In less than two weeks, the annual Cannes International Film Festival will arrive as scheduled. Here we have witnessed the glory of art films, and have also experienced the ups and downs of various film movements.
Tin Drum Standard Collector's Edition Art Poster
In the 1970s, the development of film art was at its peak, and under the leadership of the French New Wave Movement, almost all european countries had a vigorous art film movement. In France's neighboring Germany, since 62, a group of young people have begun to independently shoot films that conform to the spirit of the times and a new film aesthetic, giving birth to four talented young directors, Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, and Volcker Schrondorff, and are known as the four masters of the new German film.
And the protagonist we are going to talk about today is the last one, Volker Schrondorff, and the film whose name is always tied to him, "Tin Drums." The film is perhaps the darkest "children's film" ever made, filled with Nazism, incest, and the ugliness of human nature, but it is also an alternative masterpiece that conquered Cannes and the Oscars.
Forty years ago today, "Tin Drum" began a small premiere in Germany, causing a sensation. And the story of this film has to start from a long, long time ago.
Oscar with his tin drums
The historical metaphor behind the pathological story
In 1958, the German writer Günter Glass created a novel full of magic realism and grand historical narrative "Tin Drum", the novel through the protagonist Oscar's perspective absurd and realistic story that takes place in the small border town of Danzig between Poland and Germany, spanning more than half a century, with the lives of various small people in the city here, with a small and large collage of magnificent micro modern European history.
Trailer for the film
How classic is this novel? If you simply measure the awards, when Günter Glass won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999, the official label "Tin Drum" was one of the most important literary works after World War II, and the protagonist of the novel, Oscar, was considered by critics to be a "deformed child of the twentieth century". The film is mainly based on the second part of the novel, the story of the period from the eve of World War II to the end of the war.
Why is it called a century of deformities? Friends who have seen movies or novels are naturally very clear, Oscar is a child who refuses to grow up, at the age of 3, oscar witnessed the incest between his mother and uncle, he developed a dislike for the adult world, deliberately rolled down the stairs, refused to grow up, and since then the body has stopped developing and stayed at the age of 3.
This exposure of the dark side of human nature runs through the film. In fact, as early as the moment from the womb drilled out to the moment of the world, director Schlöndorf showed Oscar's fear of coming to the human world, Oscar hid in the womb to resist the new life, when the mother said that he would give him a tin drum at the age of 3, Oscar began to have expectations for life, so you can see in the film, whether it is war or play, the tin drum is always with him, the restless drum is only a child's body, the only weapon against the dark side of this world, and it is also one of the few things he relies on in this world. It can be said that the tin drum has become a part of Oscar's body.
In the film, Oscar actively chooses not to grow up to become a "dwarf", walking in a weak posture on the German border of Danzig, he uses this to escape the opportunity to become an adult, refuses to go along with it, and his omniscient perspective leads the audience to witness the madness of the situation, the complexity of human nature, but ironically, the physical rejection can not prevent the inner maturity, and eventually he is also swallowed up by darkness.
Of course, Oscar's dislike of the human world is actually the author's warning and criticism of the political atmosphere of the European situation, especially the terrorist political atmosphere before Nazi Germany came to power. In addition to the story itself, we should also look at the historical and political issues involved in "Tin Drum" from a broader perspective, the era in which Oscar was in an era when Nazi Germany gained widespread popular support and eventually came to power to start a war, and as the story progressed, we also witnessed the demise of the Nazis and the failure of Germany again.
The composition of this shot strongly hints at the relationship between the three
So in addition to the Oscars, the identities of the three core characters in the film all have their own political references. Oscar's father, Mazrat, was a German who symbolized Germany, who supported the Nazis and could not hide his inner cruelty on the surface; uncle Jan was Polish, and his greedy desires and weakness in the face of Oscar's father all secretly confirmed the fate of Poland in World War II; and Oscar's mother, the weak woman, symbolized the small town of Danzig, circling between two men, but neither side gave her substantial protection and love until the final destruction.
Günter Glass, "Oscar Jr.", Schrondorff
The filming was full of twists and turns, and the erotic drama caused controversy
Although at the 32nd Cannes Film Festival, "Tin Drum" shared the Palme d'Or with Coppola's great "Apocalypse Modern" and won the Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards the following year, like most art films, "Tin Drum" struggled from the beginning of the preparation period, and even nearly stillbirth.
