Don't Forget My Little Traudel

Don't Forget My Little Traudel (German: Vergeßt mir meine Traudel nicht)[1] is an East German comedy film, directed by Kurt Maetzig. It was released in 1957.

Don't Forget My Little Traudel
Directed byKurt Maetzig
Produced byHans-Joachim Schoeppe
Written byKurt Barthel
StarringEva-Maria Hagen
Music byHans Hendrik Wehding
CinematographyErwin Anders
Edited byIlse Peters
Distributed byProgress Film
Release date
  • 15 November 1957 (1957-11-15)
Running time
86 minutes
CountryEast Germany
LanguageGerman

Plot

Traudel is a war orphan, whose mother had died in the Ravensbrück concentration camp after refusing to renounce her love for a Czechoslovak prisoner. The only remnant the daughter has from her mother is a letter ending with the words "don't forget me, my little Traudel". When she turns seventeen, she flees the orphanage and ventures to Berlin, where she meets policeman Hannes, who falls in love with her and even forges documents for her. He is caught, but is only slightly reprimanded, and marries her.

Cast

Production

At the late 1950s, the East German cultural establishment allowed a certain liberalization in the national cinema industry, and a series of entertainment-oriented films was produced by DEFA as a result, mainly comedies.[2] Director Kurt Maetzig told an interviewer that he decided to create a light-hearted comedy after being exhausted by the work on "the all-too-serious" Castles and Cottages. He encountered difficulties when he tried to have the script approved for filming by the DEFA Commission, which criticized it for lack of morality an overly-sexual content; only the influence of the director and of writer Kurt Barthel enabled it to be authorized.[3] Maetzig was influenced by The Seven Year Itch when making Don't Forget My Little Traudel, and included a scene in which Eva-Maria Hagen's skirt fluttered in the wind in a manner reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe's famous appearance. The movie was the actress' debut on screen.[4][5]

Reception

Although Traudel was a commercial success, Maetzig complained that most critics did not respond well to the film: Mikhail Romm told that the director "betrayed Socialist Realism" after watching it.[3] The East German authorities continued to see it in negative light after its release.[2]

Antonin and Miera Liehm called the film "a tale of cheap sentimentality".[6] Joshua Feinstein wrote that "the director was certainly not above... depicting women in demeaning conventions... as a voluptuos ditz".[7] Sabine Hake noted that the film, while presenting the adventures of a teenage girl, still used the conventions of class struggle and other communist motifs when depicting society.[8]

References
  1. "Vergeßt mir meine Traudel nicht" [Don't Forget My Little Traudel]. defa.de (in German). Archived from the original on 28 March 2018.
  2. Schittly, Dagmar (2002). Zwischen Regie und Regime: die Filmpolitik der SED im Spiegel der DEFA-Produktionen. Berlin: Links Verlag. p. 122. ISBN 978-3-86153-262-0.
  3. Poss, Ingrid; Warnecke, Peter, eds. (2006). Spur der Filme: Zeitzeugen über die DEFA. Berlin: Links Verlag. p. 124. ISBN 978-3-86153-401-3.
  4. Schenk, Ralf (25 January 2005). "Der Mann, der das Kaninchen schuf" [The Man who Made the Rabbit]. Berliner Zeitung (in German). Archived from the original on 9 May 2012.
  5. "Retrospective: Vergesst mir meine Traudel nicht" [Don't Forget My Little Traudel]. berlinale.de. 2011.
  6. Liehm, Miera; Liehm, Antonin J. (1980). The Most Important Art: Soviet and Eastern European Film After 1945. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 262. ISBN 978-0-520-04128-8.
  7. Feinstein, Joshua (2002). The Triumph of the Ordinary: Depictions of Daily Life in the East German Cinema, 1949–1989. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. p. 134. ISBN 978-0-8078-5385-6.
  8. Hake, Sabine (2002). German National Cinema. London: Routledge. p. 101. ISBN 978-0-415-08901-2.
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