At first, Interrogating the Witnesses (Vernehmung der Zeugen) looks like it’s going to be a murder mystery or a police procedural. A boy named Rainer (Mario Gericke) has been stabbed to death, and the doctor investigating the scene believes her son Max (René Steinke) is the killer. It turns out she’s right, and the rest …
Category: Pop Culture
Herzsprung
When the Berlin Wall finally came down, East Germans danced for joy in the streets. No more Stasi, no more food shortages, no more travel restrictions, and no more fiddling with their Trabis to get the damned things started. At the time, most people in East Germany were glad to see the backside of the …
Berlin Around the Corner
In the mid-1950s, director Gerhard Klein and screenwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase made a trio of films about life in Berlin. The films were inventive, daring, and popular. Both men went on to have successful careers at DEFA, working together and separately to create films of all sorts. In 1965, the two joined forces again with what …
The Naked Man on the Sports Field
Three of Konrad Wolf’s feature films—Goya, The Naked Man on the Sports Field (Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz), and Solo Sunny—form a loose trilogy. On the face of things, the three films are as different as can be, musically, stylistically, and cinematically. On closer inspection, we notice that all three films are explorations of artistic …
The Man Who Replaced Grandma
The Man Who Replaced Grandma (Der Mann, der nach der Oma kam) belongs to the comedy of errors genre—specifically the sub-genre that finds comedy in the mistaken belief that someone is being unfaithful.1 Some classic Hollywood films have mined this vein for comedy, most notably Preston Sturges in his hilarious 1948 film, Unfaithfully Yours, as …
Don’t Cheat, Darling!
In 1975, director/screenwriter Jim Sharman, along with co-author Richard O'Brien, had a huge hit with The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In 1981, they decided to try again with Shock Treatment. It had the same writers, same director, and some of the same cast, but it failed miserably. It was like trying to catch lightning in …
Today is Friday
By 1989, Nina Hagen was well-known in West Germany, but few people there knew anything about her past. She was the operatic, punk demon lady from the far side of the moon spouting mystic mumbo-jumbo and singing like nobody else. Then the Wall fell (Mauerfall) and we Westerners saw a whole other side of her—the …
My Wife Wants To Sing
Excessive seriousness has never been a problem for Hollywood. Designed for the sole purpose of making money, Hollywood films only give us something to think about when it looks like that approach will improve the bottom line. In stark contrast, DEFA was all about making thoughtful, serious films. An approach that led to some criticism, …
Not to Me, 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 …
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 …
East German Cinema Blog 