A Lenda de Paul e Paula

Die Legende von Paul und Paula captures the spirit of the changes and upheavals of the late 1960ies / early 1970ies upheaval like no other film. Outstanding acting and the on-screen chemistry between Angelica Domröse and Winfried Glatzeder (basically they're the Brangelina of early 1970ies East Germany) make up for the movie's slow and somewhat inane first third, and some dated flourishes such as the Sergeant Pepper-style scene on the barge. The movie manages to convey that the GDR wasn't the worker's paradise many like to remember it as, without ever being in-your-face type of critical.

Unlike some reviewers have hinted, the movie was never banned in the GDR, although it can't have been popular with the party big whigs. In fact it was even the most popular homegrown movie on the other side of the wall.

This picture, which has been shown in East Germany for only a week until political censors understood its impact on the people, is a very realistic East German view of life in post war East Berlin. It's mainly about the romance of Paul, a privileged but unhappy secret service agent, and Paula, an underprivileged and single girl with children. Since it is one of the very few movies which portraits honest details of real life in East Berlin at that time, it now serves as a reminder of emotions and feelings for a lot of East Germans. Despite the heavy use of symbolism (pretty old houses are blown away for the construction of uniform socialist buildings) it still doesn't draw a too pessimistic picture and leaves space for dreams and hope. I really love this movie, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to catch a glimpse idea of how life was at that time in a socialistic system. The film is available with English subtitles which gives foreigners the chance to understand it, too.

This is a film from the time when you only saw Trabant (GDR-made) and Volga (Soviet-made) cars on the streets. It is a sad love story, set among the ruins of old German houses and the new blocks of socialism. In the soundtrack we hear some songs by the band from DDR Die Puhdys, unfortunately not the best from their repertoire, actually some very bad, they having some really excellent ones, being the most valuable rock band in communist Germany. For a film made in that period, when in countries like GDR, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Albania the films were nothing but communist propaganda, this film is a real exception, being very libertine, something inexplicable how it got away of the fierce censorship of the regime. In Yugoslavia the situation was different, they were much freer. And, there were bolder films in Hungary, Poland, Romania, but they were banned soon after release or scenes were cut. Angelica Domröse plays a role full of courage, totally unconventional for the politics behind the iron curtain. Scenes of sex and alcohol consumption could not be seen in those films of communist countries where everyone had to appear happy, without problems, living a wonderful life, in a perfect society, where children were brought by storks, not being the fruit of a sexual act between a man and a woman.

If you want to get the feel of life in East Germany and of life in the 70s, this is your film. It is critical of the socialist system (national socialism ended in 1945, afterwards there was no Nazi-propaganda anywhere anymore, especially not in the East! Sorry, but another reviewer got this wrong), offers a romantic story and good acting by well-known actors. It is still cult in Berlin, where you can regularly see in the cinema. It kicked off the wave of east-German nostalgia. The film was so successful that today you can still see references to it in other films (eg. "Sonnenallee") and that the city decided to name a path along a lake "Paul und Paula Ufer" with a Paul und Paula bench to sit on. Also the soundtrack is worth listening to (especially the lyrics) and marked the beginning of the Puhdys'huge career.

It's kind of weird. Angelica Domröse speaks in the movie of a Banana and why it's bent, yet she as an actress has probably never seen one. Also her parents most likely chose her name 'Angelica' (note: the name is spelt 'Angelika' in any German-speaking country) to mock the Soviet system and give credit to the American way of life. Just like pretty much anyone else in the GDR (note: if ever you meet a girl in Europe named 'Doreen', 'Melissa' or 'Mandy', it's pretty safe to say that she's from East Germany).

Pretty much all of the home appliances shown are authentic, yet they had to introduce coffee and cosmetics (which didn't really exist in the GDR at that time) to make it suitable for the political demagogues. Imagine it: the fact that there is a sentence in English ("excuse me, only one glass for you") could have led to a total ban of the entire movie.

What else is there to say? Try to understand the lyrics of the Band 'Puhdys' featured manifold in this flick and the in-between-the-lines-messages and how this was important to get thoughts of freedom past the GDR's government's census.

Well you guys probably don't and will never understand what kind of fruit GDR's socialism sprouted, but watching 'Paul and Paula' could theoretically help you get at least a glimpse.