East German Cinema Blog

Seven Freckles (Sieben Sommersprossen) is the story of the love affair between Karoline and Robbi—two fifteen-year-olds who had been close two years earlier and meet-up again at summer camp. Standing in their way is Marlene, an attractive but self-absorbed girl who also has the hots for Robbi. When one of the camp counselors decides that it would fun to put on a production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Marlene jumps at the chance to play Juliet, and suggests Robbi to play Romeo, but it is apparent to everyone that the real love story is between Robbi and Karoline. As the kids prepare for the production, the romance between Robbi and Karoline unfolds in counterpoint to Shakespeare’s play.

Summer camps inhabit a realm all their own in the movies. Maybe that’s because they also inhabit a realm all their own in the lives of the kids that were shipped off to them. For some they were opportunities to reinvent themselves, while for others they were places where all their worst fears came true. As a genre, the Summer Camp Film started with Her First Romance, which took Herman Wouk’s Book, The City Boy, about a fat Jewish kid from the Bronx, and turned it into the story of a slender and very WASP-y teenage girl, played by Margaret O’Brien. There were previous Summer Camp films, most notably 1937’s Thrill of a Lifetime, which shares with Seven Freckles a sub-plot about putting on a show, but the genre really took off in the fifties when the early baby-boomers were getting old enough to ship off to camp, and the parents started reminiscing about their younger days in the woods.

Throughout the fifties, summer camps popped again and again in movies and on television. Comedian-turned-songwriter Allan Sherman even parodied the subject with his hit tune, “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh.” And in 1961, Hayley Mills did a comic turn, playing both the good girl and the evil camp-mate in Disney’s The Parent Trap. In 1980, the genre took a dark turn with Friday the 13th, in which the teenagers at a newly reopened camp are killed one by one, usually right after having sex. This opened the doors to dozens of imitators (including way too many sequels of its own). Every year for the next five years the movie-going public could expect to see dozens of films about teenagers killed while attending summer camp. The same year that the first Friday the 13th was released, also saw the release of Little Darlings, in which two girls at camp have a contest to see which one loses her virginity first. And in 1993, the subject took a more sardonic turn when Wednesday and Pugsley Addams are shipped off to camp in Addams Family Values.

Many of the themes (some might say tropes) that were common to Summer Camp Films were there right from the start: the evil camp-mate, who either gets her comeuppance or teams up with the protagonist to save the day, the budding first romance, the overly strict but clueless camp supervisor, and  the prankish behavior of youngsters. All of these are in evidence in Seven Freckles. But Seven Freckles probably owes most of its pedigree to Russian films on the subject. The first was Welcome, or No Trespassing (Dobro pozhalovat, ili postoronnim vkhod vospreshchyon) from 1965, a fairly bold film in which the kids in the camp conspire against the director. The film was popular and seem to be parodying government bureaucracy. Like East Germany, the USSR had a brief period in the early sixties in which many of the restrictions on what could be discussed in films were relaxed. And just like East Germany, this came to a grinding halt in 1965 when Khruschev was deposed in favor of the hardliner Brezhnev. Even more of an influence was Sergei Solovyov’s One Hundred Days After Childhood (Sto dney posle detstva), which also dealt with the subject of pubescent love at a summer camp. This Russian film was a huge hit in the Eastern Bloc countries, and was also recognized in the west, winning the Silver Bear at the Berlinale in 1975.

To cast Seven Freckles, director Herrmann Zschoche chose to use non-actors in all the teenager roles. For most of these kids, this was their first venture into acting and their last. A few went on to have successful careers in film, most notably, Steffi Kühnert, who has appeared in dozens of popular German movies, including Sun Alley (Sonnenallee), The White Ribbon (Das weiße Band), and We Are the Night (Wir sind die Nacht). Others, such as René Rudolph and Kareen Schröter, made a few more movies, but did not pursue careers as actors after the Wende. Most surprising of all is Janine Beilfuß who played Marlene. She has a real screen presence but never made another film. Ironically, the boy who played Robbi, Harald Rathmann, had no interest in his leading lady, Kareen Schröter (although both she and her co-star, Janine Beilfuß found him pretty hunky).

Today, this film is best known for its famously uninhibited sequence in which the two young lovers frolic naked in a field. It is here that Herrmann Zschoche’s demonstrates his talent as a director. One misstep and this scene could have degenerated into prurient pedophilia; a leering look at the naked bodies of two teenagers. Zschoche avoids this by approaching it for what it is: the last innocent encounter in the lives of two young people; that pivotal age when the body is ready for sex, but the mind isn’t. Nonetheless—and in spite of its innocence—the film does feature the full-frontal nudity of two teenagers and is unlikely to get U.S. distribution anytime soon for this reason.

The film was shot by Günter Jaeuthe, who started as Zschoche’s cinematographer with Eolomea and worked with him on nearly every film after that. As with Eolomea, Jaeuthe seems most at home when he is filming the great outdoors. He cinematography is sharp and clear and at its best in the brightly-lit scenes. The night scenes and day-for-night scenes are murky and sometimes hard to make out.

Seven Freckles features one of the most varied soundtracks of any movie. It goes from wistful pan-pipe music, to synthesized mood music, to swirling dramatic strings, to somber organ. The music is credited to Gunther Erdmann, with some rock’n’roll bits added by Peter Gotthardt who scored The Legend of Paul and Paula. Erdmann was a logical choice to score a film about kids. As a composer he was best known in East Germany for the choral music he wrote or arranged for children’s and young people’s choirs. Although there is not a lot of music in the film, every time there is, it is different from the last.

Seven Freckles was a huge hit in East Germany, playing to sold-out theaters for the first few weeks. It helped turned Herrmann Zschoche into one of the busiest directors at DEFA during the GDR’s final decade. Before he made Seven Freckles, Zschoche had already explored the theme of coming-of-age in Liebe mit 16 (Love at 16), and he would return to it again in films such as Island of the Swans and Und nächstes Jahr am Balaton (Next Year at Lake Balaton). After the Wende, Zschoche continued to work, primarily in television. Shortly after the wall came down, he directed several episodes of Drei Damen vom Grill (Three Ladies from the Grill), a popular TV series about an Imbissstand (a takeaway food trailer, like you see at carnivals). Drei Damen vom Grill started in 1977 when the wall was firmly in place, and had a strong West Berlin vibe to it. Not surprisingly then, the show didn’t last long after the Wende. After that, Zschoche directed a few made-for-TV movies, and several episodes of popular TV shows. He retired in 1998, but Seven Freckles remains a high point in his career. So much so that when decided to recount what filmmaking was like in the GDR, he titled his book: Seven Freckles and Other Memories (Sieben Sommersprossen und andere Erinnerungen).

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