Archive for the ‘Annekathrin Bürger’ Category

Fatal Error

Posted: February 11, 2017 in Annekathrin Bürger, Gojko Mitic, Indianerfilme, Konrad Petzold
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Fatal Error
With the protests at Standing Rock, and recent plans to privatize Indian lands for their oil deposits, this is an excellent time to take a look at Fatal Error (Tödlicher Irrtum), a 1970 western from DEFA. It’s a shame this film isn’t available with English subtitles, because this is a movie for the times if ever there was one.

Like many of the DEFA westerns, Fatal Error is based on historical events. The story takes place in 1898. At the time the American West was still the Wild West of myth, but things were changing rapidly. The promises of riches that had started the westward expansion a few decades earlier was being replaced with a new kind of gold—black gold. As it turned out, many of the best oil deposits were on Indian land. So what did the oil companies do? They did what they’ve always done: lie, cheat, steal, and kill to get at that oil.

The story starts with an Indian named Shave Head riding into the newly formed town of Wind River City, Wyoming and announcing excitedly that they’ve found oil on the local reservation. This would be the last time Shave Head would be happy about the discovery. After this intro, the story advances a few years when we see Wind River City overrun with white men bent on taking advantage of the local Indians in every way possible. For some, this means grossly overcharging them for goods. For others, it means murdering them and stealing the money and land deeds which the Indians insisted on carrying around on their persons because they didn’t trust the banks.

Fatal Error

The chief villain of the piece is Mike Allison, a local robber baron who’s behind many of the murders. Allison is busy trying to consolidate all the oil land under his name. If this means an occasional murder, then so be it. Things come to a head after Shave Head’s half-brother Clint Howard takes the job of assistant sheriff and starts investigating the deaths.

Fatal Error is the fifth Indianerfilm to come out of the DEFA studios.1 It is also the fifth one to star Yugoslavian stuntman-turned-actor Gojko Mitić. As discussed here previously, Mitić was DEFA’s go-to guy when they needed someone to play a Native American. As Shave Head, Mitić bring his usual dignity and strength to the role.

Playing Shave Head’s half-brother Chris Howard is Armin Mueller-Stahl, who needs no introduction here. Mueller-Stahl is one of the few East German film stars who also managed to become an international film star. To a lesser extent, the same can be said for Rolf Hoppe, who plays the villainous Mike Allison. Just as Gojko Mitić was DEFA’s Indian, Hoppe often showed up as the villain in these films. Hoppe made himself known internationally for his powerful portrayal of Tábornagy in István Szabó’s Mephisto. Since then, he has gone on the appear in films of every type, demonstrating that he’s not simply a good villain, but also capable of comedy. Also appearing is Annekathrin Bürger in a minor role.

Annekathrin Bürger

The film is directed by Konrad Petzold, a talented director who was mainly consigned to making children’s films and westerns. Born in 1930, Petzold was still a kid when the Nazis took over. After the war, he first studied to be a mechanic. Like his older brothers and sisters, he became involved in a local political theater group in his hometown of Radebeul. In 1949, he went to Berlin to study at the DEFA film school for young directors. He, along with co-director Egon Günther, got into trouble with the powers-that-be for their 1961 film The Dress (Das Kleid), a film version of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Since the story takes place in a city with a wall around it, the authorities thought they were talking about Berlin, even though Perzold and Günther had started shooting the film before the Wall was built.

In 1969, Petzold directed White Wolves, a sequel to the previous year’s The Falcon’s Trail. It was his first foray into the field of Indian films, and it was a hit. After that film, Petzold became DEFA’s number one choice for filming their westerns, including Osceola, Kit & Co, and The Scout. Petzold is one of the many directors who found himself cast adrift after the Wall came down. His last film, The Story of the Goose Princess and Her Faithful Horse Falada (Die Geschichte von der Gänseprinzessin und ihrem treuen Pferd Falada), was released in January of 1989. In later years, Petzold suffered from Parkinson’s disease, and died in 1999.

Gojko Mitic

The Wind River Indian Reservation is real, but the Wyoming Oil Company is not. Nor are any of the characters. Although it isn’t specifically cited, the most-likely basis for the film’s story were the Osage Indian murders of the 1920s, which occurred in Oklahoma. Oil was discovered on Osage land in 1897, leading to a boom in the Osage economy that saw many Indians suddenly becoming wealthy. This led to an influx of fortune seeking interlopers.

One of these interlopers was a man named William Hale—as nasty a piece of work as this country has ever produced. Hale concocted a plan whereby his nephews would marry local Indian women and then have them killed, thus obtaining the rights to the oil profits. This plan came about thanks to an incredibly racist law that was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1921, whereby the Osage Indians were required to have white guardians take care of their affairs until they demonstrated “competency.” Since this evaluation of competency was left in the hands of the very people who stood to benefit from taking over guardianships, very few people passed the test.

Hale murdered his way into wealth, and when the authorities started to investigate, he resorted to killing potential witnesses against him and even threatening the local law enforcement. It finally took the newly formed Federal Bureau of Investigation to step in and put an end to his reign of terror. Hale was eventually convicted in 1929, but for only one of the murders. He spent eighteen years in jail before being paroled—less time than some people have spent in jail in Oklahoma for marijuana possession. After the events in Osage County, the law regarding guardianship for the Osage Indians was revised, allowing only full-blood Osage Indians to inherit the mineral rights.

As for the real Wind River Reservation, in 2014, a writer for the New York Times called it the most crime-ridden Indian reservation in America. The article provoked angry responses from the locals, including a well-written response from a local student that the NY Times published.

IMDB page for the film.

Buy the film.

1. Indianerfilm (plural: Indianerfilme): Literally “Indian film.” DEFA preferred this term over “western” for obvious reasons. Most academics avoid the use of the term “western” when writing about these films. I have used both terms interchangeably here. As a genre definition, they are unquestionably westerns, whether DEFA liked to admit or not.

© Jim Morton and East German Cinema Blog, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jim Morton and East German Cinema Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Love’s Confusion

Posted: September 24, 2016 in Angelica Domröse, Annekathrin Bürger, Comedy, Love
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Love's Confusion
Love’s Confusion (Verwirrung der Liebe) is a 1959 romantic comedy that is similar to the ones being made in Hollywood around the same time. The story centers around Dieter, a medical student at Humboldt University, and his girlfriend, Sonja, an art student at the Berlin-Weißensee Art Academy. The two plan to meet up at a masquerade party, but Dieter repeatedly rejects the advances of Sonja, thinking she’s a stranger, and ends up with Siegi, thinking she’s Sonja. But when everyone removes their masks to reveal their faces, does Dieter apologize for the mistake and look for Sonja? Nope. He invites Siegi over to the bar and chats her up. One can hardly blame him: Siegi is gorgeous. Sonja spots Dieter kissing Siegi, and things go downhill from there.

It is a strange way to begin a romantic comedy. Are we suppose to feel any sympathy for Dieter? Let’s face it: the guy’s a jerk. Herein lies one of the fundamental problems with this story. We’re not really rooting for him to end up with anybody. When we first see Dieter, he is attending a lecture, pretending to pay attention, while secretly slipping his notepad and textbooks into his book bag so that he can get out of the classroom as quickly as possible when the bell rings. Even in this act, he is inept, accidentally dropping his pen case on the floor because he’s not looking where he’s putting things. Right out of the gate he’s set up as a man who doesn’t pay very close attention to details and capable of feigning interest when there’s none there. Just the sort of fellow you want operating on you.

