Sport as a survival drama under the Nazis: “The Boxer and the death” with Manfred Krug is considered to be one of the most compelling films about the national socialist reign of terror. Now you can discover it again.
Game movies, the German concentration camp to use as a setting, are controversial. You can map the Gray on the canvas? You may need to place the Holocaust at all for a fictional cinema-stories “miss”? The answers to these questions from the fall until today in different ways. Three years ago, the Hungarian concentration camp-movie, “Son of Saul” caused at the Festival in Cannes for heated discussions, because he pretended authenticity and realism, although he worked only with the means of the feature film.
On DVD and Blu-Ray: Peter Solans “The Boxer and the death”
It is also against this Background, it is welcome that, in Germany, now a long-forgotten Film to re-discover that even many cinephiles, is not likely to know more: “The Boxer and the death”. The work of a Slovak Director Peter Solan, which is wrested so that also the Forgotten, is now available for the first time in an uncut version on DVD and Blu-Ray.
Unequal opponents in the Ring: Komínek (Štefan Kvietik) and Kraft (Manfred Krug)
Solan, The Boxer and death is turned “on” in the years 1962/63, first against the resistance of the socialist authorities in Czechoslovakia. “The Boxer and the death” became the most successful Film of the year in his home country and was even shown in the “Western countries”. At the International film festival in San Francisco, the Film won two prizes.
Slovakia stood in the shadows of the productions from Prague
Nevertheless, The Boxer and death “disappeared” from the General cinema-consciousness, although the departure of the Czechoslovak film will be counted in the 1960s to today’s most important new movements in the post-war European film, including Oscar wins for Czechoslovak films in the years 1966 and 1968. The 1929 in the Slovak Banská Bystrica-born Peter Solan is this cinematic riser with ushered in, but today is largely forgotten.
Nazi Propaganda also in the concentration camp
“The Boxer and the death” takes place in a concentration camp in the East of Europe. After a failed attempt to escape of several prisoners, the six survivors of Slovak Prisoners executed are to be executed. The camp commander Kraft (Manfred Krug in the early phase of his career), before the war, a Boxer, discovers that the prisoner Komínek (Štefan Kvietik) was apparently also used to be a Boxer. He pardoned him. In order to keep themselves fit and to offer the SS thugs in the camp, a spectacle, a force in its officers, Komínek with eating extra rations and feed. The Slovak prisoners should serve him as a sparring partner for exhibition matches in a concentration camp.
Holocaust Drama without the Kitsch
Director Peter Solan staged in a unspectacular as a haunting Drama about the Survival of an individual severely injured people in the midst of an inhuman environment. The plot, which is based on the biography of the Polish boxer Tadeusz “Teddy” Pietrzykowski, in the concentration camps Auschwitz and Neuengamme rode around 50 fights, omitted showmanship and dramatic escalation, we know from the other concentration camp movies. “The Boxer and the death” is a sober, realistic, truthful – and therefore one of the best films on the subject.
Director Peter Solan with the images of concentration camp horrors
Solan shows the turmoil of the battle between power and Komínek, even on the part of other prisoners of concentration camps and the German concentration camp staff. At the heart of the conflict is always in the Komínek by the unusual offer, Kraft’s device: Boxing he is too strong and duped the commander, he faces death, he takes the matter seriously enough, is likely to be his fate in a similar way.
Solan tells the story of a personal battle, but also shows the Horror
The original locations on the site of a Jewish labour camp near the town of Nováky wound Film does not, despite the compaction of the action on the two main characters are clear pictures – in the Background you can see always the smoke of the Chimneys of the concentration camp, rising into the sky.
At the end of Komínek (Štefan Kvietik) proves to be the Stronger one – with fatal consequences
Also Solan, amazingly, to be omitted from the beginning of the 1960s, to draw the Germans only as a murdering Monster at that time, very unusual and one of the reasons that the Director met with the production of the film in his homeland, first with resistance. “The Boxer and the death” did not meet the guidelines of socialist film propaganda with Black-and-White characters, and a clear Good-Evil-scheme.
A Film about the “failure of communication between the Nations”
“‘The Boxer and the death remains under warranty at the memory,” says a critic of the DVD portal, “action”: “As one of the few movies about the Nazi period, the German side, something Human, succeeds him, under the Fears expressed to transform it into a playful context and there to dissolve, to fall without the Kitsch or the polarity of an ordinary athlete movies.” The Director had signed the relationship between the SS and concentration camp inmates very carefully, so that “the failure of communication between the Nations at war, the horizon is sharp shown direction”: “in The end, it doesn’t need much more than a Ring, four fists and unequal conditions.”
Peter Solan: “The Boxer and the death”, Czechoslovakia, 1962/63, 110 minutes, two DVD or Blu-Ray with an extensive range of Extra-Material, talks with film experts, short films by Peter Solan, a documentary about the Director, a Text about a Boxer in the concentration camps, etc., published at the provider’s “image disorder”.