ Henryk Goldberg: The charm of the early years . In: Filmspiegel , No. 25, 1990, p. 13.
  5. ↑ Erika Richter: Between the building of the wall and the clearing of the wall 1961 to 1965 . In: Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 205.
  6. ↑ When you grow up, dear Adam. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed July 11, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  7. ↑ When you grow up, dear Adam. In: cinema.de. Retrieved July 11, 2017 .