Sonja, on the other hand, comes across as likable, as do Siegi and her friend, Edy. When the various couples eventually align with the people they are “supposed” to marry, we’re left with sadness for the woman who ends up with Dieter. If this is the intent of director Slatan Dudow, it’s the most subtle piece of direction this side of Paper Moon.1 Of course, it was 1959, and cads who find love was the order of the day. In Hollywood, Frank Sinatra and Rock Hudson were making careers out of these types of characters with films such as The Tender Trap, Pal Joey, Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back. The popular message of the time was that even men who are cads can me tamed with the “right” woman. It is a popular fantasy in films, right up there with destiny playing a hand in couples meeting. When you come right down to it, romantic comedies present a world as improbable as Zardoz or The Lobster.

annekatrin3

If this sounds like the kind of story that the SED authorities might have problems with, you’d be right. Some objected to the film’s carefree morality, and its brief moments of nudity—a first for an East German film—while the notorious journalist and TV personality Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler felt that it didn’t do enough to address the issue of class struggle (for more on von Schnitzler, see Look at This City!). The film probably only got made because it’s director, Slatan Dudow, was something of an idol in East Germany, having directed the 1932 film Kuhle Wampe, a film banned by the Nazis for its socialist message (see Destinies of Women). Love’s Confusion would be the last film that Dudow would live to complete. While working on his next film, Christine, Dudow was killed in a car accident.

Much of the action in Love’s Confusion revolves around Sonja, played by Annekathrin Bürger. Bürger is no stranger to this blog, having starred in several East German classics, starting when she was nineteen with A Berlin Romance, and including Star-Crossed Lovers, The Second Track, and Farewell. For most of her career at DEFA, she was married to Rolf Römer, an actor who also directed Hey You! And Hostess, two under-appreciated films that starred Bürger.

angelica1

Playing Siegi, Sonja’s rival for Dieter’s affections is eighteen-year-old Angelica Domröse in her first film role. Domröse was working as a typist when she responded to a newspaper advertisement looking for “young, cheerful, pretty girls, aged 16 to 20 years, around 1.60m tall (5’ 2”) for a leading role.” 800 young women applied for the job and it is a testament to Domröse’s beauty and charisma that she won the part. It was exceptionally good casting. Not too many women could compete with Annekathrin Bürger in the looks department, but Domröse does (although Bürger gets a lot more screen time). Domröse would go on to appear in several more films throughout the sixties—most notably, The Story of a Murder—but it was the 1973 film The Legend of Paul and Paula that really brought her to public’s attention. As one of the signatories of the letter protesting the the expatriation of Wolf Biermann, Domröse was denied future film roles, and eventually moved to West Germany.

Included in the cast are several well-known actors in blink-and-you’ll-miss-them roles who would later go on to become stars in East Germany. Among them, Erik S. Klein, Barbara Dittus, Rolf Römer, Marianne Wünscher, and Arno Wyzniewski. Also in the cast is Dietlind Stahl, sister of Armin Mueller-Stahl.

Art director Oskar Pietsch and costume designer Gerhard Kaddatz had a lot of fun with this movie, particularly in the carnival scenes. He was the logical choice for this job, having created the sets for My Wife Wants to Sing. He probably would have gone onto to create many more great sets for DEFA, but he resided in West Berlin, and the Wall effectively cut him off from that source of income. He art directed a few West German features, but primarily worked in television for Sender Freies Berlin (SFB).

cigarette2

Like Pietsch, costume designer Gerhard Kaddatz had worked on My Wife Wants to Sing. Unlike Pietsch, Kaddatz lived in East Berlin, and was able to continue his career throughout the sixties and encompasses everything from spy films (For Eyes Only and Frozen Flashes) to fantasy films (Mother Holly and The Flying Dutchman). But it is his work in the fifties that really stands out. Kaddatz had a good eye for fifties fashion, and his costume designs for these movies are worthy of Helen Rose and Edith Head, even if the fabrics are not.

In spite of the misgivings of some SED party members, the film was a hit with the public, and because it did not wear its socialism on its sleeve, it was easier to sell to West Germany than most other East German films at the time.

IMDB page for the film.

Buy this film. (Part of a four film set of films starring Angelica Domröse)

The film is also available on Veoh.

1. Peter Bogdanovich, the director of Paper Moon, has said in interviews that he considers the ending of that film a tragedy. Audiences, on the other hand, saw it as a happy reunion.

Track in the Night

Posted: February 14, 2016 in Annekathrin Bürger, Crime, Günter Reisch, Krimi, Republikflucht, Ulrich Thein
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Spur in die Nacht
In America, we tend to parse out films about crime into specific categories, such as heist films, detective films, film noir, mysteries, and so on. In both East and West Germany, these films are lumped into one big group: Kriminalfilme, or “crime films,” usually referred to as “Krimis.” Many West German Krimis center around a murder, but this is more unusual in East German Krimis. Murder, as an individual crime, is seen as a symptom of capitalism and less likely to occur in the GDR. In West Germany, the criminals are often members of crime organizations run by an evil masterminds, best exemplified by the Dr. Mabuse films. In East Germany, these films often revolve around West Germans and foreigners who are using the disparity between East and West Germany for their own ends. Track in the Night (Spur in die Nacht) falls squarely into this category.1 Its original title was Schmugglerkönig (Smuggler King), which gives some idea of the subject matter, but also clues the audience in to the criminals’ motives early on.

In Track in the Night, we follow the misadventures of a Berlin bricklayer named Ulli, who arrives in a small village on the Czech/German border to visit his girlfriend, Sabine. It’s skiing season, and Sabine is doing seasonal work at the local HO store. When she’s not there to meet him, he goes to the the Fuchsbau Inn where she’s staying, but Sabine isn’t there either. After a brief investigation, the local authorities decide Sabine is a Republikflüchtling—a person who left East Germany illegally—but Ulli doesn’t believe it and neither does Sabine’s friend and co-worker Traudel. Ulli starts his own investigation, and soon finds himself embroiled with a gang of smugglers.

Spur in die Nacht

In some respects, Track in the Night resembles an Alistair MacLean story (The Guns of Navarone, Breakheart Pass), where we find out later that someone we thought was possibly a bad guy turns out to be a good guy, but a good guy in this case means someone who works for the Stasi. In other respects, it resembles the format pioneered by Hitchcock, where an ordinary man is thrown into a situation outside of his usual experiences, and is forced to play the hero.

Track in the Night is the second film from director Günter Reisch. Reisch was one of East Germany’s most interesting and imaginative directors. He is best known for Anton the Magician, as well he should be, for it is a real classic, but his others films are also worth a viewing. Politically, he rarely rocked the boat, but this wasn’t out of timidity. He was resolutely socialist, and often attacked what he saw as a growing tendency toward bourgeois values in East Germany.2 His most unique contributions to cinema are the bookend films, A Lively Christmas Eve and Like Father, Like Son, filmed twenty-five years apart with nearly the same cast, right down to the bit parts.

Playing Ulli is Ulrich Thein, and this is his movie he appears in nearly every scene. He even takes to singing and playing guitar at one point. The song he sings, “Fuchsbau-Boogie,” was composed by Thein; rather quickly from the sounds of it, but it’s supposed to be an impromptu song anyway. Thein was a man of many talents. Although best known as an actor, he also directed films and plays, composed songs, and wrote screenplays. He died in 1995 in Berlin (for more on Thein, see Anton the Magician).

Ulrich Thein

Track in the Night also stars two of East Germany’s most beautiful actresses: Eva-Maria Hagen and Annekathrin Bürger.3 For Hagen, this wasn’t the first film she worked on—that would be Don’t Forget My Little Traudel—but it was the first film featuring her to reach the theaters. Her acting duties here are limited. She doesn’t appear until the last half-hour of the film, and even then only in a few scenes. These two movies arrived in theaters within weeks of each other, kicking Hagen’s career with a roaring start.

Annekathrin Bürger had already made a splash in her previous film, Gerhard Klein’s A Berlin Romance. When Track in the Night was made, Bürger was romantically coupled with her co-star Ulrich Thein. After splitting with Thein, Bürger dated and married fellow actor Rolf Römer. Although Römer is now dead, Bürger is still going strong and regularly performs programs of songs and poetry (for more on Bürger, see Hostess). Bürger’s contribution to the plot is not as limited as Hagen’s but the story doesn’t revolve around her either.

