The Hamburg Syndrome

Last updated
The Hamburg Syndrome
Directed by Peter Fleischmann
Written by
Produced by
  • Peter Fleischmann
  • Michel Gast  [ fr ]
  • Felix Hock
  • Lothar H. Krischer
  • Willi Segler
Starring
Cinematography Colin Mounier  [ fr ]
Edited bySusan Zinowsky
Music by Jean-Michel Jarre
Release date
22 November 1979
Running time
117 minutes
Countries
  • West Germany
  • France
Language German

The Hamburg Syndrome (German : Die Hamburger Krankheit) is a 1979 West German-French science fiction film directed by Peter Fleischmann and starring Helmut Griem, Fernando Arrabal and Carline Seiser. [1] [2] The film is about an outbreak of an epidemic and quarantine. [3] The film received attention again in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. [4] [5]

Contents

Plot

A deadly epidemic breaks out in Hamburg. [6] Out of the blue, victims fall dead in an embryonic posture. [1] In one scene a doctor who autopsies the dead says: "Three days ago it was 12 [bodies], the day before yesterday 57 and now we don't have any more space." [4] Politicians and the military intervene, set up quarantine stations and develop a vaccine, which carries high risks. [7] People leave their home with face masks and protective suits. [5] There are travel restrictions, and people who go near infected people have to go into quarantine. The search for the index case (patient zero) takes place. [5] Hamburg is cordoned off, and a small group of people wander across West Germany, on the run. In doing so, they pass Lüneburg. [8] The city is already cordoned off. Fulda becomes a collecting basin for the refugee movement. [6] West Germany is in a state of emergency. [5] The plague suddenly dies out and the "Hamburg disease" ends in Southern Germany. [6]

Partial cast

Production

Fleischmann first conceived of the film after talking to an English epidemiologist in Greece in the 1970s, who was convinced that humans had only got to where they are today through catastrophes: "Imagine there is a plague of rats and a poison is used that kills all but two of the rats because they are more resilient. From these two a new race is born, which has made a huge leap forward compared to the old one. Without the catastrophe, the same development would have taken centuries." [5]

The film is a West German-French joint production by Hallelujah-Film Munich, Bioskop-Film Munich, Terra-Filmkunst Berlin, S.N.D. Paris and ZDF. [1] [9]

A conversation with Luis Buñuel's screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière brought Fleischmann to the film concept years before. [3] The initial idea was that in Athens, scientists put an artificial, deadly virus on the pillars of the Acropolis to solve the problem of overpopulation. [8] [3]

Release

The West German cinema premiere was on 23 November 1979. [1] Two months before the cinema release, the film was shown in a rough version, approximately eight minutes longer, at the Hamburg Film Festival. [10]

Reception

The film was not a commercial success in 1979. [5] Hans C. Blumenberg wrote in 1979 in Die Zeit : "The Hamburg Syndrome by Peter Fleischmann is a chaotic film about chaotic conditions, considerably more appealing, unusual and intelligent than the many reviews suggest," [11] and "Fleischmann's staging is as eccentric as the cast of this apocalyptic farce between the Reeperbahn and the Almhütte: a series of violent style breaks, without regard to aesthetic losses." [11]

Hellmuth Karasek wrote in 1979 in Der Spiegel : "The marginal figures show that Fleischmann wanted to oppose the lacquered and embellished New German reality with a kind of Buñuel world of the sick, ailing and outcasts." [12]

Deutsche Film- und Medienbewertung (FBW): "The FBW jury shares this [Blumenberg's] opinion and above all points out the unleashed and exuberant staging of this "madhouse" positively and confirms the rating valuable. (Prädikat wertvoll)" [13]

Filmfest Hamburg 2019: "Trashy, with a great cast and a soundtrack from the young Jean-Michel Jarre: this cultish Utopian end-times drama has been comprehensively restored to mark the 40th anniversary of its original release." [9]

In 2020, when asked about the film's relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, Fleischmann said that "You know, if you dream up the improbable, there's a good chance it will become reality. Just the obvious, that never happens." [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hamburg</span> City and state in Germany

Hamburg, officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, is the second-largest city in Germany after Berlin, as well as the overall 7th largest city and largest non-capital city in the European Union with a population of over 1.85 million. Hamburg is 941 km2 in area. Hamburg's urban area has a population of around 2.5 million and is part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region, which has a population of over 5.1 million people in total. The city lies on the River Elbe and two of its tributaries, the River Alster and the River Bille. One of Germany's 16 federated states, Hamburg is surrounded by Schleswig-Holstein to the north and Lower Saxony to the south.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">St. Pauli</span> Quarter of Hamburg in Germany

St. Pauli is a quarter of the city of Hamburg belonging to the centrally located Hamburg-Mitte borough. Situated on the right bank of the Elbe river, the nearby Landungsbrücken is a northern part of the port of Hamburg. St. Pauli contains a world-famous red-light district around the iconic Reeperbahn area. As of 2020 the area had 21,902 residents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans Albers</span> German actor and singer (1891–1960)

Hans Philipp August Albers was a German actor and singer. He was the biggest male movie star in Germany between 1930 and 1960 and one of the most popular German actors of the twentieth century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hellmuth Karasek</span>

Hellmuth Karasek was a German journalist, literary critic, novelist, and the author of many books on literature and film. He was one of Germany's best-known feuilletonists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Fleischmann</span> German film director (1937–2021)

Peter Fleischmann was a German film director, screenwriter and producer. He worked also as an actor, cutter, sound engineer, interviewer and speaker. Fleischmann belonged to the New German Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. He is known for directing the 1969 Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern, but he produced films of many genres.

