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DFW

(58,490 posts)
5. This is considered among the three greatest post-war German films ever.
Mon May 19, 2025, 08:08 AM
May 19

Günter Grass despised the Nazis, and never missed a chance to ridicule them, Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum) being his most famous novel. Schlöndorff's filming of it was just masterful, seeking out the perfect actors for the roles.

One of the other two was "Die Brücke," a brilliant 1959 film about the last days of the war when some teenage soldiers are sent to guard a meaningless little bridge over a stream in their home town. The commanding officer knows full well that a total surrender is coming, and tells the officers under him "no unnecessary deaths," so these kids are sent back to their home town to "guard" the bridge, with the idea that nothing will happen for a couple of days, and they can all go home. It doesn't turn out that way.

The third one was a recent one called "Das Leben der Anderen," or "The Lives of Others." It is in the last years of the socialist regime, focusing on a Secret Police (Stasi) officer who is also an instructor for recruits. He is assigned to spy on a dissident, and catch him "in the act," so to speak. The file on him is immense, and the Stasi has wired his whole apartment, while a Party Boss demands sex from his girlfriend in return for protecting them from arrest. The Stasi instructor, who leads a rather empty life outside of his work, begins to slowly acquire sympathy for his "subjects," which he knows he should never do, and he knows it could ruin his life. The regime falls just before the end of the film, and a few people end up in rather different positions than those they had before the wall fell. Mostly actors from the former East Germany were used for this film, and while West German audiences were blown away by the film, East German audiences (my wife saw it in Leipzig shortly after it came out) sat motionless in stunned silence when the curtain came up. They had just seen their lives played back in front of them. It even got an Oscar in the USA.

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