Heimatfilme (German pronunciation:[ˈhaɪmaːtˌfɪlmə], German for "homeland-films"; German singular:Heimatfilm) were films of a genre popular inWest Germany, Switzerland, and Austria from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.Heimat can be translated as "home" (in the geographic sense), "hometown" or "homeland".
The genre came to life after the devastation of Germany inWorld War II, and remained popular from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. The films suggested a whole, romantic world untouched by war and the hazards of real life. The Berlin-based studioBerolina Film was the driving force behind the development ofHeimatfilme.[1]
In the immediatepost-World War II era, the idea ofHeimat is linked to the experience of loss of more than twelve million Germans, known asVertriebene, who were displaced from the former eastern territories of Germany in its pre-1938 borders. Contemporary concerns with expulsion and re-integration become manifest in many of the more than three hundredHeimatfilme that were produced during the 1950s. This is particularly true for theVertriebenenfilme as Johannes von Moltke shows with respect to the 1951 version ofThe Heath Is Green (Grün ist die Heide).[2] TheHeimatfilme made during the chancellorships ofKonrad Adenauer andLudwig Erhard present idyllic images of thecountryside. Nevertheless, the post-war genre does deal with questions ofmodernisation, social change andconsumerism; it "affords the positive resolution of contemporary social and ideological concerns about territory and identity".[3]
Heimatfilme were usually shot in theAlps, theBlack Forest, or theLüneburg Heath, and always involved the outdoors. Their characteristics were their rural settings, sentimental tone and simplistic morality, and they centered on love, friendship, family and non-urban life. They also involved the difference between old and young, tradition and progress, and rural and urban life. The typical plot structure involvedlove triangles, with both a good and bad guy wanting a girl, conflict ensuing, and the good guy ultimately triumphing to win the girl, making all (except the bad guy) happy.
In the late 1960s and the 1970s, young West German film directors associated withNew German Cinema set out to challenge many of the cultural assumptions inherent in theHeimatfilm. The results are variously labelled "criticalHeimatfilme", "newHeimatfilme", and "anti-Heimatfilme". Examples of such films includeVolker Schlöndorff'sMan on Horseback (1969) andThe Sudden Wealth of the Poor People of Kombach (1970);Peter Fleischmann'sHunting Scenes from Bavaria (1969);Volker Vogeler'sJaider, the Lonely Hunter (1971);Reinhard Hauff'sMathias Kneissl (1970); and Uwe Brandner'sI Love You, I Kill You (1971).[4] A more recent example of an anti-Heimatfilm isMichael Haneke's Oscar-nominatedThe White Ribbon (2009).
The trilogy of films calledHeimat by the German directorEdgar Reitz (1984, 1992, and 2004) has been described as "post-Heimatfilm" because the director neither sets out to challenge the genre on political or social grounds nor idealizes the past to the extent that earlierHeimatfilme did.[5]
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