A basic revaluation is being subjected to the post-war German cinema. Gave the starting shot in the past year, the retrospective in Locarno. Also, the home cinema benefits from now – are three examples.
As at the film festival in Locarno last year, the retrospective “Loved and displaced: the cinema of the young Federal Republic of Germany 1949 – 1963,”about the festival screens flickered, as the Amazement in front of all the spectators from abroad was large. Here is a German post-war cinema was presented, the away from home movie clichés and displacement of myths to offer, apparently, more than previously known.
Locarno retrospective will also be shown in New York and Washington
The genre cinema of different Kinds, subtle social analyses, hard-blooded melodramas – the German cinema in the first decade after the end of the Second world war, the artist seemed to be, and aesthetically, but also from the stories told, more broad-based than in the memory of most viewers and film historians. The retrospective was shown in Locarno in various German, European and North American cities.
Parallel to this re-evaluation of the German post-war cinema is interpreted, most recently, also in the 1960s, the subsequent decade of German cinema. In essays, documentary films and Festivals, the 1960s and ’70s are now seen differently than in the past.
Director Zbynek Brynych and Uschi Glas during the filming of the movie “The female”
Until recently, the common opinion was like this: After the decline of the German cinema with home and displacement films of the ’50s, it was the Directors of the “Oberhausen Manifesto”, the actors of the German cinema in the 1960s artistic life: Directors such as Edgar Reitz and Alexander Kluge, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Volker Schlöndorff, Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog for the “New German cinema” and also acquired abroad, prizes and recognition.
Ask for a re-assessment of German film history
However, this view is questioned in recent times, increasingly behind. Have not been observed due to a one-sided focus on the above-mentioned Directors of many other talents too little or even ignored? Could these “other” talents unfold less and were also funded by the bodies responsible less? And the cinema of the “New German film is not overly intellectual” anyway, a lot, and intellectually? These questions are now provided by some publicists, critics, and Directors, and often answered Yes.
Not least against this Background, some of the films by lesser known Directors in the recent time your appeared. Three Examples:
“Females” from Zbynek Brynych (1970)
The Czechoslovakia-born Director was one of the founders of the “New Czech wave” and turned some formal attention-grabbing movies. Later, Brynych went to the Federal Republic and staged a game – and-for-television films and episodes of popular TV series. His Film “The female” bot in 1970 and then a wild mixture of horror film, emancipation Farce and Popkino.
Sexual liberation and Anarcho-emancipation
A work that can only be understood against the Background of the sexual liberation of that time, an anarchist-emancipatory movement, as well as the Hippie Era: The young Eve (Uschi glass, our picture above) occurs after a nervous breakdown several weeks of Spa treatment in Bad Marein. In the Sanatorium she meets almost exclusively on a mysterious emerging women.
In the bathroom Marein only a few men that seem to consort with the women. Only a few men who are stranded because of a car breakdown in the Spa town, seemingly “normal”. How fast turns out, Eve landed in a very exceptional Sanatorium: The male visitor will be killed brutally by the women.
Treatment in a strange Sanatorium: Uschi Glas in “The females”
“Females” is a desert Popcollage with fast Perspective, unconventional camera angles, optical experiments and Tonspielereien. “The audience doesn’t want to see in the cinema, what a day” was does the Credo of Brynych at the time. “‘The female’ is aimed at an audience, the Form is more important than the Story. You have to be receptive for stylish decorations and costumes, for daring image splits, and a surreal Aesthetic to pay tribute to the work of Brynych,” writes the Film critic Frank Noack in the Booklet of the DVD edition. In fact: “The females” is not a desolate, not to say crude, cinematic LSD Trip, a matter of taste.
“Girls, girls” by Roger Fritz (1966)
Here, too, a young girl occurs at the beginning of the movie plot is a trip. But this time, it is a return. Angela (Helga Anders), after a stay of several months in a reformatory back to the place you once had to leave forcibly.
Roger Fritz looked at the generation of conflict from 1968
In a cement factory they had, still a minor, with the owner of the plant involved. Was sentenced to a prison sentence. After their return, now, Angela begins a relationship with the son of the chief, until the time at which the possessive comes back at the end of dad.
Director Roger Fritz, a photographer, filmmaker and producer, is one of those Directors that has been forgotten, many critics believe to be wrong or in the shadow of his much more famous contemporaries from the “New German cinema”. At least Fritz’ debut “girls, girls” is worth today, a reunion, in any case.
The 1960s also saw – sleek cars, and men with ties
The Film is a wonderful Black-and-White shots verfilmtes adolescence-Drama that takes place in the epochs and the generation conflict of the ’68 years to the point: “Fritz is in his first feature film, a chronicler of sexual liberation, and sees your Potential, without denying their shadow sides,” says the film historian Christoph Huber, “girl, girl”.
“All the years” by Ulrich Schamoni
The film Director Ulrich Schamoni was in the 1960s – in contrast to Brynych or Fritz – to be recognised as a circle of “New German film”. However, his films were regarded even then as “easy” and so Schamonis work is today a bit forgotten. “All the years”, the Director shot in the year 1966, has an amazingly frivolous look behind the Scenes of the Bourgeoisie.
Hypocrisy of the bourgeois, the Church’s facade
The father of the family, Hannes arrives with his young girlfriend, Inge to home for Christmas to Münster. There, he celebrates together with his wife Lore, and the family of the Saint, while Inge in the hotel room waiting and Münster strips. That Hannes and Lore of life for years with new partners in the “wild” marriage, is held in front of the children, and parents-in-law a secret. Also in the erzkatholischen Münster, the small town, everyone knows everyone, you will get home cooking-moral facade to maintain.
Embarrassing scene in the Church: Hannes between wife (R) and beloved
“All the years” draws the eye relentlessly, and even by today’s standards a surprising clarity to the bourgeois atmosphere of the Federal Republic of post-war society. Like “girls, girls,” he reminds, with its black-and-white Aesthetic, and its casual narrative stance to the films of the French Nouvelle Vague.
“The females” is out now on DVD and Blu-ray provider “image disorder”. “Girl-girl” in the series “Edition Deutsche Vita” in the “Media Target”. “All the years” came in “fiber-optic media center for Westphalia”. All three DVD editions include extensive Extras such as liner notes, Interviews and audio commentaries.