The music is by Helmut Nier, a classical composer, who brings to the score a nice Gershwinesque jazziness. Those who have seen New Year’s Punch, which was also scored by Nier, will recognize certain leitmotifs Nier used again in that film. The cinematography is by Walter Fehdmer, who worked in East Germany until the Wall went up, and thereafter worked in West Germany, suggesting he either chose this time to leave the country or, more likely, found himself cut off from his former employer. He retired from film work in 1970. No death date is listed for him, although, since he was born in 1913, he is either dead, or one of the oldest men in Germany. Fehdmer’s work is adequate, but not on a par with the likes of Rolf Sohre, Günter Ost, Joachim Hasler, or Werner Bergmann.

Track in the Night is not one of the most daring or inventive Krimis to come out of DEFA. Those would come later. But it is entertaining, and has a perspective that is completely at odds with our western way of thinking.The proposition that it’s good to cooperate with the Stasi is not a position that one is likely to see repeated anytime soon. Even at DEFA, this position became less and less common as the Stasi became more and more invasive.

IMDB page for this film.

1. Note: I’ve translated the German word Spur as “Track.” This film could also be called “Trail in the Night” or “Trace in the Night” (the more common translation of Spur), and both would fit. The English word “spoor” comes from the same root, although it has lost much of its meaning in English and now is usually reserved to talk about animal droppings. I’ve chosen “track” in reference to one specific scene in the film, which I believe the title is in reference to.

2. Sadly, I never met the fellow, but reports from friends and associates make him sound like a wonderfully cantankerous old coot. I think I would have liked him.

3. Although most of the time I use the now gender-neutral “actor” in all cases, somehow the phrase “beautiful actors” just doesn’t work for me, so I’ve made this exception.

Farewell (Abschied)

Posted: September 7, 2015 in 11th Plenum, Annekathrin Bürger, Banned, Egon Günther, Love, Manfred Krug, Rolf Römer, Walter Ulbricht, WWI
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Abschied
In the history of East German films, the period between the 11th Plenum and Erich Honecker’s takeover from Walter Ulbricht is considered to be a dark time for DEFA films. That’s not to say there weren’t good, entertaining films made during this time. After all, this period saw the introduction of the Indianerfilm, Hot Summer, and I Was Nineteen. But when when you compare it to the period right before the Plenum, you can see the impact the foolishness at that meeting had on the East German creative output.

Most noticeable, was a decrease in inventive cinematography. Cinematographers often were singled out for attack when their work got too creative. Roland Gräf was accused of imitating the Italians, and Günter Ost’s career as a cinematographer came to an abrupt end thanks to the 11th Plenum. If a film was visually imaginative, it was immediately suspect as far as the film review board was concerned. So it was probably no surprise to director Egon Günther when his 1968 film Farewell (Abschied) came under criticism, for it is a beautiful film indeed. Filmed in Totalvision (East Germany’s wide screen format) in that rich black-and-white film that the Wolfen film factory (the original Agfa factory) was rightly famous for.

Farewell is based on a novel of the same name by Johannes R. Becher, a German poet is best known for writing the lyrics to the East German national anthem. The movie begins in 1914, right after the Battle of Liège, Germany’s opening salvo in WWI. Hans Gastl, a young man of artistic temperament and pacifist beliefs is leaving home. The rest of the story is told in flashbacks that show us how he came to this crossroad in his life. The novel is heavily autobiographical. The character of Fanny is based on his childhood sweetheart, Franziska Fuß, whom he killed in a botched suicide pact. Becher survived, but developed an addiction to morphine due to his injuries.

farewell

Director Egon Günther was, quite possibly, the bravest director in the GDR. He had a special knack for irritating the authorities with films that pushed any parameters they tried to set. He did this right out of the gate with his first film, Das Kleid (The Dress), which he co-directed with Konrad Petzold. Günther and Petzold managed to find the limits at a time when the GDR was boasting that the wall would mean fewer restrictions. And whener the film board moved the boundaries, Günther pushed again. He is also to the only East German director who managed to get a film—and a made-for-TV film at that—banned by the Swiss (see Ursula). It’s not surprising, then, that he was one of the directors chastised by the 11th Plenum for his clever film, Wenn du groß bist, lieber Adam (When You Grow Up, Dear Adam). It would be three years before he got the opportunity to make another film, and that film was Farewell, a fact that didn’t help him mend fences with the authorities.

As a writer himself, and a prolific one at that, Günther had a better understanding of how to bring the written word to film than most. He realized that the literal translation was sometimes less effective than a more filmic approach. Over the years he adapted the work of classic writers such as Thomas Mann, Goethe, and Gottfried Keller, as well as the work of newer writers, such as Eberhard Panitz and Uwe Timm. His 1999 film, Die Braut (The Bride), which looks at the life of Christiane Vulpius, Goethe’s long-time—and long-suffering—mistress.

Günter Marczinkowsky was the cinematographer, and one of the best East Germany ever produced. Like other East German cinematographers, he got his start in a film laboratory and worked as a projectionist as well. By the time he picked up a movie camera, he knew and understood film stock about as well as anyone could. He started as an assistant to the great Robert Baberske. He started working as the director of photography in 1957. He became Frank Beyer’s favorite cinematographer, until both of them were relegated to television for making The Trace of Stones. Farewell represents Marczinkowsky’s return to the big screen. Later on, he and Beyer would get together again, first on a couple TV mini-series, and later on Jakob the Liar, considered by some to be the best movie to ever come out of East Germany (a viewpoint I don’t share, but it is a good film). Jakob the Liar did not lead to more feature film work, however. Marczinkowsky continued to work in television until he finally left the GDR in 1980. Thereafter, he joined up with Frank Beyer again, who had left the country following the Wolf Biermann affair (see Jakob the Liar). From here on out, all his work would be in television, with the exception of Didi und die Rache der Enterbten, a reworking of Kind Hearts and Coronets with the West German comic actor Dieter Hallervorden playing multiple roles à la Sir Alec Guinness. Marczinkowsky retired from cinematography the same year that The Wall came down. He died right after Christmas 2004 in Hamburg.

farewell5

Playing the older Hans Gastl in his first film appearance is Jan Spitzer, looking very much like a classmate of Malcolm MacDowell’s in If….; a good choice for someone as anti-authoritarian as Hans. Spitzer got his training at then Ernst Busch Academy, which is still a leading school for students of the dramatic arts in Germany today. He appeared in many more films in East Germany in roles of variying size, but his performance as Hans in Farewell remains one of his best-known performances. Like other East German actors, the Wende threw a roadblock into his path. He still perfroms, but most of his work is done in the dubbing studio. If a film stars Chris Cooper, that is probably Jan Spitzer’s voice your hearing in the German-dubbed version. He also dubs the voices for Danny Trejo, Ted Levine, and Ratchet in the Transformer series.

Playing the ill-fated Fanny is Heidemarie Wenzel. Wenzel had appeared in small roles in films prior to this (she was the bride in The Lost Angel), but this was her first starring role and she turns in a sensational performance. Due to the limited distribution of this film, very few people saw her performance. It would be her turn in Zeit der Störche (The Time of Storks) that would finally put her on the map, but it is her performance as Paul’s wife in The Legend of Paul and Paula for which she is most famous. That same year, her next film, The Dove on the Roof, had the dubious distinction of being the first film banned after Honecker took over. Wenzel was a popular actress throughout the first half of the seventies. Then the state decided to stop putting up with any criticism, starting withn the expatriation of Wolf Biermann and the sidelining of everyone who signed the letter against this action. Wenzel didn’t sign this letter, but she was still considered “politically unreliable,” so her career ended along with Manfred Krug’s, Angelica Domröse’s, and the others who actually did sign the letter. She applied for an exit visa in 1986 and was finally allowed to do so in 1988. In 1991, she joined the cast of the popular German family drama, Unsere Hagenbecks (Our Hagenbecks), but her character was killed off in a car accident after the first season, to the outrage of many viewers (apparently the character she played was pregnant at the time). Like many other East German actors, she shows up from time to time on the Leipzig hospital drama, In aller Freundschaft, playing Eva Globisch, the mother of one of the main characters in the show.

