Word: schlondorffs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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HERE IS The Tin Drum's failure, of course. Intimidated by Grass and by the novel itself, Schlondorff's film is hardly more than a moving picture show, Oskar's treasured photograph album (left out of the film) brought to life. The director has made little attempt to translate aspects of the novel into cinematic language. While Grass' imagination provides an exciting and titillating narrative, Scholondorff only steers his camera earnestly through each sequence, giving Oskar's war-time charades a warm, personal gloss. Schlondorff's Oskar is little Oskar, a cruel, manipulative Peter Pan who ultimately leaves his Never...
...business, however, and The Tin Drum was guaranteed of commercial success in Germany because of the novel's popularity. Grass resisted all offers for the film rights to his book for 15 years until he decided he had met, finally, the right man to direct Oskar's story. Schlondorff (whose past films include Young Torless and The Lost Honor of Katherin Blum) asked sharp questions, Grass noted, and made no plans to significantly alter his book for the screen...
...Schlondorff must be conceded his nice touches. The film begins and ends with Oskar's grandmother in her Kashubian potato field, a Brechtian Mother Courage moving with time and walking in place, Mother Earth herself, born of the land and too old to travel far from her potato patch. She is an ugly, dirty (dirty-y) little woman who, quite by coincidence, spawns Oskar's mother, who in turn delivers Oskar...