11 - Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz (1974)

Summary

ONE OF WOLF'S most original and subtle films, Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz (1974) is also one of his most GDR-specific works. Much of the film is hardly comprehensible without knowledge of its very local context. Even for a director who avoided rhetorical bravura as much as Wolf, this is an extremely understated film, all in half tones and fine shadings of irony and humor. The film narrates a few weeks in the life of the sculptor Kemmel, who is experiencing something of a crisis in his work, although one without any high drama, and which thus has to be guessed at from small nuances of his performance. Kemmel is played by Kurt Bowe, a beloved GDR actor who also had the role of mayor Jadup in Rainer Simon's Jadup und Boel (1980/1989). As in that film, Bowe plays a rough, gruff Everyman, very much an East German type. and not at all the typical artist as genius. Although he is married and has a child, he also has a younger mistress whom he visits. His artistic career runs into multiple obstacles: an earlier relief has been unceremoniously deposited in a storeroom rather than displayed; an attempt to portray a worker (named Hannes) fails, although he manages to connect with the worker on a personal level; and his commissioned sculpture of an athlete for a local football club (which gives the film its title) is not well received when the locals, expecting a man in a footballer's uniform, discover he has portrayed one clad only in Greek nudity. Other episodes of the film treat the artist's profession by contrast, such as a visit from a pretentious younger countercultural couple, one of whom affects to have a Russian soul and sings an Orthodox hymn along with a tape recording, or the opening of an exhibition accompanied by incongruous Pan pipes. Jackie Schwarz from Ich war neunzehn also makes a cameo appearance as the artist's model. Throughout the film, Kemmel is also wondering about what the purpose of an artist in the workers’ and peasants’ state should be, and how art relates to history (in particular to specific traumas such as Babi Yar or Buchenwald).