The noted German director Volker Schlöndorff made The Tin Drum, an anti-war (and anti-totalitarian) satire, which defies easy categorization by blending elements of magical realism, a symbolic allegory, and a period dramedy.
Grade: B+
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Original German film poster
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The screen adaptation of Günter Grass’s novel (of the same name) was co-written by Schlöndorff, Jean-Claude Carrière, and Franz Seitz.
It stars Mario Adorf, Angela Winkler, Katharina Thalbach, Daniel Olbrychski, and Charles Aznavour.
David Bennent plays the lead role of Oskar Matzerath, a young, precautious boy who willfully arrests his own physical development, determined to remain in the body of a child even as in his adulthood.
A darkly comic war drama with magical realist elements, the film follows Oskar, a precocious child living in Danzig, who wields seemingly preternatural abilities.
Oskar lives in contempt of the adults around him and witnesses firsthand their potential for cruelty, first via the rise of the Nazi Party and then by the subsequent war.
The title refers to Oskar’s toy tin drum, which is given to him in 1927, on his third birthday; he loudly plays whenever he is displeased or upset.
Oskar is the son of a half-Polish Kashubian woman, Agnes Bronski, who is married to German chef Alfred Matzerath. Agnes is engaged in an affair with Jan, a Polish Post Office worker and her cousin. Alfred and Jan are great friends, and Alfred mostly acts as if he is unaware of his wife’s infidelity.
Oskar’s parentage is uncertain, though he believes that Jan is his biological father.
Oskar Matzerath, a boy born and raised in the Free City of Danzig prior to and during World War II, recalls the story’s events, though clearly he is a subjective, unreliable narrator.
Reflecting on the foolish antics of his drunken parents and friends, he resolves to stop growing.
Oskar then discovers that he can shatter glass with his voice, an ability he often uses when he is upset or displeased. On one occasion, he uses his drumming to cause the attendants of a Nazi rally to start dancing a waltz.
During a visit to the circus, Oskar befriends Bebra, a performing dwarf who chose to stop growing at age ten.
The movie was marketed as an “important art-house film,” benefiting from the prestige of its source material, Gunther Grass well received novel, which was far more complex, ambitious, and vital than the movie it inspired.
Some critics complained that Oskar simply doesn’t have a personality forceful enough to unify the rambling continuity, or replace the narrative voice that gave the book intellectual authority. The uneven movie unfolded as a series of set pieces and images, which differed in vitality.
Critical Kudos
The German-language film was a co-production of West German, French, and Yugoslavian companies.
The film shared the Palme d’Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Fest in a tie with Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. t was the first German move to win that award.
It was a major financial success in West Germany, where it won the German Film Award for Best Film.
It was received more controversially internationally, and became a target by censorship campaigns in Ireland, Canada, and the U.S.
Nonetheless, the film went on to become the highest-grossing German film in the U.S., with a gross of $4 million, beating the record set a year earlier by Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun.
The film won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the 1980 Academy Awards.
Credits:
Directed by Volker Schlöndorff
Written by Jean-Claude Carrière, Franz Seitz, Schlöndorff, based on The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
Produced by Franz Seitz
Cinematography Igor Luther
Edited by Suzanne Baron
Music by Maurice Jarre
Distributed by United Artists
Running time: 142 minutes; 162 minutes (Director’s cut)
Budget $3 million
Box office $13 million
