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The Story of a Young Couple (Roman einer jungen Ehe) (1952)
Directed by Kurt Maetzig
Distributed by DEFA Film Library
www.defafilmlibrary.com
99 minutes
A Berlin Romance (Eine Berliner Romanze) (1956)
Directed by Gerhard Klein
Distributed by DEFA Film Library
www.defafilmlibrary.com
81 minutes
These two historical relics of the only film production organization of the now defunct German Democratic Republic have been available on VHS from the same source for over a decade but are now being promoted to the "permanence" of the digital format. The validation entailed by the transfer to disc is well deserved, for both are gems for the historian, the historical sociologist, and the film buff alike. The Story of a Young Couple (1952) and A Berlin Romance (1956) have much to share with contemporary audiences, representing as they do distant voices from across a vast frontier of decades passed, landscapes faded and governments discharged. Like all of the DEFA films available, in their images and sounds these films represent uniquely and invaluably the remaining shadow of the challenges and complexity of life and culture in the former GDR.
The Story of a Young Couple is an especially vivid example of DEFA propaganda cinema at the point of the Cold War when Stalinism was firmly establishing its grip on the artistic ethos of the GDR. The credits-over opening shots of Agnes Sailer making her way through a rubble-reduced East Berlin orients the audience to Germany at zero-hour, signifying the end and beginning of a nation's history. The romantic relationship between Agnes and Jochen Karsten is completely acquiescent (incidental, really) to the greater narrative of the film: the choices, commitment and sacrifices that should, and must, be made in constructing a new socialist society. Indeed, the strain that...