Farewell

All the way down the line, Farewell features an outstanding cast. Even in relatively minor roles we have the likes of Rolf Römer, Annekathrin Bürger, Fred Delmare, and Mathilde Danegger. Manfred Krug turns in an especially fun performance as an aging revolutionary who hangs out at the Café Größenwahn where Hans recites his poetry.1 Annekathrin Bürger has a fun, if brief, turn as the café’s resident chanteuse.

A film this visually inventive was bound to provoke the authorities, and it did. At the 8th plenary meeting of the SED’s Central Committee, the film was roundly criticized, essentially for no better reason that it was too interesting to look at. At a ceremony to honor the author, Johannes R. Becher, Walter Ulbricht got up and made sure everyone saw that he left the event just before the film was about to screen. Still in charge in 1968, this demonstration carried some weight. The film was pulled from the normal distribution channels and was only screened on special occasions.

IMDB page for the film.

Buy the film.

1. Café Größenwahn was the nickname for the Café Stefanie in Vienna where Johannes R. Becher hung out as a young man. “Größenwahn” can be translated as either “egomania” or “delusions of grandeur.”

Five Days, Five Nights

Posted: December 24, 2014 in Annekathrin Bürger, Cold War, DEFA, Heinz Thiel, Love, Nazis, post-war years, WWII
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Five Days, Five Nights
At the end of World War II, Russian soldiers went on a plunderfest across eastern Germany. Think Sherman’s March to the Sea, but with dividends. Houses were stripped of their valuables, stores were looted, and machinery was taken. Much of this looting was done on a personal level—soldiers helping themselves to the contents of the houses they invaded—and some of this was done as part of the Soviet Union’s campaign to get the maximum financial benefit out of the war. They certainly needed it. Hitler’s ill-advised attack on Russia hurt Germany, but it devastated Russia.

On a more organized level, specialized American, British, and Soviet troops were tasked with finding specific things, the best-known example of this is the race between Soviet Union and the United States to procure German scientists and their materials related to rockets and atomic research. On the Soviet side there were also trophy brigades, whose job was to find as many works of art and antiquities as they could. While most of the art looting by American troops was done by individuals looking to bring home souvenirs, Soviet troops had a mission: Find the art and bring it back to Russia.1

A logical place to start was Dresden. Dresden had been the art capital of Germany. The museums there were outstanding. As the war escalated, museum officials decided to move many of the most valuable paintings to safer locations in case the city was attacked. This turned out to be a very good idea indeed. Dresden wasn’t just bombed, it was nearly erased from the face of the Earth. U.S.and British bombers dropped nearly 4,000 tons of bombs and incendiaries on the city. The resulting firestorm was so intense that many people hiding in their air raid shelters died not of burns, but of asphyxiation when the firestorm sucked all the oxygen out of the area. The results of the firebombing are still visible today in the blackened facades of the buildings along the Elbe, and the calico churches built from the rubble left after the war.2

Fünf Tage - Fünf Nächte

When the Russians started arriving in Dresden, claiming they were there to save the artwork, the locals were, understandably, suspicious. Especially after these soldiers announced that they would have to take the artwork back to Moscow to protect it from the further deterioration due to mold and the elements. The Russians assured the locals that they were doing this for the benefit of the art, and they would return the artwork as soon as things had stabilized. No one in Dresden believed this for a minute, and they were probably right not to—Josef Stalin was not exactly the poster boy for trustworthiness. In truth, the collecting of the art of Germany was just what it looked like: an attempt at payback for the devastation and destruction that Germany rained down on the U.S.S.R.

But as the cold war heated up, the Soviets were looking for any ways they could to demonstrate they weren’t the ogre that the United States made them out to be. The subject of the Dresden paintings came up again. What better way to demonstrate their integrity than to show that the vow they made to the Dresdeners at the end of WWII was not just hot air? So it was that 750 of paintings were returned to Dresden in 1955. This wasn’t all of the artwork that was purloined, but it was a lot of it, and certainly enough to make for good press.

Five Days, Five Nights (Fünf Tage – Fünf Nächte) is the story of the Russian art recovery effort at the end of the war. The films was the first of several joint productions between East Germany and the Soviet Union. DEFA often joined forces with production companies from other countries to make movies. During the fifties, they made movies in conjunction with Swedish and French production companies, but after the border tightened up and relationships with western countries became strained, most of the co-productions were made with Eastern Bloc nations, primarily Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Whether or not these co-productions looked and felt like DEFA movies was largely dependent on the director and which film company wielded the most control over the production. Stars was made in cooperation with Bulgaria’s Boyana Film, but the film is pure DEFA, thanks to Konrad Wolf’s sure hand at the helm. On the other hand, the French/East German co-production Die Hexen von Salem (The Crucible) is, for all intents and purposes, a French film, having been directed by a Belgian from a screenplay by Jean-Paul Sartre, and starring Simone Signoret and Yves Montand.

Russian soldiers

Five Days, Five Nights, is very much a Russian film. It forgoes the usual, cool DEFA objectivity in favor of socialist realism (which, let’s face it, isn’t very realistic at all). People are either filmed at chest level, making everyone, even the children, look heroic, or from above looking up to the sky in triumphant bliss. The effect is further enhanced by a powerful score, written for the film by Dmitri Shostakovich.

Along with Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Rachmaninoff, and Stravinsky, Shostakovich is one of the great Russian composers of the twentieth century. Unlike western classical composers, such as Erich Korngold and Max Steiner, the fact that he wrote scores for movies did not assign him to the film ghetto, or reduce his standing as a classical composer. He could write a score for a film one year, and compose an opera the next. This was largely due to the Soviet Union’s attitude toward film. Unlike the west, where film was was viewed as a form of mindless entertainment for the masses, the Soviets already saw the power of film to galvanize public opinion back in 1925 with Battleship Potemkin. So it was that Shostakovich was hired to write the score for October: Ten Days That Shook the World, a film about the October Revolution of 1917.

Shostakovich had a rocky career under the Soviets, thanks mostly to Stalin’s tin ear and lack of musical sophistication. Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (Леди Макбет Мценского уезда) was initially a hit, but later came under attack as “coarse, primitive and vulgar.” When Stalin attended a performance of the opera in 1936, he behaved boorishly, laughing and grimacing throughout, leaving poor Shostakovich sweating bullets in the back. This was around the time Stalin started his Great Purge. Having him as your enemy was a good way to wind up freezing to death in a Siberian prison.

To keep on Stalin’s good side, Shostakovich cancelled performances of his musically challenging fourth symphony and restricted much of his composing to film music, knowing Stalin was rather fond of films. With the release of his crowd-pleasing fifth symphony, Shostakovich got back in the good graces of Stalin and the public, at least until 1948, when he was once again attacked by Central Committee secretary Andrei Zhdanov, who accused his music of being “formalist”—a term that was thrown around a lot, and appears to have no more meaning to Soviet critics than “I don’t like it.”

After Stalin died, Shostakovich started receiving the attention he deserved. His work came to the attention of Leonard Bernstein in New York, who became a strong advocate for Shostakovich, and played his compositions in concerts on a regular basis. Eventually, Shostakovich joined the Communist Party in 1960, mostly as a formality so that the government could appoint him as the General Secretary of the Composers’ Union. This seems to have given him both clout and courage. He protested against the incarceration of the poet Joseph Brodsky, and was one of the signatories on a an appeal to Brezhnev not to rehabilitate Stalin’s reputation. In both cases his causes were triumphant.

