''Carbide and Sorrel'' () is a 1963
East German
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...
comedy film directed by
Frank Beyer
Frank Paul Beyer (; 26 May 1932 – 1 October 2006) was a German film director. In East Germany he was one of the most important film directors, working for the state film monopoly DEFA and directed films that dealt mostly with the Nazi era ...
and starring
Erwin Geschonneck
Erwin Geschonneck (27 December 1906 – 12 March 2008) was a German actor. His biggest success occurred in the German Democratic Republic, where he was considered one of the most famous actors of the time.
Early life
Geschonneck was born in Bart ...
.
Plot
In 1945, after the end of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
in Europe, Karl 'Kalle' Blücher examines the ruins of the cigarette factory where he worked in the city of
Dresden
Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...
. The other workers tell him they need
carbide
In chemistry, a carbide usually describes a compound composed of carbon and a metal. In metallurgy, carbiding or carburizing is the process for producing carbide coatings on a metal piece.
Interstitial / Metallic carbides
The carbides of the ...
to replace the destroyed roof. They assign him the job of getting it, as he has a brother-in-law in
Wittenberge
Wittenberge () is a town of eighteen thousand people on the middle Elbe in the district of Prignitz, Brandenburg, Germany.
Geography
Wittenberge is situated at the right (north-eastern) bank of the middle Elbe at its confluence with the Stepen ...
who works at a carbide company. Also, they are all married and have to look after their families, while he is single and a vegetarian, so he should be better able to feed himself along the way.
Karl walks to Wittenberge. His brother-in-law gives him seven barrels, but cannot help him with their transportation. His return to Dresden turns into a long chain of comical incidents.
First, a good-looking war widow named Karla invites him to put the barrels on her wagon and takes him a short distance to her farmhouse, where he spends the night and they become romantically entwined. He promises to return after he makes his delivery.
Next, he hitches a ride on a truck in exchange for his cigarettes. While waiting for another ride, he hunts mushrooms in the nearby forest, unaware that the woods have been mined until an old man warns him. A second truck takes him further along in return for his cooked mushrooms.
Finding a seemingly empty barn, he takes a nap in the loft. Soviet soldiers find him (and a hidden cache of Nazi food), so they take him to their commandant. The sympathetic commandant believes his story and lets him go, but tells him he needs permits from Dresden and Potsdam to transport raw materials between regions. Karl instead talks the captain in charge of supplies into giving him stamped written authorization and a cart for two barrels of carbide. Later, hunger overcoming his beliefs, he decides to go fishing using carbide (which
explodes when it is wet). The first barrel he opens contains chalk, but the second has carbide. The explosion, however, results in suspicious Soviet troops taking him into custody again. Back he goes to the same commandant. This time, he trades the captain one more barrel for a 30-kilometre truck ride (Karl gives him the one with chalk inside). Along the way, they pick up first a middle-aged singer, then Karin, a teenage orphan in
pigtails
A woman with long pigtails and braids.
In the context of hairstyles, the usage of the term pigtail (or twin tail or twintail) shows considerable variation. The term may refer to a single braid, but is more frequently used in the plural ("p ...
determined to go to America.
The trio then find an abandoned boat. The singer, unable to steal the boat, leaves the next morning. Karl rows the barrels and the girl (who does not want to go to Dresden) down the river
Elbe
The Elbe (; cs, Labe ; nds, Ilv or ''Elv''; Upper and dsb, Łobjo) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Repu ...
. When one of the oars breaks, they end up stranded on the concrete pillar of a wrecked bridge in the middle of the river with two barrels; the boat comes loose and drifts away with the other two. Karin abandons him the next morning.
Then an American soldier appears in a motorboat. He is willing to help (in exchange for a barrel), but is forbidden to go into
Soviet-controlled territory, so Karl steals his boat. He later docks and encounters Clara, a middle-aged widow. She plies him with liquor, but he ends up too drunk to go to bed with her as she wants. (One of her worker tells him that he is the 13th man Clara has taken in.) Two German ex-soldiers show up and are put to work gardening. Karl fixes some machinery in a sawmill. One of the soldiers sleeps with Clara. Early the next morning, the pair steal Karl's barrels, but he wakes up in time to drive them off.
He is next given a ride by an undertaker in exchange for a
eulogy
A eulogy (from , ''eulogia'', Classical Greek, ''eu'' for "well" or "true", ''logia'' for "words" or "text", together for "praise") is a speech or writing in praise of a person or persons, especially one who recently died or retired, or as a ...
. Taking a nap in the empty coffin, he terrifies a later hitchhiker when he emerges from it. At the funeral, they discover that the dead man was despised when the "mourners" slip quickly away.
At a black market, he tries to exchange transportation for a barrel, but is instead arrested. He escapes and is recaptured; fortunately, the man in charge believes he is working for the Soviet occupiers and lets him go.
