The Tin Drum (film)

Infobox_Film
name = The Tin Drum


image size= 150 px
caption= original movie poster
imdb_id = 0078875
writer = Volker Schlöndorff
Jean-Claude Carrière
Franz Seitz
Adapted from the Novel The Tin Drum by Gunther Grass
starring = Mario Adorf
Angela Winkler
David Bennent
Katharina Thalbach
Charles Aznavour
director = Volker Schlöndorff
producer = Franz Seitz
Anatole Dauman
distributor =
released = flagicon|West Germany May 3, 1979
flagicon|USA 11 April, 1980
runtime = 142 min
country = GER
YUG
language = German
Polish
Russian
Italian

amg_id = 1:50080
budget =

"The Tin Drum" ( _de. Die Blechtrommel) is a 1979 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Günter Grass. It was directed and co-written by Volker Schlöndorff.

The film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival and the 1979 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Plot summary

David Bennent plays Oskar, the young son of a Kashubian family in a rural area of the Free City of Danzig, circa 1925. On his third birthday, Oskar receives a shiny new tin drum. At this point, rather than mature into one of the miserable specimens of grown-up humanity that he sees around him, he vows never to get any older or any bigger. Whenever the world around him becomes too much to bear, the boy begins to hammer on his drum; should anyone try to take the toy away from him, he emits an ear-piercing scream that literally shatters glass. As Germany degenerates towards Nazism and war in the 1930s and 1940s, the unageing Oskar continues savagely beating his drum.

Reception

"The Tin Drum" was one of the most financially successful German films of the 1970s and won the 1979 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

Controversy

The film features a scene in which Bennent, then 11 years old and playing a stunted 16-year-old, appears to perform oral sex on a 16-year-old girl (played by actress Katharina Thalbach, who was 24 years old at the time).

In 1980, the film version of "The Tin Drum" was first cut, and then banned as child pornography by the Ontario Censor Board in Canada. [ [http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2004/200404/20040419.html CBC Radio | The Current | Whole Show Blow-by-Blow ] ]

Similarly, on June 25, 1997, following a ruling made by State District Court Judge Richard Freeman, who had reportedly only viewed a single isolated scene of the film, "The Tin Drum" was banned from Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, citing the state's obscenity laws for portraying underage sexuality. All copies in Oklahoma City were likewise confiscated and at least one person who had rented the film on video tape was threatened with prosecution. Michael Camfield, leader of a local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit against the police department on July 4, 1997, alleging that the tape had been illegally confiscated and his rights infringed.

This led to a high-profile series of hearings on the film's merits as a whole versus the controversial scene, and the role of the judge as censor. The film emerged vindicated and most copies were returned within a few months. [http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/publib/1997-July/080537.html] [http://www.bubbaworld.com/tin-drum-1.html]

Cast

*Mario Adorf - Alfred Matzerath
*Angela Winkler - Agnes Matzerath
*Katharina Thalbach - Maria Matzerath
*David Bennent - Oskar Matzerath
*Daniel Olbrychski - Jan Bronski
*Tina Engel - Anna Koljaiczek (young)
*Berta Drews - Anna Koljaiczek (old)
*Charles Aznavour - Sigismund Markus
*Roland Teubner - Joseph Koljaiczek
*Tadeusz Kunikowski - Uncle Vinzenz
*Andréa Ferréol - Lina Greff
*Heinz Bennent - Greff
*Ilse Pagé - Gretchen Scheffler
*Werner Rehm - Scheffler
*Käte Jaenicke - Mother Truczinski
*Helmut Brasch - Old Heilandt

References

External links

*imdb title|id=0078875|title=The Tin Drum
* [http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=234&eid=349&section=essay Criterion Collection essay by Eric Rentschler]
* [http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/publib/1997-July/080537.html Librarian discussion of the Oklahoma case]
* [http://www.surfindead.com/tindrum.html Film review at Surfin' Dead]

###@@@KEY@@@###succession box
title=Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
years=1979
before="Get Out Your Handkerchiefs"
after="Moscow Does not Believe in Tears"succession box
title=Palme d'Or
years=1979
tied with "Apocalypse Now"
before="The Tree of Wooden Clogs"
after="All That Jazz"
tied with "Kagemusha"