Kolberg (1945)

User Rating:

5.3/10   

Director:

Veit Harlan

Writers:

Alfred Braun (writer)
Veit Harlan (writer)

Release Date:

5 October 1953 (Sweden)

Genre:

Drama | History | War

Plot:

During Napoleon's victorious campaign in Germany, the city of Kolberg gets isolated from the retreating Prussian forces...

Plot Keywords:

Germany | Napoleonic Wars | Period Piece | Propaganda

Cast

Heinrich George	...	Bürgermeister Nettelbeck
Kristina Söderbaum	...	Maria
Paul Wegener	...	Stadtkommandant Loucadou
Horst Caspar	...	General Gneisenau
Gustav Diessl	...	Leutnant Schill
Otto Wernicke	...	Bauer Werner
Irene von Meyendorff	...	Königin
Kurt Meisel	...	Claus
Claus Clausen	...	Frédéric-Guillaume III
Jaspar von Oertzen	...	Prinz Louis Ferdinand
Jakob Tiedtke	...	Reeder
Paul Bildt	...	Rektor
Franz Schafheitlin	...	Fanselow
Hans Hermann Schaufuss	...	Zaufke
Paul Henckels	...	Major in Königsberg

Also Known As:

Burning Hearts
Kolberg - Der 30. Jannuar 1945 (Germany) (rerun title)

Runtime:

111 min

Country:

Germany

Language:

German | French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Germany:16 (re-release) | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Kolberg, Pomerania, Germany

Company:

Universum Film (UFA)

Trivia:

Under orders from Reichs-Propagandaminister Josef Goebbels, Wolfgang Liebeneiner had to cut several very expensive battle scenes, without director Veit Harlan's consent.

Goofs:

Continuity: In the scene at the Sylvester evening the camera shows the sky and it's snowing, but there are just a few clouds in the sky so it can' really snows.

Quotes:

Bürgermeister Nettelbeck: 50 years I lives in there, an now it's burned down. Alas life goes on

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Das Goebbels-Experiment (2005)

Soundtrack:

Maikäfer flieg

The Testament of Dr Goebbels

There are some mistakes in the other reviews, which I would like to correct. "Kolberg" is by no means the last film of the Third Reich. The film production kept on going until April 23 in Berlin-Babelsberg, and as long as the early days of May in Prag, the last major colour film shot being "Shiva und die Galgenblume". Until that time there were about 90 films being either completed or shot in the Prag studios. If you want to find out the really "last" film, perhaps you should check out Käutner's absolutely beautiful "Under the Bridges", which didn't pass censorship in March 1945. But I'm not sure even that was the last completed film. Amazon.de sells about 6 different films on DVD which are marked as completed in 1945 (Frech und Verliebt, Monte Miracolo, Peter Voss - Millionendieb, Fledermaus etc.) Plus there are several, which were completed in 1945, but released only after the war.

Then, Kolberg hadn't fallen when this film premiered in Berlin and La Rochelle (which, perhaps inspired by the film, capitulated only two days after Germany had fallen). Kolberg was finally abandoned on March, 18.

There is a beautiful restored print sold by the International Historic Films. It has beautiful colours and a good soundtrack, plus some extras. This film can be watched - and indeed enjoyed - as a work of art, unless you absolutely want to read propaganda into it. Sure, it was made as an ultimate propaganda vehicle, but as a viewer I am permitted to distance myself from the politics and see this film as a cinematic near masterpiece. We know, that it was radically edited in January 1945, since Dr Goebbels found it to be too bloody, "nearly pacifistic". Every trace of human suffering (aside from the lame love intrigue) was removed, and that's probably what makes this film uneven and jumpy at times. What the director's cut could have looked like, we can only guess.

Politics and propaganda are as important today as they were back then. It's important to remember the atrocities of war and the crimes of Nazist regime. But a film starts living its own life since the moment it's completed, and we are stupid if we fail to recognize its merits merely because we know, that we are supposed to be blind to them.