During the late sixties and early seventies, Shostakovich’s already bad health got worse. He had lost the use of his right hand to polio in the fifties, then broke both legs, causing him to remark in a letter to a friend: “All I need to do now is wreck the left hand and then 100% of my extremities will be out of order.” He died August 9, 1975, but his music continues to be a popular addition to movie soundtracks.

Five Days, Five Nights

With most films, the job of directing is assigned to one person and the resulting movie is attributed them as the auteur. The whole auteur concept falls apart when talking about the films from the East Bloc nations, where the contributions of everyone involved are given greater weight than in the west and the choice of cast and crew are not always left to the director.3 Five Days, Five Nights features three directors. The German language scenes were directed by Heinz Thiel, who directed Black Velvet, recently discussed on this blog; some of the Russian scenes were directed by Anatoli Golowanow, who probably would have receive a second unit or first assistant director credit in a Hollywood film; and the whole affair was overseen by the Russian director Lev Arnshtam, who is listed as the film’s head director.

Unlike DEFA directors such as Kurt Maetzig and Joachim Hasler, who came to filmmaking via the film labs, or Jürgen Böttcher, Arthur Pohl, and Peter Pewas, entered the field through graphic arts, Lev Arnshtam came to films via music. He studied piano at the Leningrad Music Conservatory and, for a while, was the music department head at Vsevolod Meyerhold’s theater. There, he met people in the film industry, and soon started working as a sound director and later a screenwriter. He directed his first film, Подруги (Girlfriends, originally released in U.S. as Three Women) in 1936. Mr. Arnshtam’s style is heavily influenced by the work of Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, whom he met while working at the Meyerhold Theater. Their influence is on full display here. After Five Days, Five Nights, he directed only one more film—Софья Перовская (Sofiya Perovskaya), a film based on the life of the Russian revolutionary, Sophia Perovskaya, who was hanged for her part in the assassination of Alexander II. Mr. Arnshtam died in 1979.

Dresden

Perhaps the most striking thing about this film, aside from Shostakovich’s majestic score, is the representation of Dresden after the firebombing. By 1960, when this film was made, much of Dresden had been rebuilt. To recreate the destroyed city, miniatures were used to remarkably good effect. Much of the credit for this must go to production designer Herbert Nitzschke. Mr. Nitzschke got his start as a set painter for German film productions. He first worked as a production designer on L’Entraîneuse (Nightclub Hostess), a French/German co-production from 1939. Several more films followed. At the end of WWII, his career as a production designer went on hiatus until 1955, when he was hired as the production designer for Hotelboy Ed Martin, a film adaptation of Albert Maltz’s play, Merry Go Round.

Mr. Nitzschke’s career in film was starting to take off again, and his miniature work in Five Days, Five Nights is spectacular—helped greatly by Ernst Kunstmann, a master of filming miniatures, whose work includes Metropolis, Triumph of the Will, The Singing, Ringing Tree, and First Spaceship on Venus. Unfortunately, Herbert Nitzschke lived in West Berlin, and his career at DEFA came to an abrupt halt on the 13th of August, 1961, when the Berlin Wall went up. His last credit as production designer was on Five Days, Five Nights co-director Heinz Thiel’s Tanz am Sonnabend (Dancing on Saturday).

Also worth mentioning is Walter Schulze-Mittendorff, who designed the costumes for this film. A sculptor by training, it was Mr. Schulze-Mittendorff who designed the Maria Robot for Metropolis. At that point, Mr. Schulze-Mittendorff was still billed as a sculptor. With Amphitryon, he got his first billing as a costume designer and showed a real knack for it. After the war, he started working for DEFA, and often found himself on the same projects as his old Metropolis co-worker, Ernst Kunstmann. Like Herbert Nitzschke, Mr. Kunstmann lived in West Berlin and found his career at DEFA stopped cold with the building of the wall. He worked on a few West German productions, most notably, The Castle (Das Schloß), then retired in 1968.

The story of wartime art theft is not a new one, nor a dead subject. Jewish families are still wrangling for the return of artwork stolen by Nazis, and in November 2014, the son of an East German art collector—from Dresden, coincidentally—filed to recover artwork that was stolen from his father by the Stasi.

IMDB page for this film.

Buy this film.

1. The allies did have a team of people searching out art, but it was a much smaller effort. These people mostly worked alone (although the film The Monuments Men would have you believe otherwise), and their primary goal was to identify historic sites. The search for stolen artwork arose as a by-product of that effort, and a reaction to the Soviet Army’s art recovery efforts.

2. It’s probably worth pointing out here, that, as bad as the firebombing of Dresden was, it couldn’t hold a candle to Berlin, which saw nine-and-a-half times as many bombs dropped on it.

3. There are a few Hollywood exceptions to this: Tora! Tora! Tora! featured Japanese sequences by Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda, while The Longest Day featured a host of directors from different countries, all under the watchful eye of producer Darryl Zanuck.

Star-Crossed Lovers

Posted: August 17, 2014 in Annekathrin Bürger, Frank Beyer, Love, Manfred Krug, Nazis, Wolf Biermann, WWII
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Star-Crossed Lovers

As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, the period between the building of the Berlin Wall and the 11th Plenum was a golden age for film in East Germany. The authorities were determined to prove that building the wall was not intended to repress the population, but was intended as an “anti-fascist protective barrier” (antifaschistischer Schutzwall) that would allow East German filmmakers greater artistic freedom without subversion from the west. Films that would have been deemed too experimental or arty before the Wall were approved now, and DEFA’s directors took full advantage of this change in policy. Small wonder, then, that any list of the best East German films shows a noticeable concentration of films made during this period.1

One of the first to take full advantage of DEFA’s new policy was Frank Beyer, a director on any short list of great East German directors, and the only one from the GDR to have an Oscar nomination (Jakob the Liar). With Star-Crossed Lovers (Königskinder), Mr. Beyer kicks things into high gear with vivid cinematography and an artist’s eye for frame composition. It is a dazzling film from a brief but exceptional time for East German cinema.

Königskinder

Star-Crossed Lovers is the story of three childhood friends—Magdalena, Michael, and Jürgen. Michael and Magdalena are in love, but the fates conspire to keep them apart. Jürgen, a timid conformist, has lusted after Magdalena since childhood, but there is never really any romantic tension here—Magdalena loves Michael, Michael loves her, and poor Jürgen remains the odd man out. When they get older, Michael becomes active in the KPD (the German Communist Party) and Magdalena assists him. Meanwhile, Jürgen takes the path of least resistance and joins the SA. He still loves Magdalena, but, as one might imagine, his employment choice does nothing to improve his standing in her eyes.

The story is told in flashbacks, with the present-day action taking place during the final days of World War II. Magdalena is working with the Russians to provide aid to their troops on the front lines, while Michael is conscripted into the infamous Strafdivision 999 (Penal Battalion 999), Hitler’s remarkably ill-conceived attempt to use prisoners as soldiers. There he meets up with Jürgen, who has been assigned as an officer in the battalion.

The German title for the film comes from the folk song, “Es waren zwei Königskinder” (There Were Two Royal Children), which tells the story of a prince and princess who are kept apart by waters that separate them. Of course, the “waters” in this case Nazism and WWII, but Beyer is a sophisticated filmmaker and he reflects the idea of separation by water several times in several ways. Part of the fun of this film is spotting these references. Things end badly in the song, and the film hints at a similar tragedy, but Beyer leaves things open to interpretation.

Annekathrin Bürger

Playing Magdalena is Annekathrin Bürger. I’ve talked about Ms. Bürger in previous post (see Hostess and Not to Me, Madame!). Ms. Bürger started working films at eighteen after being discovered by Gerhard Klein, but 1962 was a banner year for her. She starred in two of the best films from that year—this one and The Second Track. After marrying Rolf Römer, Ms. Bürger often starred in films he directed. She continues to work in films.

