In November of 1951, a man named Walter Pannewitz rented office spaces on the ground floor of the Römischer Hof, a stately old office building on the corner of Charlottenstrasse and Unter den Linden in Berlin’s Mitte district. Nobody asked many questions at the time. Building owners were happy to have any tenants who could …
Tag: Rolf Hoppe
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 …
Spring Takes Time
Spring Takes Time (Der Frühling braucht Zeit) was one of the twelve films banned in the wake of the notorious 11th Plenum. Along with The Rabbit is Me, it's one of the only films that made it into the theaters before the axe came down. While some of the 11th Plenum bans seemed downright silly …
The Falcon’s Trail
When it came to telling the truth about the American West, the East Germans had it all over Hollywood. While Hollywood was still portraying Indians as brutal savages, DEFA’s Indianerfilme gave a much more accurate picture of the events, showing that most of the wrongs were committed by the whites who felt that they had …
Kit & Co
From time to time, East German filmmakers looked to America for source material. Bellboy Ed Martin was based on Albert Maltz’s play, Merry-Go-Round, and Chingachgook, the Great Snake took most of its story from James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking book, The Deerslayer. Jack London was a natural choice for DEFA. He was an ardent socialist, writing …
East German Cinema Blog 