Two Mothers (1957)

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Movie
Original title Two mothers
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1957
length 87 minutes
Rod
Director Frank Beyer
script Jo Tiedemann
Frank Beyer
production DEFA
music Joachim Werzlau
camera Otto Merz
cut Ruth Moegelin
occupation

Zwei Mütter is a German feature film from the DEFA studio for feature films by Frank Beyer from 1957 .

action

Shortly before the end of the Second World War, the French foreign worker Madelaine had a son in a German makeshift hospital that was set up in a school. The German Hedwig Schindler, who is living in the same room and is also expecting a child, looks after her a little, because the birth was not without complications. According to the doctor Dr. Weller, the French woman has little chance of surviving her weakened condition. During a bomb attack , the German woman also had her child, who was also a son and was treated by the nurse Jutta. Shortly before the two children can be brought into the air raid shelter, the German mother's child is killed by a bomb. Still gripped by horror, the nurse sees how Hedwig takes the child of the French woman, which she takes to be hers, and is unable to clarify. After returning from the air raid shelter, Madelaine is informed of the death of her child, but she immediately realizes that it is her boy that Hedwig is holding in her arms. Only Sister Jutta can provide clarification, which she does not do because the doctor expects the foreign worker to die . But she survives the disease and demands her child back. She does not get her rights because the nurse does not speak and the doctor tells her that her child has died.

After the end of the war, Madelaine goes back to her homeland and learns that her husband was shot by the Germans because he was active in the Resistance . Now she is doing everything possible to get her child back. First she wrote to the German doctor, whose wife, the nurse Jutta, discovered the letter and destroyed it. Therefore, she is now hiring a tracing service organization that hires an American district judge in the American zone to clarify the matter. He orders the doctor for interrogation, but he can only report his level of knowledge, i.e. that the child was killed in a bomb attack. When she received this information from the tracing service, Madelaine decided to go to Germany herself four years after the end of the war.

In the hospital that Dr. Weller is now in charge, she is received by him and sent to his wife's home, with whom she is supposed to talk. This is slowly plagued by doubts, but remains with the opinion that the child has died. Madelaine has no choice but to go back home. In the station restaurant, she wants to have a coffee before her train leaves and is served here by Hedwig, who gave birth to her child at the same time. Both recognize each other, but Madelaine misses Hedwig's end of work, but learns the address from her colleagues. The next day she wants to visit Hedwig and sees the playing boy Toni in the front yard, in whom she immediately suspects her own son. Mrs. Schindler excitedly sends Madelaine away again, because she is of the firm opinion that Toni is her own child.

Jutta Weller informs her husband about the actual events, but is urged by him not to tell the truth. He is afraid of losing management of the hospital because no one will believe he did not know the truth and there is already another contender for the post. But Jutta is now of the firm opinion that the child belongs to the right mother, and explains Madelaine. In order not to harm her husband, she wants to part with him. But he loves his wife and resigns from the management of the hospital of his own accord. Hedwig now learns the whole truth. Madelaine doesn't want to take the boy with her right away, because now he's Hedwig's child, and if she takes him with her later, it's their child.

production

Two mothers was shot as a black and white film under the working titles The Child of Others and The Upper Palatinate Kreidekreis, based on the tragic story of the two mothers Erna Rustler and Georgette Phelippeau, published in October 1954 in the Frankenpost and had its world premiere on June 28, 1957 in the Babylon cinema in Berlin . On July 20, 1957, it was shown in the program of the German TV radio .

The dramaturgy was in the hands of Wolfgang Ebeling .

criticism

Horst Knietzsch represented in the new Germany the opinion that it lacked this film in a real dramatic action, and above all the courage to intransigence to the great conflict. Although a humanly clean and decent film, it is not okay how people tried to artistically manage a real human conflict.

The lexicon of international film says that it is a sympathetic, albeit somewhat dispassionate, film whose aim to reconcile nations cannot be overlooked.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Neue Zeit of July 3, 1957, p. 4
  2. ^ New Germany of July 10, 1957, p. 4
  3. ↑ Two mothers. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed June 11, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used