Michael is portrayed by Armin Mueller-Stahl, who was just coming into his own when this film was made. He had appeared in some TV movies during the fifties, but it was his role in Five Cartridges that brought him to the big screen. Star-Crossed Lovers was his second feature film, followed a few months later by And Your Love Too. He starred in several classic DEFA films, including Naked Among Wolves, Her Third, Jakob the Liar and The Flight. In 1976, he joined other popular film stars in a protest against the expatriation of Wolf Biermann. As with the others who signed the protest, he found that job opportunities had dried up, so he did what many of the others on the list did also, and moved to West Germany. For Mr. Mueller-Stahl this proved to be an especially auspicious move. There, he met up with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who cast him in Lola and Veronika Voss; and with Niklaus Schilling, who cast him in Der Westen leuchtet (The Lite Trap). He began to get more work in West Germany, but the big break came when Costa-Gavras cast him as the Grandpa with a secret in The Music Box. Other films followed quickly, including Barry Levinson’s Avalon, Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth, and Steven Soderbergh’s Kafka. Mr. Mueller-Stahl is a true renaissance man. Besides being an actor, he paints, writes, and plays a mean fiddle. Of late, he has been concentrating on these other pursuits over acting.

Royal Children

To play the sad-sack Jürgen, Mr. Beyer cast Ulrich Thein. Mr. Thein, more than any other star in East Germany, was born to be an actor, his father was a theater bandleader. Although his father died when he was only four years old, the young Ulrich continued in his father’s footsteps, studying music and working in theater. In 1951, he joined the world-famous Deutsches Theater Berlin, where he continued to perform until 1963. Ironically, although he played the unloved man in this film, it was he who was in a relationship with Ms. Bürger at the time. During the sixties, Mr. Thein added film director to his list of talents—at first in TV movies, then later in feature films. After the fall of the Wall, he found that most of the films he was offered were lousy. In his words, “I won’t make the shit producers are offering me.” (“Ich will den Scheiß nicht machen, der mir von einigen Produzenten angeboten wird.”). He retired from filmmaking in 1992, and took up teaching.

To shoot the film, Mr. Beyer used his long-time collaborator, Günter Marczinkowsky. Like many of the better cinematographers at DEFA, Mr. Marczinkowsky came from the technical side of film, having work as a photo lab technician and a projectionist before starting at DEFA. He was assistant to the famous Robert Baberske, whose Berlin: Symphonie of a Great City remains a classic example of pure cinema. After Beyer’s Traces of Stones was banned, Mr. Marczinkowsky was relegated to work on TV movies—a common fate for anyone who found their work in the crosshairs of the 11th Plenum. He returned to features films from time to time, most notably with Abschied (Farewell) and Jakob the Liar, but most of his later work was for the small screen. Sadly, his career ended with the collapse of East Germany.

Of the films from East Germany, I would have to categorize this one as the best film that is not available with English subtitles. I suspect this is only temporary. It’s too good a film to go unrecognized for much longer.

IMDB page for this film.

Buy this film (German only, no subtitles).

1. It probably didn’t hurt that during the same period, West Germany’s film industry was gaining a reputation for making lousy movies. So much so that, in February of 1962, a group of young West German filmmakers at the International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen released the Oberhausen Manifesto, stating that “conventional films are dead,” and calling people to challenge the film industry’s conventions, and free it from the control of commercial interests.

A Berlin Romance

Posted: September 7, 2013 in 11th Plenum, Annekathrin Bürger, Berlin, Gerhard Klein, Love, Wolfgang Kohlhaase
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A Berlin Romance

A Berlin Romance (Eine Berliner Romanze) is the second of three films sometimes referred to as the “Berlin Trilogy.” These three features represent the first movies by the team of Gerhard Klein and Wolfgang Kohlhasse. They have very little in common except that they all take place in Berlin. The first of the three, Alarm at the Circus, is a thriller. and the third, Berlin – Schönhauser Corner, is a juvenile delinquent film.

A Berlin Romance is, as the name suggests, a romance. It follows the adventures of Uschi, a young woman from the eastern side of the city who falls in love with a poor young man on the western side. Uschi works as a model at a large department store in East Berlin, where she models clothing for customers. In the evening, she likes to visit West Berlin and window shop. There she meets, Lord, a shady young hipster who wears a noisy transistor radio around his neck like a rapper’s gold chain. Lord proceeds to woo Uschi, but his efforts are thwarted by Hans, a young schlemiel who is lovestruck by Uschi the moment he sees her. At first, Hans’ efforts to impress Uschi have the opposite effect, and it looks like their romance won’t get off the ground, but Hans is nothing if not persistent, and he ready to help Uschi with her dream of attending modeling school in West Berlin.

A Berlin Romance is a sharply drawn portrait of life in Berlin during the mid-fifties. This was the time of the Wirtschaftswunder (Economic Miracle), when American money poured into the country to help rebuild its economy and infrastructure. Told from the East German perspective, this influx of cash only benefited the rich, who were as indifferent to the problems of the working class as ever. People in need of work were exploited in dangerous situations to help keep the wealthy living in the luxury to which they had grown accustomed. Job security was not an option, and people lost their jobs at the drop of a hat.

Part of the fun of this film is in its use of details—the way the transistor radio acts as both a lure and an irritant, the obnoxious American soldier at the bar, and the names of films at the cinema. In one scene, as Uschi, Hans, and Lord enter the cinema to see a film called Lockende Sünde (literally “alluring sin,” but translated in the subtitles as Temptation), and in another the camera pauses briefly on a poster for a movie titled Die kleine Stadt will schlafen geh’n—the city wants to sleep. Unlike Lockende Sünde, this is a real movie that gets its name from a song that was popular during the Third Reich, but Klein uses it nicely to take a dig at West Germany and the way it seemed to be ignoring the Nazi pasts of some government officials.  All of the Klein/Kohlhasse films are filled with these small details and benefit from repeated viewing to catch them. Some things seem to be intended exclusively for the amusement of Berliners, both East and West.

Annekathrin Bürger

Uschi is played by Annekathrin Bürger. It was her first feature film and the start of a long career. Putting the weight of an entire film on a nineteen-year-old novice actor was a risky proposition. Fortunately, Ms. Bürger is as talented as she is beautiful. She went on to star in dozens more DEFA films, including Star-Crossed Lovers, The Second Track, Hey You! and Hostess. Ms. Bürger continues to work in films, most recently appearing alongside fellow East German actor, Katrin Saß, in Kilian Riedhof’s Sein letztes Rennen (His Last Race).

Playing opposite her was Ulrich Thein. Mr. Thein had appeared in several films already, including Gerhard Klein’s Alarm im Zirkus and Hotelboy Ed Martin—an East German retelling of Albert Maltz’s popular play, Merry Go Round. He went on to appear in many DEFA classics, including Castles and Cottages, Five Cartridges, Star-Crossed Lovers, The Baldheaded Gang, and Anton the Magician. Like many DEFA actors, Mr. Thein’s background was in the theater. The son of an orchestra leader, he was an accomplished musician who also composed songs for several movies. In 1983, he starred in a miniseries about Martin Luther, then took on J.S. Bach in another miniseries a couple years later. As was too often the case after the Wende, Mr. Thein found it difficult to find work, He died in 1995.

Director Gerhard Klein came to DEFA with strong communist credentials. As a young man in Nazi Germany, he was a member of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany), and got himself arrested for this. After the war, he started working at DEFA as a screenwriter and helped start the children’s films unit of the studio. After making a few shorts and taking some assigned films, Klein finally got the opportunity to make the films he wanted to make. He was a fan of the Italian neo-realists and wanted to make films that reflected real lifer in East Germany without any pretenses. To do this, he needed a screenwriter with a keen ear for the way people actually talked. He found such a man in Wolfgang Kohlhasse, who was—and still is—the best writer of Berliner  dialog.

