The Tin Drum (film)

The Tin Drum
Original film poster
Directed by	Volker Schlöndorff
Produced by	Franz Seitz Anatole Dauman
Written by	Volker Schlöndorff Jean-Claude Carrière Franz Seitz
Based on	The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
Starring	David Bennent Mario Adorf Angela Winkler Daniel Olbrychski Katharina Thalbach Charles Aznavour
Music by	Maurice Jarre
Cinematography	Igor Luther
Editing by	Suzanne Baron
Release date(s)	May 3, 1979 (1979-05-03) (West Germany) April 11, 1980 (1980-04-11) (US)
Running time	142 minutes
Country	West Germany Yugoslavia Poland France
Language	German Polish Russian Italian Kashubian

The Tin Drum (German: 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. Stylistically it is a black comedy.

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

Plot

David Bennent plays Oskar, the young son of a Kashubian family in a rural area of the Free City of Danzig, circa 1925. He humorously explains his lineage, which is illustrated by the camera, explaining how his grandfather being pursued by police, hid under his grandmother's skirts in a potato field. The film also gives a "childs-eye view" of his own birth, from the womb out, and he explains his displeasure at being born.

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 bigger. He throws himself down the basement stairs...and stops growing. 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 shatters glass. Oskar wears a sailor suit and a cap from the SMS Seydlitz. As Germany moves towards Nazism and war in the 1930s the unaging Oskar continues savagely beating his drum. Only after the Soviet invasion at the end of the war, when only his grandmother and his half brother/son survive, does he decide to grow up.

Cast

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

Reception

The Tin Drum was one of the most financially successful German films of the 1970s. It won the 1979 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and was jointly awarded the 1979 Palme d'Or at Cannes, along with Apocalypse Now.

The film features scenes in which Bennent, then 11 years of age and playing a stunted 16-year-old, licks effervescing sherbet powder from the navel of a 16 year old girl, played by Katharina Thalbach. Thalbach was 24 years old at the time. Subsequently Bennent appears to have oral sex and then intercourse with her.

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. 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 scenes, and the role of the judge as censor. The film emerged vindicated and most copies were returned within a few months. By 2001, all the cases had been settled and the film is legally available in Oklahoma County. This incident was covered in the documentary film Banned in Oklahoma, which is included in the 2004 Criterion Collection DVD release of The Tin Drum.

External links

• The Tin Drum at the Internet Movie Database
• The Tin Drum at AllRovi
• Criterion Collection essay by Eric Rentschler
• Librarian discussion of the Oklahoma case