Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder | |
---|---|
Directed by | |
Based on | Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder by Bertolt Brecht |
Produced by | DEFA |
Starring | Helene Weigel |
Cinematography | Harry Bremer |
Edited by | Ella Ensink |
Music by | Paul Dessau |
Release date | 1961 |
Running time | 151 minutes |
Country | German Democratic Republic |
Language | German |
Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children) is a DEFA film which documents the staging of Bertold Brecht's play of the same name from 1959 to 1961, which Manfred Wekwerth and Peter Palitzsch directed with the Berliner Ensemble, modelled after the original production by Bertolt Brecht and Erich Engel from 1949, with Helene Weigel in the title role. The film, made in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), received a prize at the Locarno Film Festival.
Bertold Brecht had directed his play Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder with the Berliner Ensemble, together with Erich Engel, in 1949. Manfred Wekwerth worked as his assistant for the production from 1951. [1] After Brecht's death, the film Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder intended to be a faithful rendering of this model production on stage. It was taken in black and white in 1960 and 1961, with Wekwerth and Peter Palitzsch directing. [1] [2]
The film's first presentation was on 10 February 1961, in the presence of Alexander Abusch, minister of culture, at the Berlin cinema Oranienburger Tor Lichtspiele. The film was shown simultaneously at 14 regional capitals of the GDR, marking the 63rd birthday of Brecht. [3] The first presentation in West Germany was in October 1962 at the Internationale Filmwoche Mannheim. [4] It began in other cinemas there on 12 March 1965, and was recommended in June 1965 by the Evangelische Filmgilde as best film of the month. [5] The film was first aired by the Deutscher Fernsehfunk, the GDR television, on 27 March 1973.[ citation needed ]
Henryk Keisch wrote in the daily paper Neues Deutschland that the film was a faithful reproduction of the staging which was then performed already 400 times at the theatre of the Berliner Ensemble. [6] Helmut Ullrich of Die Neue Zeit noted that facial expressions were dominant compared with a stage production of the same actors. [7]
Mother Courage and Her Children is a play written in 1939 by the German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), with significant contributions from Margarete Steffin. Four theatrical productions were produced in Switzerland and Germany from 1941 to 1952, the last three supervised and/or directed by Brecht, who had returned to East Germany from the United States.
Ekkehard Schall was a German stage and screen actor/director.
Paul Dessau was a German composer and conductor. He collaborated with Bertolt Brecht and composed incidental music for his plays, and several operas based on them.
Angelica Domröse is a German actress, who became famous in the role of Paula in Heiner Carow's film The Legend of Paul and Paula. Her biological father was a prisoner of war from France.
Heinz Schubert was a German actor, drama teacher and photographer, best known for playing the role of Alfred Tetzlaff in the German television sitcom Ein Herz und eine Seele.
Anke Borchmann is a rower who competed for East Germany in the 1970s.
Jana Sorgers is a German rower who was a dominant sculler of her time, starting her career for the East German rowing team and continuing after the German reunification for the combined Germany for a few more years. Between 1986 and 1996, she won two Olympic gold medals, seven world championship titles, and nine national titles. Upon the conclusion of her successful career, she was awarded the Thomas Keller Medal by the International Rowing Federation (FISA) – the highest honour in rowing.
Girls in Gingham —sometimes called Beaverskin—is a 1949 German drama film directed by Kurt Maetzig.
Roswietha Zobelt is a German rower who competed for East Germany in the 1976 Summer Olympics and in the 1980 Summer Olympics.
Wolf Kaiser was a German theatre and film actor. He grew up in Switzerland, where he studied chemistry and physiology. In 1937 he was deemed unfit for service in the Wehrmacht, and then went to Berlin where he trained as an actor.
Eva-Maria Hagen was a German actress and singer. She was known as the "Brigitte Bardot of the GDR" but was banned from performance for political reasons.
Herbert Sandberg was a German artist and caricaturist. He was best known for his caricatures in the satirical magazine, Ulenspiegel, which he co-founded and art directed. He is also well known for his drawings of Bertolt Brecht and for his column, Der freche Zeichenstift in the magazine, Das Magazin. A member of the Communist Party, a Jew, and a German Resistance fighter, Sandberg spent 10 years in a Nazi prison and in Buchenwald concentration camp. He conceived the idea for Ulenspiegel while a prisoner there and began working on it almost immediately on liberation.
Manfred Wekwerth was a German theatre and film director and writer. He was the director of the Berliner Ensemble theatre from 1977 to 1991. He was also an informant for East Germany's Stasi from 1965 until the German reunification.
Carmen-Maja Antoni is a German actress.
Barbara Müller, is a rower who represented East Germany in the 1960s. She was later a rowing coach for SG Dynamo Potsdam.
Alfred Kirchner is a German actor, theatre director and theatre manager who is based in Berlin. He worked at theatres such as Theater Bremen, Schauspielhaus Bochum, the Burgtheater in Vienna and the Staatliche Schauspielbühnen Berlin, before turning to freelance work. He has staged productions in Europe and North America, including several world premieres of both drama and opera. He directed the premiere of Martin Walser's Ein Kinderspiel in Stuttgart in 1971, the U.S. premiere of Henze's We Come to the River at the Santa Fe Opera in 1984, and the premiere of Hans Zender's Stephen Climax at the Oper Frankfurt in 1986. In 1994, he staged Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festival.
Peter Palitzsch was a German theatre director. He worked with Bertolt Brecht in his Berliner Ensemble from the beginning in 1949, and was in demand internationally as a representative of Brecht's ideas. He was a theatre manager at the Staatstheater Stuttgart and the Schauspiel Frankfurt. Many of his productions were invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen festival. He worked internationally from 1980.
Ruth Wilhelmi-König was a German woman stage photographer.
Andre Asriel was an Austrian-German composer.
Sonntagsfahrer is a 1963 East German comedy drama film directed by Gerhard Klein for the DEFA studio. The screenplay for the film was written by Wolfgang Kohlhaase and Georg Edel, and is about six disgruntled citizens of Leipzig who try to leave East Germany for West Berlin. It premiered on August 30, 1963, in Berlin.