Any regular reader of this blog is already familiar with the screenwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase. He is the writer behind several DEFA classics, including The Second Track, I Was Nineteen, and Solo Sunny. Kohlhasse is an acute observer of human nature, and not afraid to explore the moral and logical conflicts and ambiguities that come with being alive on this planet. While many other East German screenwriters found it hard to find work in that field after the Wende, Kohlhasse never stopped working. Now in his eighties, he continues to spin tales for filmmakers. His work since the wall fell includes Volker Schlöndorff’s The Legend of Rita (Die Stille nach dem Schuß), and Andreas Dresen’s popular romantic comedy, Summer in Berlin (Sommer vorm Balkon).

Gerhard Klein made three more films with Wolfgang Kohlhaase—The Gleiwitz Case, Sonntagsfahrer (Sunday Driver), and Berlin um die Ecke (Berlin Around the Corner). As its name suggests, Berlin um die Ecke was a return to the city they loved, but the film ended up on a shelf, banned after the 11th Plenum. In 1970, they started working on Murder Case Zernik, but Klein died ten days into filming. He was fifty years old. After sitting on a shelf for two years, Murder Case Zernik was eventually completed by Klein’s assistant, Helmut Nitzschke.

IMDB page for the film.

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Not to Me, Madam!

Posted: May 19, 2013 in Annekathrin Bürger, Comedy, Love, Manfred Krug, Pop Culture, Rolf Römer
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Mit mir nicht, Madam!

Not to Me, Madam! (Mit mir nicht, Madam!) is what is referred to in German as a Verwechslungskomödie, and in English as a comedy of errors. The English term dates back to Shakespeare, and is taken from his play of the same name. Although originally a theatrical term, there are plenty of movies that fall into this category. The premise starts with two people who are mistaken for each other and the comedic adventures that result. The concept has turned up again and again in films, from Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator to the Joel and Ethan Cohn’s The Big Lebowski. Besides Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers also used the concept frequently, and Alfred Hitchcock used it a few times for more dramatic purposes, most notably in North by Northwest.

Not to Me, Madam! starts on a plane to Yugoslavia. An East German journalist named Thomas and his photographer sidekick, Hasselhuhn are flying there to report on an international fashion show. They meet a priest on the plane who bears an uncanny resemblance to Thomas, and just to escalate the absurdity, Thomas and the priest are carrying identical briefcases. Unbeknownst to Thomas, the priest is really a notorious French fashion designer who is being tailed by a sexy English industrial spy named Mabel Patrick, as well as a bunch of bumbling Italians in a Jeep. It seems the French fashion designer is rumored to have plans for a new line of clothing that will make everything the British and the Italians are doing instantly obsolete. The Brits and the Italians will stop at nothing to find out what the designer’s up to—if only they can find the right guy.

The film was a co-production between DEFA and Yugoslavia’s Bosna Film Company, and was filmed along Yugoslavia’s Mediterranean coast. It is a beautiful location and the cinematography serves it well. The story even lapses into a travelogue at a couple points to take full advantage of the location. Besides the scenery, the film is also notable for its inclusion of American cars. It’s probably no accident that none of these cars perform particularly well. The Pontiac the good guys use to get to the airport requires a push, and the Chevy and Jeep driven by the villains aren’t much better.

One of the strangest and most striking things about this film is the way it jumps back and forth between color and black-and-white. It wasn’t the first film to do this. Lindsay Anderson had used the same technique a year before in his classic film, if…. In that movie, the choice to use black-and-white for certain scenes was either because of the lighting problems in the shots, or because they were running out of money, depending on which interview with Anderson you read. Lighting may have been a factor here as well, but the decision to use both black-and-white and color was a strange one and gives the film a slightly psychedelic quality. The extent to which the filmmakers were aware of the Anderson film is unknown. It does seem unlikely that the same technique would crop up independently in another film six months later.

Perhaps the jumps between film type has something to do with the fact that Not To Me, Madam! is directed by two budding directors—Roland Oehme and Lothar Warneke, both of whom went on to successful careers at DEFA. Oehme came to the studios after a stint in the army. He started his career as an assistant director for Ralf Kristen on the 1964 comedy, Mir nach, Canaillen! (Follow Me, Canaillen!). He got his first offer to direct a feature film shortly after this, but turned it down because he didn’t like the subject matter, a decision that probably helped keep him from joining the ranks of the blacklisted directors after the 11th Plenum. Not To Me, Madam! was his first feature film. His next feature film, Der Mann, der nach der Oma kam (The Man that came for Grandmother), was a hit and helped establish his career in East Germany. He was awarded the Film Critics’ of the GDR prize in 1979 and 1981 for Einfach Blumen aufs Dach (Ordinary Flowers on the Roof) and Asta, mein Engelchen (Asta, My Little Angel) respectively. After the Wende, he left films to work as the director of the Störtebeker Festival in Ralswiek on Rügen island. Since 2006, he has been writing an on-going series of plays known as the Müritz Saga that explore the history and folk tales of the region. A new episode is presented every year at the town’s open-air theater.

Oehme’s co-director, Lothar Warneke, was a former theology student turned director. Warneke had several films that were popular with East German filmgoers, including Die unverbesserliche Barbara (Incorrigible Barbara), Addio, piccola mia, and Blonder Tango; but it was his last DEFA film, Bear Ye One Another’s Burden, for which he is best remembered. As with many DEFA talents, his career as a filmmaker essentially ended with the Wende.

Not to Me Madam!

Not To Me, Madam! stars the husband and wife team of Rolf Römer and Annekathrin Bürger, both of whom we’ve discussed here previously (see Hey You! and Hostess). The duo had been appearing in films together since the late fifties, but this time the screenplay was co-written by Römer. A couple years later, he would take the next logical step and direct his wife in the pop period piece, Hey You! As with Römer’s film, Hostess, Annekathrin Bürger gets a chance here to demonstrate her skill with various languages and accents, playing the duplicitous Mabel Patrick.

Eva is played by the Polish actor, Krystyna Mikołajewska. Mikołajewska first came to the public’s attention in the Oscar-nominated, Polish film, Pharaoh. Like Jutta Hoffmann, Ms. Mikołajewska wasn’t a standard-issue beauty, but her dark hair and heavy-lidded eyes made her stand out from the models in the movie. As was often the case with actors who didn’t speak perfect German, Ms. Mikołajewska’s voice was dubbed. This time by fellow Pole, Zofia Słaboszowska,

The photographer, Hasselhuhn, is played by East Germany’s best-known comedian, Rolf Herricht. Herricht was the star of several of films, not to mention dozens of TV-movies and guest appearances. He died on stage while performing in Kiss Me Kate in 1981. [For more on Rolf Herricht, see Beloved White Mouse.]

The person who has the most fun in this film is Manfred Krug. Here, he gets to be East Germany’s answer to Peter Sellers, playing at least nine parts in the film, including Eve’s uncle, the hotel receptionist, an English-speaking woman tourist, a gypsy violinist, and a black man. Part of the fun of the film is seeing if you can spot Mr. Krug in each scene. Mostly his appearances are sight gags, and he plays several of them very broadly. [For more on Manfred Krug, see The Trace of Stones.]

Not To Me, Madam! features the first East German film appearance by Etta Cameron, a Danish/West Indian singer who came to East Germany to perform and got stuck there for five years when she lost her exit papers. Her part is small here and we don’t really get to see her perform. She would be used to better effect in Römer’s Hey You!

