« Parajanov – A Requiem at St. Petersburg | Home | Eine mörderische Entscheidung »
“Jerichow” (2008) by Christian Petzold
By Dorothea Holloway | August 28, 2013
From KINO – German Film No: 94 (2009), Jerichow was one of the last reviews Ron Holloway wrote. I think, Ron and Christian Petzold knew each other. Some days ago, on August 24, I saw on TV BR Jerichow – ein Beziehungsdrama, ein großartiges Werk.
Among the highlights of Hof 2008 were German premieres by “Autoren” directors Christian Petzold’s Jerichow, fresh from the Venice film festival, scores as a reprise of his Wolfsburg (2003), the title this time referring to an East German town.
Both films star Nina Hoss and Benno Führmann in similar tales of unrequited love against a fatal background of death and betrayal. Jerichow will no doubt go down in film history as yet another exceptional screen adaptation of James M. Cain’s seminal novel The Postman Always Rings Twice ( published in 1934), a classic in the annals of American hardboiled crime literature. What makes Jerichow a pleasure to watch as it unfolds with a couple new twists. Instead of the Greek-American husband in Cain’s original, he’s a Turkish-German owner of a string of döner stands – played with zest and streak of arrogance by Hilmi Sözer, the discovery of the film.
Christian Petzold, recognized as a leading “auteur” in the current German New Wave, owes some of his fame to the Hof Film Festival. Nearly all of his films have been screened here. – Ron Holloway
Topics: Film Reviews, German Film | Comments Off on “Jerichow” (2008) by Christian Petzold
Comments are closed.