Word: post-war
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Gunter Grass filled his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), with symbols that are not symbols, with allegories that are not allegories, with messages that are not messages. Volker Scholondorff has turned this sprawling, self-conscious novel of post-war Germany into a beautiful and disturbing film that recreates Danzig of the '30s and '40s without adequately illuminating Grass' novel. His film is both a magnificent success--well-acted, unblinkingly photographed, crisply edited--and a huge failure, an adaptation that dismally dissipates the epic power of the novel...
...Barbaric, Mystical, bored," writes Grass of the 20th Century. Historians will one day recognize The Tin Drum as representative of a universal 20th Century experience, yet Grass' novel is above all a German work, addressing the provincial guilt and unease of post-war Germans, drawn to Hitler like adolescents to pornography and unable to cleanse themselves under the searchlight of vengeful, scrutinizing time...
From some of the burned out apartments of Fidelis Way, through shattered windows, the spires of Harvard's River Houses gleam in the distance. The ground crunches underfoot, not with fresh snow, but with broken glass. The fenced-in project looks more like post-war Dresden. The hollow buildings and junkyard streets appear uninhabitable. Many of the apartments are occupied by squatters who arrive at night and stake out empty rooms. Periodic drug raids shake up the dismal day-to-day activities at Fidelis...
...date quickly, like the Bing Crosby/Bob Hope Road to... series with which they have much in common. But Woody, though sprightly, dislikes himself for his relentless spry evasiveness (and it's been less and less prominent in his recent films); the innocence that met a popular demand in the post-war years won't do in the sophisticate seventies...
Maria may be ruthless, she may be supremely manipulative, yet she seemingly emerges through all with a rippling laugh and a twinkling gaiety. This, in contrast to other weaker characters who have not her resilience. Her physician, forced by post-war stresses into drug addiction, is one example of a character who falls by the wayside. Anothers is Willi, her brother-in-law who dissipates into a broken alcoholic. Unlike them, Maria manages to keep going. In a crazy, loyal way, she keeps visiting Herman in mail, pressing upon him money, speaking fondly of the day when he will...