Melville was Schlöndorff's master
Schrondorf is known in the international film world for his political films, and when he studied in France in the early years, he worked as an assistant director under Melville, yes, the French film master who made "Lone Killer" and "Shadow Army", and also made a cameo appearance in Godard's "Exhausted" and said "Become Immortal, and then Die".
A bit of a children's version of Anthony Hopkins
Melville had a habit when filming, if the work was adapted from a literary work, he would choose one of the bridges that were suitable for the screen and cut it and paste it on the book, as the basis for writing the script. Because both sides of a page will be printed with text, so you have to buy two copies, Schlöndorff filmed "Tin Drum", so the film restored the lines and scenes in the novel in large sections, precisely because of this simple way of creation.
Of course, it is not a simple collage to complete the script, in fact, when Schrondorf first read the novel, he had the idea of putting the film on the screen, he visited the original writer Günter Glass many times in a year, brought him the screenplay he created, patiently listened to his views and opinions on the screenplay of the film, and the two finalized that the film version was only filmed until the oscar was born to the end of World War II.
As for actors, the biggest question is, who can play a child who does not want to grow up, and the image is close to the image of a dwarf? For commercial reasons, Schlöndorff even thought about Polanski or even Dustin Hoffmann's name in his mind, but he was reluctant to make a German story in English, and in his own words, he was defending a German film.
In order to select oscar actors, Schrondorff and his assistants select actors at a dwarf event, but the 60 dwarfs on the scene can not meet Schlondorff's demanding requirements - to have an old-fashioned side while maintaining a few innocence of children.
Although the Oscars are played by children, the other "dwarf" roles in the film are played by dwarfs
David Bennett was suffering from dwarfism at the time, when he was still being treated
To this end, Schrondorf decided to take a desperate risk, and at a doctor in Munich, he found out the information of the child with short stature, in fact, this was a violation of the doctor's confidentiality agreement, but coincidentally, the father of the short child was the actor who had worked with Schrondorff, and he had planned to invite the father to participate in the filming, and the two sides hit it off. The boy's name was David Bennett, and he was the little boy who everyone later saw wandering around with a tin drum.
If the script creation and casting are still smooth, the preparation of funds is stretched, so that the crew has found actors, and has negotiated the intention of cooperation, and the pie has been drawn, but it is always a verbal commitment, and no formal contracts have been signed with the actors. With a budget of more than 8 million marks, such a grand production was rare in the Federal Republic of Germany at the time, and in addition to the support from the German government, Schrondorf had to find a way to raise more funds.
At that time, the most desirable investor in Schlöndorff's heart was Lianmei, one of the eight major companies in Hollywood. Lianmei was the Hollywood blockbuster scene that paid the most attention to the artistry of the film in that era, and even after seeing Schrondorff's first draft and plan, Lianmei felt that there was no need to let the film be shot as an English film in order to consider distribution, they were very optimistic about the artistic value of the original book itself, and also affirmed Schrondorff's adaptation plan, and the recognition of the award afterwards did prove the unique vision of Lianmei.
However, contrary to expectations, United American made a series of personnel changes, investment became suspicious, and finally only participated in the distribution of the film in North America, which of course was enough to pave the way for the film to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
Eventually, after repeated postponements, the film finally waited for a number of German government funding, as well as funds and location support from Poland and the former Yugoslavia, and the film was officially put into filming.
It is worth mentioning that after receiving Polish financial support, the film was able to shoot in Danzig (known as Gdansk in Poland). Ironically, Poland was still under the shadow of the Soviet Union at the time, and the novel "Tin Drum" was banned in Poland at that time, but danzig (known to Poles as Gdansk) was almost a copy of it by the locals. In this way, a film about the local banned book adaptation was filmed directly in Danzig.
The investment background of multinational funds makes the composition of the film crew very complicated, Germans, French, Yugoslavs, Poles and even Japanese, in the crew can not even communicate in a common language, the relationship between the members is more complicated. But in any case, the film began shooting in such an environment.