Finally, after six weeks, he returns to the factory with two barrels of carbide. He finds letters from Karla there. Karl borrows a bicycle and starts back to Wittenberge.
Cast
*
Erwin Geschonneck
Erwin Geschonneck (27 December 1906 – 12 March 2008) was a German actor. His biggest success occurred in the German Democratic Republic, where he was considered one of the most famous actors of the time.
Early life
Geschonneck was born in Bart ...
as Karl 'Kalle' Blücher
*
Marita Böhme
Marita Böhme (born 7 May 1939) is a German actress. She appeared in more than forty films from 1962 to 2005.
Selected filmography
References
External links
*
1939 births
Living people
Actresses from Dresden
German film actresses ...
as Karla
* Manja Behrens as Clara
* Margot Busse as Karin
* Kurt Rackelmann as Riese
* Rudolf Asmus as the singer
* Hans-Dieter Schlegel as the American soldier
*
Fred Delmare
Werner Vorndran (24 April 1922 – 1 May 2009), known professionally as Fred Delmare, was a German actor.
Life and work
Werner Vorndran was the son of a carpenter and a seamstress and grew up in Hüttensteinach at Sonneberg in Thuringia, wh ...
as the coachman
* Bruno Carstens as the police officer
* Alexei Presnetsov as the Soviet commandant
* Leonid Svetloff as the Red Army supply officer
* Werner Möhring as Peter
* Peter Dommisch as Paul
* Fred Ludwig as Ganove
* Günter Rüger as the man with the marmalade
*
Fritz Diez
Fritz Diez (27 February 1901 – 19 October 1979) was a German actor, producer, director and theater manager.
Biography
Early life
Diez's mother was a servant, and raised her three children alone. To support his family, the child began working a ...
as the reconstruction chief
* Jochen Thomas as a locomotive driver
* Elsa Grube-Deister as a woman in the sawmill
* Gina Presgott as a woman in the sawmill
* Otto Saltzmann as an old man
* Wolfram Handel as a traveler
* Gerd Ehlers as the butcher
* Albert Zahn as a locomotive driver
* Hans Hardt-Hardtloff as the commissar
* Agnes Kraus as a woman in the cemetery
*
Sabine Thalbach
Sabine Thalbach (actually ''Sabine Joachim genannt Thalbach''; 4 August 1932 – 30 September 1966) was a German actress who appeared in many East German films. She was married to the director Benno Besson, and was the mother of the actress Katha ...
as a woman in the cemetery
* Else Koren as a woman in the cemetery
* Maria Besendahl as a woman in the cemetery
* Gertrud Brendler as a woman in the cemetery
* Frank Michelis as a worker
* Hermann Eckhardt as a worker
* Georg Helge as a worker
* Peter Kalisch as the man with the hat
*
Horst Giese
Horst Fritz Otto Giese (31 January 1926 – 29 December 2008) was an East German actor.
Biography
In 1945, Giese made his debut on stage at his native Neuruppin, then in the Soviet occupation zone. Later he appeared on television. His first role ...
in an uncredited role
Production
Frank Beyer recounted that the script was authorized without unusual problems. But after filming ended, representatives of the East German Ministry of Culture were worried that the portrayal of Red Army soldiers as comical plunderers would offend the Soviet Union. The Deputy Minister then took a copy of the film to Moscow and arranged a screening for a local audience. The audience broke into loud laughter during the viewing, and it was approved for mass screening.
Actor Erwin Geschonneck told that "In ''Carbide and Sorrel'' we did not ignore the hardships of the time. We did not turn the people who rebuilt the country into a joke... We knew that, in spite of all the challenges back then, the people also had funny experiences and knew to laugh about them."
Reception
The film was well received. Author Joshua Feinstein noted that "the picture spared no one, including the Red Army, in its satire. The work also subtly undermined the official accounts of the GDR's history." Seán Allan and John Sandford wrote that "it took a deceptively light-hearted look at the division of Germany" and was a "milestone in DEFA's history." Catherine Fowler concluded that it was one of the "most prominent" examples of "DEFA comedies... relaxed enough to laugh at their own Germanness."
Frank Beyer's codename in
Stasi
The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the (),An abbreviation of . was the Intelligence agency, state security service of the East Germany from 1950 to 1990.
The Stasi's function was similar to the KGB, serving as a means of maint ...
files, ''Karbid'', was inspired by the film's title.
[Daniela Berghahn. ''Hollywood behind the Wall: the cinema of East Germany''. . Page 28.]
References
External links
*
''Carbide and Sorrel''at
filmportal.de/en
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carbide and Sorrel
1963 films
1963 comedy films
German comedy films
East German films
1960s German-language films
Films directed by Frank Beyer
Babelsberg Studio films
Films set in 1945
1960s German films