La toile d'araignée

This film is based on a novel of the famous writer Joseph Roth. Director Bernhard Wicki, born in 1919, had a pretty good idea about the German society in the late Twenties. Personally he had to suffer under the NAZI regime and had to spend some years in a concentration camp, just for making a remark about Göring's wife ("Die Hohe Frau ist eine fette Sau"(The Lady is a fat pig)).

The political background of the story was certainly the frustration of many Germans about the Versailles Treaty which lead to an exaggerated nationalistic feeling, especially among the aristocrats and wealthy land owners. Wicki describes this general development based on single fates and analyzes therewith the unhealthy situation in Germany which ended in the takeover of the political and individual life by the Nazis.

The cast is first class: Ulrich Mühe (who won the "Oscar" award for his role in the movie "Das Leben der Anderen"), Armin Müller-Stahl and not to forget Klaus Maria Brandauer.

The main figure - Theodor Lohse(Mühe) - is a typical example for a young man who simply tries to meliorate his personal situation and just wants to live a better life. His only chance is to unconditionally surrender to the influential and wealthy class which dictates the political and daily life in Germany.

Wicki shows analytically the suspension which leads Lohse more and more in a criminal life where there is no escape. This 3 hour movie is full of historical details which give an excellent picture of the mood and situation in these days. For a non German this story might be rather complicated and hard to follow if he is not familiar with the newer German history of the late Twenties and early Thirties of the past century.

I can only recommend this film which is full of suspense, to everybody who is interested in the history of our country.

If it is only for subject a film by Bernhard Wicki is always interesting viewing, but it also takes a lot of perseverance. This very long (would it ever end?), badly paced and boring film is no exception. Maybe the long production period (almost three years) took its toll, the film is very unsatisfactory with a couple of good scenes but on the whole it is a muddled up endeavour that sometimes simply rambles on from the one scene to the next without any overall power and structure. I could not care a bit about any of the characters.

Wicki is not shy of using some strong graphic imagery to really make his point only to achieve complete distance: ah yes another ripped off head. Furthermore he seems to have been afraid not to get the atmosphere of the period across and endlessly we have to watch how good he was trying to achieve this by maybe a 1000 props we all have to see and a rather folklore interpretation of the Jewish Berlin neighbourhood: Wicki should have concentrated on good story telling in stead. The film is not helped much by poor acting.