''Rotation'' is a 1949 East German

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

directed by

Wolfgang Staudte Wolfgang Staudte (9 October 1906 – 19 January 1984), born Georg Friedrich Staudte, was a German film director, script writer and actor. He was born in Saarbrücken. After 1945, Staudte also looked at German guilt in the cinema. Alongside He ...

and starring

Paul Esser Paul Esser (24 April 1913 – 20 January 1988) was a German stage and television actor and voice actor. He is remembered for playing the lead role in the Sender Freies Berlin version of the detective series ''Tatort''. Esser was born in Geld ...

Irene Korb Irene is a name derived from εἰρήνη (eirēnē), the Greek for "peace". Irene, and related names, may refer to: * Irene (given name) Places * Irene, Gauteng, South Africa * Irene, South Dakota, United States * Irene, Texas, United States ...

and

Werner Peters Werner Peters (7 July 1918 – 30 March 1971) was a German film actor. He appeared in 102 films between 1947 and 1971. Biography Peters was born in Werlitzsch, Kreis Delitzsch, Prussian Saxony, and died of a heart attack on a promotion tou ...

. It was produced under the auspices of the DEFA film studio in

East Germany 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 ...

. It began filming on 29 September 1948 and premiered in theaters on 16 September 1949. The film was partly shot at the Althoff Studios in

Potsdam Potsdam () is the capital and, with around 183,000 inhabitants, largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of B ...

. The

art director Art director is the title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, film industry, film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and ...

Willy Schiller Willy Schiller (11 August 1899 – 17 July 1973) was a German art director.Allan & Sandford p.3 In the later part of his career he worked for DEFA, the East German state-controlled film studio. Selected filmography * ''Radio Magic'' (1927) * ''T ...

and Arthur Schwarz worked on the film's sets.

Plot

The film opens to scenes of Berlin during World War II, with the ongoing war depicted by bombs and explosions, both onscreen and in the background soundtrack. The film then jumps back twenty years in time, and, through a series of vignettes about worker Hans Behnke, traces the way in which a typical worker who opposes Nazi party ideology could be drawn into complying and cooperating with the Nazi regime. Significant vignettes include depictions of the high unemployment in 1920s Germany and later, the threat to Hans's job due to his failure to belong to the Nazi party. It is implied that Hans's complicity with the Nazi regime rises out of a desire to be able to provide for his family and not return to the ranks of the Arbeitslos (unemployed). Hans ultimately does join the Nazi party, but still shows signs of disagreement with their ideology. He eventually aids a resistance group in printing anti-war propaganda, and is finally turned into the authorities by his son Helmut. Hans is then put in jail, and the timeline returns to that given at the very beginning of the film. Hans is eventually freed from jail, but his wife, Charlotte, has been killed in the war. The end of the film depicts Hans's reconciliation with his son Helmut, and Helmut's beginning of a new life with his girlfriend. The ending scenes of the film echo those of the beginning in which Hans and Charlotte start their life, but with dialog and visual symbolism suggesting that Helmut will not repeat his father's mistakes and his father's complicity.

Critical reception

Critics noted that Hans Behnke's character represented the typical German worker, and that his reasons for cooperating with the Nazi regime resonated with viewers who had lived through the war. Viewers in 1949 saw themselves in Behnke. As one critic wrote, "dieser Film zeigt, wie es wirklich war" (this film shows how it really was). Staudte explicitly stated that the intended message of the film was against war: in his words, his goal was to "show how it could come to such an unimaginable catastrophe, in order to help ensure that it will not come to a greater catastrophe in the future."quoted in Baumer Heinz, and Hermann Herlinghaus. ''20 Jahre DEFA-Spielfilm.'' Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1968. The film won the

Golden Leopard The Golden Leopard () is the top prize at the Locarno International Film Festival, an international film festival held annually in Locarno, Switzerland since 1946. Directors in the process of getting an international reputation are allowed to be ...

at the

Locarno International Film Festival The Locarno Film Festival is an annual film festival, held every August in Locarno, Switzerland. Founded in 1946, the festival screens films in various competitive and non-competitive sections, including feature-length narrative, documentary, sh ...

Main cast

as Hans Behnke *

as Charlotte Blank Behnke * Karl Heinz Deickert as Hellmuth Behnke *

Reinhold Bernt Reinhold Bernt (19 December 1902 – 26 October 1981) was a German film actor. Bernt was born Reinhold Bienert in Berlin and died in West Berlin. Career Bernt's acting career began in Stuttgart with a theater debut. Soon after, he traveled to B ...

as Kurt Blank *

Reinhard Kolldehoff Reinhard Kolldehoff (29 April 1914 – 18 November 1995) was a German film actor. He appeared in 140 films between 1941 and 1988. He was born and died in Berlin, Germany. Selected filmography * '' The Gasman'' (1941) - Polizeibeamter (uncr ...

as Rudi Wille *

as Udo Schulze *

Brigitte Krause Brigitte Krause (1929–2007) was a German actress who from 1948 was trained at the East German DEFA studios in Berlin. While still a student, in 1949 she made her debut as Christel in Kurt Maetzig's film ''Girls in Gingham''. She went on to take ...

as Inge * Albert Johannes as Personalchef * Theodor Vogeler as 1. SD-Mann *

Walter Tarrach Walter may refer to: People * Walter (name) Walter is a German masculine given name derived from Old High German ''Walthari'', composed of the elements ''walt-'' (Proto-Germanic ''*wald-'') "power", "ruler", and ''hari'' (Proto-Germanic ''*χar ...

as 2. SD-Mann *

Valeska Stock Valeska Stock (1887–1966) was a German actress who appeared in around thirty films in supporting roles. Stock originally trained as a ballet dancer in her native Breslau, before moving into theatre and then into the film industry. She played th ...

as Hebamme

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rotation (Film) 1949 films East German films Films directed by Wolfgang Staudte Films set in Berlin Golden Leopard winners Films set in the 1920s Films set in the 1930s Films set in the 1940s Films about Nazi Germany German black-and-white films Films shot at Althoff Studios German drama films 1949 drama films 1940s German-language films