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Duped Till Doomsday
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Wikipedia article
'Duped Till Doomsday' is a 1957 East German drama film directed by Kurt Jung-Alsen. It was entered into the 1957 Cannes Film Festival.
Plot
Soldiers Wagner, Paulun and Lick are three friends and the best sharpshooters in their division, that is stationed in Latvia, near the German-Soviet border. During June 1941, while on vacation, they walk near a river and spot a movement in the bush. Believing it to be a bird, they shoot in its direction and discover that they have killed Angelika, their captain's daughter. The three throw her corpse to a swamp and proceed as if nothing happened. Lick tells of the incident to his father, a Waffen-SS general, who decides to use the corpse for propaganda purposes: on 22 June, the day of the invasion to the Soviet Union, he exhumes Angelika's remains and claims she was killed by Soviet marauders. Her father orders to shoot Latvian civilians in response. Paulun tries to tell the truth, but Lick claims he is insane; Wagner remains silent. When Paulun tries to escape arrest, he is killed by Lick. Wagner does nothing and continues to behave as usual.
Cast
* Rudolf Ulrich as Wagner
* Wolfgang Kieling as Lick
* Hans-Joachim Martens as Paulun
* Walther Sssenguth as captain
* Renate Kster as Angelika
* Peter Kiwitt as Waffen-SS General Lick
* Hermann Dieckhoff as division commander
* Kurt Ulrich as lieutenant
* Erich Brauer as staff sergeant
* Hannes Fischer as kitchen sergeant
* Wolfgang Lippert as Voss
* Helga Raumer as innkeeper's daughter
* Fritz Diez as Adolf Hitler (voice)
* Horst Giese as uncredited role
Production
The script was adapted from the 1955-published novel 'Kameraden' by Franz Fhmann. Fhmann himself was excluded from participating in the production.Dennis Tate. 'Franz Fhmann, innovation and authenticity: a study of his prose-writing'. . page 50. The picture was the first of the "army epics", a new East German genre that reformed the classic German style of portraying military comradeship, replacing the typical soldiery friendship with plots centered on moral dilemmas facing the servicemen.Miera Liehm, Antonin J. Liehm . 'The Most Important Art: Soviet and Eastern European Film After 1945'. . Page 269. In addition, the picture was intended as a response to the war films produced in the West at those years.Detlef Kannapin. 'Dialektik der Bilder'. . Page 150.
Reception
'Betrogen bis zum jngsten Tag' was the first East German film to be entered into the Cannes Film Festival; a year earlier, at 1956, 'Zar und Zimmermann' and 'Der Teufelskreis' were screened outside the competition.Ulrich Pfeil. 'Die "anderen" deutsch-franzsischen Beziehungen: die DDR und Frankreich 1949'. . Page 324. Although the picture had no chance of winning due to political considerations, it was nominated for the Palme d'Or.
The film was DEFA's most successful project since the 1946 'Murderers Among Us'. It was well received abroad. The 'Punch' magazine's reviewer wrote that it was "very worth seeing... mostly admirable, flowed in the end."[https://books.google.com/books?id=trcSAAAAIAAJ&q=duped+till+doomsday&dq=duped+till+doomsday&hl=en&ei=g0nETZfpEcXf4wboq6WbBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBQ 'Punch', Volume 234. Page 163.] The East German media called it "the first DEFA war film" and praised it. Fhmann's work received considerable attention due to the film, and his books were re-printed.
References
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