Cinemorgue Wiki
Die Blechtrommel

The Tin Drum (1979)

a.k.a Die Blechtrommel

Director: Volker Schlöndorff

Synopsis[]

In 1924, Oskar Matzerath (David Bennent) is born in the Free City of Danzig. At age three, he falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing. In 1939, World War II breaks out.

Male Deaths[]

Female Deaths[]

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

  1. In June 1997, at the urging of a Christian fundamentalist group, and after viewing a few isolated scenes, an Oklahoma County District Court judge ruled that the film contained child pornography, as defined by Oklahoma's obscenity laws, and was therefore illegal. Oklahoma City police confiscated all copies of the film from libraries and rental outlets, without obtaining the necessary search warrants or court orders. They intimidated video store managers into giving them the addresses of customers with rental copies, went to those homes, and confiscated the movies. The local District Attorney announced that anyone possessing a copy of the movie would be arrested. The D.A. was forced to back down within weeks, and most of the seized videos had been returned by December. By October 1998, after several related lawsuits, U.S. federal courts ruled that the movie did not violate Oklahoma obscenity laws, and the seizure of the videotapes had been unconstitutional. The U.S. Court of Appeals closed the final case in May 2001, and the movie is once again available in Oklahoma County.
  2. David Bennent has a condition which caused him to grow very slowly. When he appeared in this film at age 11, he was 1.14 meters (3 ft. 9' in.) tall. He continued to grow to 1.55 m (5 ft. 1 in), and was still growing well into his thirties.
  3. This was Germany's first film to win an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
  4. The film is banned in parts of Canada for its depiction of underage sexuality.
  5. Alfred Matzerath says Jan Bronski is a Kashubian, part of a German/Polish ethnic group in north-central Poland, particularly Gdansk (formerly Danzig). The Nazis considered Kashubians Germans.
  6. For the 2010 long version, the sound of the missing scenes were not found in archives. The actors were called back to record their voices again.
  7. The film was initially banned in Ireland. After an appeal, it was released theatrically, uncut, in 1981.
  8. The thing that previously got the film banned in Ontario and Oklahoma involved the actor David Bennent, who was eleven at the time and who has some controversial scenes in which he appears to have oral sex and intercourse with Katharina Thalbach. But director Volker Schlöndorff affirmed that throughout the making of these scenes, Ms. Thalbach's entire pubic area and genitals and buttocks were completely covered at all times with a fully opaque cloth material called Duvetyne. Thus, there was a complete barrier that prevented any physical contact between her and Bennent.
  9. Acclaimed Polish-British actress Beata Pozniak made her movie debut as an extra when scenes were shot right outside her home.
  10. This film is part of the Criterion Collection, spine #234.
  11. At the time, the Günter Grass novel was banned in Eastern bloc countries, so getting some scenes filmed in Gdansk, Poland, required some intensive maneuvering.
  12. Volker Schlöndorff initially approached veteran production designer Ken Adam about working on the film. They quickly realized that Adam's vision would have bankrupted the production.
  13. Volker Schlöndorff was authorized by Günter Grass himself to make the film.