Story of a Young Couple (1952) User Reviews

Stalinist propaganda

[tony-70-667920 · 5/10 · 18 July 2020]

Kurt Maetzig was probably the most important East German film director, though admirers of Konrad Wolf and Frank Beyer may argue. Maetzig's first three films were "Marriage in the Shadows", "The Chequered Bedspread" and "Council of the Gods", all made soon after the war. They're all excellent, but I can't say the same for this one. Like "Marriage" it focuses on a pair of actors who are married, but the couple in "Story" are very different. Jochen's fairly easy-going, but Agnes becomes (like Maetzig himself) a committed Communist. Jochen gets his big break in Carl Zuckmayer's play "The Devil's General", later filmed with Curt Jurgens, but she's angry with him for playing the part, as it involves playing a Luftwaffe general. She's offered her big break in Sartre's "Les Mains Sales", but finds the play vile and prefers to appear in Simonov's "The Russia Question", which Jochen, no doubt wisely, dismisses as propaganda. Divorce threatens. Agnes goes off to East Berlin and appears in a pageant to celebrate the completion of a giant housing project on Stalinallee. Some extracts from her speech: "Stalin has taken us by the hand and told us to raise our heads proudly", and "How can we begin to thank Stalin." No wonder she's awarded one of the apartments. Jochen of course finds out all his friends in West Berlin are decadent and worthless, the divorce is called off and they march arm in arm into a glorious socialist future. I couldn't help wondering how many of the female extras cheering Stalin at that joyous pageant had been raped by Soviet troops, and whether Agnes ended up reporting on her husband to the Stasi (led by Konrad Wolf's brother) : there must have been a lot of divorces when the Stasi's files were opened. The film rightly castigates Veit Harlan (here called Hartman) for supporting Hitler, and re-enacts the trial at which Harlan was acquitted. Maetzig never faced a trial for eulogising the 20th century's other great mass murderer, and lived to the age of 101. I can certainly recommend the three films I mentioned but not this one or "Song of the Sailors" which I gave up on. As for the Ernest Thalmann films, even the director was ashamed of them.