9 - Ich war neunzehn (1968)

Summary

WOLF'S MOST SEEMINGLY autobiographical film—loosely based on but not literally duplicating his own experiences—is also his most significant. Ich war neunzehn was made in answer to the crisis of the Eleventh Plenum, which had brought DEFA production to a standstill; its title is also an answer to Marlen Khutsiev's I am 20 (Mne dvadsat’ let, USSR 1964), a key film of the Soviet New Wave, which had run into trouble with Khrushchev and could only be released in a much-cut version. Where Khutsiev's film shows the undramatic, everyday life of young Muscovites, in a New Wave-influenced style marked by location shooting, handheld camera, and unstaged events, Wolf's film solidly returns its young protagonist, Gregor Hecker (played by Jackie Schwarz), to the larger historical foundation narrative of the GDR. It is thus a system loyalist’s answer to a Soviet film perceived as dissident. What is new about the film is Gregor's uncertainty, self-doubt, and vulnerability, which make him kin not only to French New Wave figures such as Antoine Doinel in Truffaut's 400 Blows (1959) but also to other Eastern European New Wave protagonists such as Ivan from Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood (1964) or Maciek in Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds (1957). The film, based on Wolf's own experiences at the end of the Second World War, chronicles Gregor's travels through Germany as part of a propaganda squad calling on German soldiers to desert, with two other men, a Russian teacher of German named Vadim (Vasiliy Livanov) and a blonde Russian named Sasha (Alexey Eybozhenko) who is shot at the end of the film during a surprise SS attack. As with Sonnensucher, the international cast, speaking Russian as well as German, links Wolf's film not only to East German but also to Soviet film traditions. Wolf worked with his regular crew of cameraman Werner Bergman, scriptwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase, set designer Alfred Hirschmeier, cutter Evelyn Schmidt, and assistant director Doris Borkmann; Rainer Simon was an additional second director.