Der geteilte Himmel (1964)

Der geteilte Himmel: Directed by Konrad Wolf. With Renate Blume, Eberhard Esche, Hans Hardt-Hardtloff, Hilmar Thate. After a breakdown, Rita returns to her childhood village. It is 1961. As she recovers, she remembers the past two years: her love for the chemist Manfred, ten years her senior; his enthusiasm about his new chemical process, which turned to bitter disappointment in the face of rejection; his escape to West Berlin a few weeks before the Wall was built; and his hope that she would follow him. This East German classic, praised by critics as one of Germany’s 100 Most Important Films, is based on Christa Wolf’s internationally-known novel, criticized in the GDR for questioning the construction of the Wall. Produced during a brief cultural thaw in the early 1960s, this film was strongly influenced by French Nouvelle Vague cinema.

“Having seen two Konrad Wolf films set in WW2 (u0026quot;Starsu0026quot; and u0026quot;I Was Nineteenu0026quot;, I was keen to see more of his work. I wish I hadnu0026#39;t bothered with this one, and canu0026#39;t explain why I sat through it to the end. I see it has been voted one of the 100 best German films, which says a lot about German cinema, none of it good. The two major problems are the story and the dialogue. As a voice- over near the end admits, the story is banal. Iu0026#39;ve had experience of life behind the Iron Curtain, so the girlu0026#39;s decision to split with the man she loved and return to the laughably-named German Democratic Republic made no sense to me. She wasnu0026#39;t a Communist, sheu0026#39;d seen the way the system treated her friend and fellow student, and she barely bothered to see her mother, so what drew her back? The joy of working in a factory making railway carriages, which was a waste of her intelligence? Lack of courage and imagination (u0026quot;Iu0026#39;ve always lived in the same townu0026quot;)? What really sinks this film, as Thomas from Berlin points out, is the dreadful dialogue. Since the book is drawn from a Crista Wolf novel, and she helped write the script, I suspect the blame is largely hers. Characters, with the exception of the herou0026#39;s father, just donu0026#39;t talk like human beings. I certainly feel no urge to read any of the ladyu0026#39;s novels.”