Rotation (1949) User Reviews

Lives of working-class Berliners from 1925 to 1945

[mlwehle · 8/10 · 23 January 2007]

Director Wolfgang Staudte co-wrote this fine film with his father Fritz Staudte together with Erwin Klein. Both Staudtes took part in Reinhardt and Piscator productions, and in Hans and Lotte's wedding entertainment American audiences may hear Brecht and Weill.

This powerful work was released three years after Staudte's "The Murderers Are Among Us". In contrast with that film's depiction of an educated paragon tortured by conscience, Rotation traces the lives of Berliner everyman Hans, his beloved Lotte, and Lotte's politically-engaged brother Karl from the depression and runaway inflation of the 1920s through the return of economic normalcy, the Nazi ascension to power, war, impending defeat, the battle for Berlin, and finally war's aftermath and reconstruction. Rotation opens during the fall of Berlin. Sheltering from the battle outside a woman hears the Soviets have reached the Moabit district and she immediately leaves safety to dodge the bombs and shells outside. Why? Our interest of course is immediately piqued. The film then flashes back to 1925, the year of Hitler's reorganization of the NSDAP. Hans strives heroically to provide for Lotte and their dear son Hellmuth. Hans is a good neighbor to the Jewish family downstairs. Karl the communist thinker and activist fights both capitalists and Nazis. Hans, Karl, and Lotte care deeply for one another and for toddler Hellmuth. Hans resents the class oppression which feeds children of the aristocracy cake while Hellmuth is sick and malnourished. Hans is jailed for labor organizing. While not endorsing the NSDAP he accommodates the party in order to secure work he desperately needs to put food on the table. Here Staudte and DEFA show industrialists solidly behind the NSDAP while Karl and Hans have only the backing of fellow workers. For years Hans refuses Karl's entreaties to join the struggle, citing his family responsibilities. Finally out of devotion to his brother-in-law as well as to humanity Hans commits acts of resistance and is betrayed by Hellmuth, who is now a committed member of the Hitler-Jugend. It is the ramifications of this act for Hans, Lotte, and Hellmuth in the context of their love for one another which begins and ends the film.

Rotation celebrates the strength and continuity of human life and love: love erotic, filial and fraternal.

A sense of guilt?

[brogmiller · 8/10 · 28 May 2020]

Following Germany's surrender Wolfgang Staudte found himself in the Eastern sector and despite having participated in films of the Third Reich his services were utilised by DEFA the state-run film studio. As a means of 'working through' his guilt and presumably to please his new employers he directed 'The Murderers are among us' and 'Rotation' both of which depict the true horrors of Nazism. The latter film focuses on labourer Hans Bencke, his wife Charlotte and their son Helmuth. As one of the mass of unemployed he understandably regards National Socialism as a blessing and joins the Party in order to support his family while believing that he can remain 'non-political'. As years pass he realises that the blessing has become a curse and that he can no longer be impartial. Life becomes still more complicated when his teenage son joins the Hitler Youth....... This is a masterpiece of film-making that grips one from the outset. Ironically it is shot by Bruno Mondi, indisputably one of the greatest cinematographers of all, whose collaborations with the demonised director Veit Harlan did not prevent his becoming DEFA's chief cameraman. The characters are well-drawn and the extensive use of close-ups, notably those of Paul Esser as Bencke, serve to heighten our involvement. The editing by Lilian Seng is exceptional, especially the scene of the underground shelter being flooded whilst the closing scene is no less dramatic for being understated. The final words should be left to a critic of the time who wrote:'This film shows how it really was'.

From the same writer/director of 'Murderers Are Among Us'

[jaybob · 9/10 · 26 February 2009]

Wolfgang Staudte both directed & co-wrote this 3 years after he mad MURDERERS ARE AMONG US,which was the first film made in Germany after the end of World War 2.

Rotation in 80 short minutes.tells us about the rise & fall of Nazism through one families eyes.It traces this history in brief but telling scenes. In its brevity,it becomes very powerful, considering that most of the cast experienced much of what happens on the screen only a few years prior..We have seem many films like this but Rotation is told thru German eyes NOT Western.