Friedrich Paul "Fritz" Honka was a German serial killer. Between 1970 and 1975 he killed at least four women from Hamburg's red light district, keeping three of the bodies in his flat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heidi Kabel</span> German actress and musician

Heidi Bertha Auguste Kabel was a German actress and musician. Most of her stage roles were performed at the Ohnsorg-Theater in Hamburg, many of them in Low German. She became famous in Germany as many of the productions of the Ohnsorg Theater were transmitted on German television.

Hartmut Neugebauer was a German actor, voice actor and dialogue director.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herbertstraße</span> Street in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg, Germany

Herbertstraße is a street in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg, located near the Reeperbahn, which is the main red-light district. It is the only street in the city where it is still possible to find prostitutes in windows as in the famous De Wallen district of Amsterdam. It is reputed to have Hamburg's most expensive prostitutes. At its peak about 250 women worked there.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sinan Akkuş</span> German-Turkish film director, actor, film producer and screenwriter

Sinan Akkuş is a Turkish-German director, writer and actor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Onkel Pö</span>

Onkel Pös Carnegie Hall, better known as Onkel Pö, was a music venue in Hamburg in the 1970s and the early 1980s.

The Deutsche Film- und Medienbewertung is a German federal authority for evaluating and rating film and media, located at Biebrich Palace in Wiesbaden. It was founded by resolution on August 20, 1951 by a regular assembly of all German state ministers of education (Kultusministerkonferenz). The FBW, overseen by the Hessian Ministry for Science and the Arts, renders an expert opinion on films. Its two certification marks for outstanding quality are "worthwhile" (Wertvoll) and "especially worthwhile".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Filmfest Hamburg</span> Annual film festival held in Hamburg, Germany

FILMFEST HAMBURG is an international film festival in Hamburg, the third-largest of its kind in Germany. It shows national and international feature and documentary films in eleven sections. The range of the program stretches from art house films to innovative mainstream cinema, presenting the first feature films of young unknown directors together with films by internationally established directors. In 2017 more than 40,000 people attended 250 screenings of 141 films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Almila Bagriacik</span> German actress

Almila Bagriacik is a German actress of Turkish descent. She has performed in German film and television.

Tomte Tummetott and the Fox is a 2007 German film directed by Sandra Schießl and based on the novels The Tomten and The Tomten and the Fox by Astrid Lindgren.

Carline Seiser is a German actress, painter and sculptor. She became known in the late 1970s for her role in the science fiction film The Hamburg Syndrome.

<i>Ted Siegers Molly Monster</i> 2016 German animated film

Ted Sieger's Molly Monster is a 2016 animated adventure fantasy film directed by Ted Sieger, Matthias Bruhn and Michael Ekbladh from a story by Sieger and screenplay by John Chambers, based on the titular children's TV series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Émile V. Schlesser</span>

Émile V. Schlesser is a Luxembourgish film director, screenwriter, composer and multimedia artist.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Die Hamburger Krankheit". Deutsches Filmhaus (in German). Retrieved 19 August 2021.
  2. ↑ Hake, Sabine (2008). German national cinema. London New York: Routledge. ISBN   978-0-415-42098-3. OCLC   128237585.
  3. 1 2 3 Göttler, Fritz (12 August 2021). "Regisseur Peter Fleischmann ist tot". Süddeutsche.de (in German). Retrieved 17 August 2021.
  4. 1 2 3 Wunder, Olaf (14 April 2020). ""Hamburger Krankheit": Kultfilm sah schon 1979 die Corona-Krise voraus". MOPO (in German). Retrieved 19 August 2021.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Hippen, Wilfried (18 April 2020). "Der Film zur Epidemie". taz.de . Retrieved 19 August 2021.
  6. 1 2 3 Witzel, Matthias (4 May 2020). "Aktueller denn je: Corona weckt Erinnerungen an "Die Hamburger Krankheit"". Osthessen. Retrieved 19 August 2021.
  7. ↑ ""Die Hamburger Krankheit": Einst Fiktion, heute Realität". www.lokalo24.de (in German). 11 April 2020. Retrieved 20 August 2021.
  8. 1 2 Bohlmann, Klaus (27 April 2020). "Virus versetzt Lüneburg in Panik". landeszeitung.de (in German). Retrieved 20 August 2021.
  9. 1 2 "Die Hamburger Krankheit". Filmfest Hamburg 2019. Retrieved 19 August 2021.
  10. ↑ "OFDb – : Hamburger Filmfest (Rohfassung) (Deutschland), Freigabe: FSK 12 von Hamburger Krankheit, Die (1979)". www.ssl.ofdb.de. Retrieved 20 August 2021.
  11. 1 2 Blumenberg, Hans C. (7 December 1979). "Filmtips: Die Hamburger Krankheit". ZEIT ONLINE (in German). Retrieved 20 August 2021. Die Hamburger Krankheit von Peter Fleischmann ist ein chaotischer Film über chaotische Zustände, erheblich reizvoller, ungewöhnlicher und intelligenter als es die vielen Verrisse vermuten lassen. ... So exzentrisch wie das Personal dieser apokalyptischen Farce zwischen Reeperbahn und Almhütte ist auch Fleischmanns Inszenierung: eine Folge von gewaltsamsten Stilbrüchen, ohne Rücksichten auf ästhetische Verluste.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  12. ↑ Karasek, Hellmuth (23 September 1979). "Unheilbar". Der Spiegel (in German). Retrieved 20 August 2021. An Randfiguren sieht man, daß Fleischmann der gelackten und geschönten neudeutschen Wirklichkeit eine Art Bunuel-Welt der Kranken, Maroden, Ausgestoßenen entgegensetzen wollte.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  13. ↑ "Film: Die Hamburger Krankheit". Deutsche Filmbewertung und Medienbewertung FBW (in German). Retrieved 21 August 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.