The mother's relationship with her uncle was chaotic
There are also many interesting facts about the filming of "Tin Drum". For example, the scene of Oscar's mother and uncle cheating on each other, the actress who plays the mother, Angela Winkler, who is reluctant to be naked at first, gradually let go during the filming process, not only accepting full nudity, but even the whole person is fully engaged, and the on-site personnel even have to "cool down" for the two at the time of NG, which completes the erotic scene that is enough to go down in history. Angela even told Schrondorf privately afterwards that thanks to Daniel (played by Uncle Bronski) he had to return to Warsaw that afternoon after filming the scene, otherwise...
The sexually suggestive scenes of minors on this scale are also quite controversial today
Another scene that later caused controversy was the erotic scene between Oscar Jr. and his stepmother, which has been hugely controversial for a long time because it involves underage sex scenes. And during filming, when the actress Maria appeared naked, the young actor David, who played the Oscar, was frightened first...
The most grotesque scene in the film is about eels, especially the horse's head stuffed with eels, when the crew was filming in autumn, not the active season for eels, but the crew bought a bucket of eels on the black market, but at the beginning of filming, they were interfered with by local Polish officials, claiming that the eels were polish exports, schrondorff said that they were indeed paid for in Western European currency, and after several twists and turns, the props of the terrifying eel-stuffed horse's head appeared in the film.
He was finally awarded the Palme d'Or Oscar
After all the difficulties, "Tin Drum" finally began to be test screened in May 1979, although the German representative of the distributor United States was greatly dissatisfied with the scale of the film and believed that the film could not be released in the United States, but more people praised the film's thick history and bold shooting, and the film was also invited to the 32nd Cannes International Film Festival and was shortlisted for the main competition.
In order to welcome Coppola's classic Vietnam War film "Apocalypse Now", Chairman Jacob specially abolished the rule that directors who have won the Palme d'Or cannot enter the non-competition unit, in addition to Terrence Malik's "Heaven's Day", Herzog's "Vojcek", and Andrei Tasine's "Brontë Sisters" also participated in the palm leaf competition, fierce competition.
Apocalypse Now
Although Jacob wanted to award the Palme d'Or to Apocalypse Moderne in various ways, the current jury was chaired by the talented French writer Françoise Sagan (author of the famous novel Hello, Sorrow), but insisted that the Palme d'Or be awarded to the classic literary adaptation of "Tin Drum", and the film was far ahead in the voting.
Finally, under the pressure and instruction of Jacob, the Cannes Film Festival awarded the Palme d'Or to two films, "Apocalypse Now" and "Tin Drum", creating a precedent for the cannes film festival's highest award, the double yolk egg, but this was enough to make Schrondorf excited for a long time, because the first three nominations for Cannes he returned home, how many injustices and insiders behind this were left behind.
This film established Schrondorff's status as a jianghu
And little Oscar, after all, grew up
For Schlöndorff, the greater success of "Tin Drum" may come from the affirmation of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, he suddenly got the opportunity and invitation to develop in Hollywood overnight, when spielberg, who had just become famous, invited him to shoot a film version of "Yin and Yang Demon World", once difficult to find funds for filming, he now got many Olive Branches from Hollywood films, but at this time Schlöndorff chose to be quiet first, and did not make up his mind to come to the United States to develop. But those successes also laid the groundwork for his return to Los Angeles after 4 years to work with Dustin Hoffman on Death of a Salesman.
Along with Schrondorff, the oscar-winning David Bennett made a splash that year, but apparently his luck seems to have been drained by the film. After the film was filmed, Schlöndorf actually wanted to shoot the sequel to "Tin Drum", bringing the third part of the novel, the picture of post-war German society, to the screen, but one of the reasons why the film failed to make the film was David, who had been called oscar by the people around him after the film, and had always wanted to get rid of this identity to become a real actor, and refused the invitation to play the grotesque dwarf again.
It wasn't until 28 years later that David Bennett, 41, accepted Schrondorff's invitation again, and the two collaborated on the film Urjan. But it is undeniable that the child who walks on the streets of Danzig and beats the tin drum is the most classic image he left for the audience, although the so-called debut is the peak, although it is a little unsmooth, but how many actors have the opportunity to leave a classic image on the screen that has entered the history of film? The thin figure with the tin drum has also become a cultural footnote forged by literature and history in the 20th century.
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