The jazzy score is by Klaus Lenz. Like fellow soundtrack composer Günther Fischer, Lenz comes from a jazz combo background rather than the classical backgrounds of Karl-Ernst Sasse and Wilhelm Neef. Lenz had already been the leader of various jazz groups when he got his first DEFA film score assignment, writing songs for Hochzeitsnacht im Regen (Wedding Night in the Rain), a musical starring heartthrob singer Frank Schöbel (of Hot Summer fame). Lenz wrote the scores for a few more DEFA films, but he was, first and foremost a jazz musician, so most of his work can be found on old Amiga records, and, more recently, on YouTube. After the Wende, Lenz had to essentially rebuild his career from scratch, playing cruise ships and local festivals. He finally got tired of this semi-anonymous grind and switched careers, moving into architectural restoration. He returned to playing music in 2010 and has regained some of his pre-Wende success.

Not to Me, Madam! was a popular film. It’s sunny Mediterranean locations no doubt helped. Even though, at its core, it is an espionage movie, the film stays well away from any heavy political messages. The Italians and the Brits are acting on capitalistic impulses, but that’s as far as it goes. Critics were less kind to the film than the public. They found it all a bit silly, but sometimes that’s exactly what people want from a movie.

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Hostess

Posted: February 15, 2013 in Annekathrin Bürger, Love, Pop Culture, Rolf Römer
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Hostess

Rolf Römer is better known as an actor than a director. He played the psychopathic Johle in The Bald-Headed Gang, the restless Al in Born in ‘45, and the noble Deerslayer in Chingachgook, The Great Snake. What is less well known is that he was also a director. He only directed two feature films, but they are both worth watching. He also directed a controversial episode of the popular East German TV show, Polizeiruf 110.

Like most directors-turned-actors, Römer’s focus is on the performances and less on the mise-en-scène. That’s not to say this film is artlessly shot, quite the contrary, but you won’t find the kind of visual poetry you’ll find in the films of Konrad Wolf and Kurt Maetzig. He takes a craftsman-like approach to filmmaking, using medium shots for much of the exposition and editing only to insert flashbacks. Stylistically, the film has more in common with the Indianerfilme (East German westerns) than it does with other contemporary films from DEFA. Nonetheless, his films have some unusual touches, like the breaking of the fourth wall by the lead actress that occurs in both films. She rarely speaks directly to us, but she often stops and looks into the camera. This is not the accidental glance of the untrained actress. It is intentional and effective. Is she acknowledging our existence or our surveillance? It works either way.

Like Römer’s previous film, Hey, You!, Hostess is a vehicle for his wife, Annekathrin Bürger. Römer wouldn’t be the first nor the last director to make a movie specifically for his wife. Jules Dassin did this often for Melina Mercouri and, more recently, Guy Ritchie nearly ended his career with a misguided remake of Lina Wertmüller’s Swept Away; made for the sole purpose of showcasing the talent of his wife of the time—Madonna.

Besides a front-and-center performance by Ms. Bürger, the other thing this film shares with Hey You! is a very specific sense of time and place. In the earlier film, everyday appliances take on a special charm and we start noticing things like the classic designs of the coffee sets and furniture. Filmed only six years later, the styles and fashions in Hostess are light years from the googie charm of the earlier film. We’re deep into the seventies at this point and it shows. Music plays a more central role in Hostess with several scenes that function more as music videos than as storytelling devices. This was probably inspired by Heiner Carow’s immensely popular film, The Legend of Paul and Paula. In that film, however, the musical interludes serve to move the story forward. Here they are more for the sheer enjoyment of the songs. Römer enlists some of East Germany’s most talented musicians, including Veronika Fischer, Christiane Ufholz, The Günther Fischer Quintet, and an on-stage performance by a young, pre-punk Nina Hagen.

There is an unsettling subtext to this film. Jetta Wagner—Annekathrin Bürger’s character—is a woman who suddenly finds herself out on her own again at a point in life when most people settle down and stop hanging out in clubs. At 39, she is a bit too old for all this, which gives the whole thing a creepy sadness. I honestly don’t know if this was Römer’s intention or not. Is she supposed to be a sad character, or should this part have been played by a woman ten years younger? Perhaps Römer was just so in love with Ms. Bürger that he couldn’t see she was too old for the part (and she is a beautiful woman), or maybe he was addressing a deeper issue here about the problems a forty-year-old faces when she is forced to return to a situation that she thought she had finished with in her twenties. I like to think that it is the latter, and that Römer knew exactly what he was doing. Whatever the case it makes one of the central questions of the film more complicated: What are you willing to give up for love, and what, in the end, does the word even mean?

Annekathrin Bürger had a long career in East German films. She got her start in films thanks to Gerhard Klein, who cast her in his film, A Berlin Romance. She went on to star in over twenty DEFA films and countless other TV movies and televisions shows. In 2010, she published her autobiography, Der Rest, der bleibt: Erinnerungen an ein unvollkommenes Leben (The residue that remains: Memories of an imperfect life), which was co-written with the journalist Kerstin Decker. Decker also co-wrote Angelica Domröse’s autobiography. That same year saw the publication of Ms. Bürger’s book of short stories, poems, and illustrations, Geliebte Ostsee (Beloved Baltic Sea), which was co-written with Christine Rammelt-Hedelich. More recently Ms. Bürger has been performing live with a small combo, singing and reciting love poems in a program titled Liebe ist das schönste Gift (Love is the prettiest poison).

As mentioned earlier, one wouldn’t look to the films of Rolf Römer for editing that pushes the envelope, but that’s not to say the editing is pedestrian—far from it. This is thanks, mainly, to the fine work of Monika Schindler. Ms. Schindler was recognized as one of the best film editors to come out of DEFA, and that’s saying something. DEFA produced some of the best editors that Germany has ever seen, and most of them are women; women such as Hildegard Conrad, Christa Helwig, Helga Krause, Lena Neumann, Hildegard Tegener, Helga Gentz, Brigitte Krex, Anneliese Hinze-Sokolowa, Rita Hiller, and, of course, Evelyn Carow. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a DEFA film that wasn’t edited by a woman. For many of these women, their careers ended with the Wende. Monika Schindler, however, continued to work, sometimes on the films by fellow Ossis such as Andreas Dresen, Roland Gräf, and Egon Günther, but also on films by many other filmmakers whose careers began after the Wende.

Customized Trabant

I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the cars in this film. Jetta’s boyfriend, a child-man auto mechanic named Johannes, drives an absurdly customized Trabi. Johannes’ car figures prominently in the film. It seems at times that Jetta sees it as a rival for her affections. In another scene, we meet a man driving a compact with pretensions of muscle car status. Like their western counterparts, the young men of the GDR in the seventies clearly enjoyed customizing their cars too.

Also deserving special mention is the Berliner Fernsehturm. The TV tower is where Jetta works as a hostess, escorting tourists from other lands around the city (giving Ms. Bürger the opportunity to demonstrate her skills at speaking French, Italian, and English). The west always hated the Fernsehturm. In his famous “Mr. Gorbachev” speech, Reagan claimed that the officials in the GDR had spent thousands trying to remove the reflection from the sphere because it looked like a cross. This was patent nonsense, but was a popular myth in West Germany. After the Wende, some people campaigned to have the tower demolished, seeing it as a symbol of a government they wanted people to forget, but saner heads prevailed. It stand today as an important part of the Berlin skyline, as recognizable as Paris’s Eiffel Tower or San Francisco’s Transamerica Building.

Hostess was badly received by the critics when it came out. It was inevitably compared with The Legend of Paul and Paula and found wanting. But the public liked Hostess, probably for a similar reason—they liked Carow’s film and wanted another music-laden movie about a single woman trying to find love and still remain independent. Box office for the film was good and Römer would have probably made more films for DEFA if he hadn’t decided to sign the petition protesting Wolf Biermann’s expatriation. Like the others who signed the petition—popular stars such as Manfred Krug and Angelica Domröse—work at DEFA became harder to come by. Unlike Krug and Domröse, Römer stayed in the GDR, but would appear in no more movies. He died in 2000 after sustaining severe burns while working on his allotment garden.

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Streaming version of this film (poor quality).