I intend to look up & see more of this excellent directors work. We in the US are not familiar with him, mainly because he worked in the Soviet area of Berlin.

The acting by all & the production by all is first rate.

Ratings: ***1/2 (out of 4) 95 points (out of 100)IMDb 9 (out of 10)

Tragic tale of ordinary German people set during Hitler's times.

[FilmCriticLalitRao · 9/10 · 7 August 2007]

Wolfgang Staudte fervently condemned the disinterested bourgeois who is not at all committed and hesitantly validates his standpoint. Rotation shows the dangers such an unbiased civilian is to compelled to confront.The film concentrates much on the past as key events are shown in a flashback.It showed how high unemployment in Germany resulted in Hitler's rise to power.Staudte has astutely shown a distressed Germany in which young Germans were trained by Nazis and everyone was taught to obey Hitler.Behnke recalls effectively all the difficult times he had to endure.He is happy to have a kid but can hardly imagine that his own child would betray him.Behnke was yearning for a serene Germany where his family would flourish.His generosity of spirit is revealed as he accepts his son without any feeling of hatred.After the war,Behnke family witnesses a sign of reconciliation as the father pardons his guilt-ridden son.

A beautiful metaphor

[gudrunh-794-69037 · 9/10 · 21 July 2010]

Rotation looks at the schisms which affected families during the period leading up to and immediately after the Reich.

Proud, but relentlessly pursued by unemployment, Hans eventually becomes a machinist with a printing company. He has married a fine woman and they have raised a fine son. He is no friend of the Party however and is being asked some rather direct questions about why he is still not a member. His employer too makes it quite plain that without Party membership, future employment with the firm just might become difficult.

His wife's brother, Kurt has fled the country for being a subversive and this connection does not help Hans's parlous situation.

After the brother secretly returns to Germany, to continue his role as a militant, he comes to Hans for a request. His expertise is needed to repair the broken printing press which the group uses to publish their subversive pamphlets. Oh dear, and just when life was looking up too. He decides to take the chance, and all would have been fine until one evening when young Hellmuth his son is stuck for the answer to a crossword puzzle. Consulting the family dictionary, he finds more than the answer, for hidden in its pages is a pamphlet. And as a loyal Hitler Youth member, he must of course consult the authorities.

This movie is told in flash-back, from Hans's prison cell. It is a tragic but ultimately uplifting story of forgiveness which again becomes a metaphor for Germany's rise from the ashes. There is a particularly beautiful scene in the end which has the son and his bride to be unknowingly mirroring the actions of his parents so many years before. The son and his bride come to a fork in a country road, and they follow it to the left. Years ago, his parents had wandered this very same road, but their path led to the right.

Pretty forgettable World War II film

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 24 November 2016]

"Rotation" is a German movie from 1949 and that year Germany was separated into two countries, so this one is officially an East German production. The director is Wolfgang Staudte and he is also one of the writers. The other two are Austrian Erwin Klein and Staudte's father Fritz. As this movie will soon have its 70th anniversary, it is a black-and-white film of course (ignoring the color propaganda films from Nazi Germany) and it has sound which was really common already, even in the 1940s. The main character is played by Paul Esser, who was in his mid-30s when this film was made and he plays a man who is somehow stuck between his own ideology and the Nazis'. Occasionally he wants to join them and then he does not a couple moments later. Apart from Werner Peters, I cannot say that i am familiar with any of the supporting players in here. The most unusual thing about this film we have here is that it has actually a couple sequences that you could almost call "action sequences", especially for the standards back then. Anyway, I was neither too impressed with any of the performances (including Esser') nor with the plot and story in general. I have seen a few German films that deal with the subject of coming to terms what happened in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, but those that were made directly after World War II I tend to find fairly ineffective, just like this one here. There was never really anything interesting about it that would get you to the edge of your seat and I was kinda glad this film stayed under the 80 minute mark even as it dragged quite a bit nonetheless. I give it a thumbs-down and I cannot agree with the awards recognition or the IMDb rating here. Watch something else instead.