Herr Hamlet

The Germans, of course, are noted for their ponderosity. They invented iron crosses and Ph.D’s, the decline of the West and expressionism. One often comes across them engaged in odd weighty operations like counting all the leaves on a tree, or translating Finnegans Wake or the Cantos of Ezra Pound. To the classically minded French the Germans were les Allemands, les drôles—at least up until 1870.

It is only the Germans who would have thought of adapting Hamlet to modern ends, as Helmut Kautner has done in The Rest Is Silence. A few years back some French director modernized Manon. The films make a curious comparison, for both are set in the years after World War II, and the differences between them are the differences between the Gallic and the Teutonic mind. Manon as a film was credible, unser Hamlet is not. However, The Rest Is Silence is worth seeing, if only to contemplate some of the social aspects of the Wirtschaftswunder, the brave new world of Volkswagens.

FR

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Francis Russell

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The Germans, of course, are noted for their ponderosity. They invented iron crosses and Ph.D’s, the decline of the West and expressionism. One often comes across them engaged in odd weighty operations like counting all the leaves on a tree, or translating Finnegans Wake or the Cantos of Ezra Pound. To the classically minded French the Germans were les Allemands, les drôles—at least up until 1870.

It is only the Germans who would have thought of adapting Hamlet to modern ends, as Helmut Kautner has done in The Rest Is Silence. A few years back some French director modernized Manon. The films make a curious comparison, for both are set in the years after World War II, and the differences between them are the differences between the Gallic and the Teutonic mind. Manon as a film was credible, unser Hamlet is not. However, The Rest Is Silence is worth seeing, if only to contemplate some of the social aspects of the Wirtschaftswunder, the brave new world of Volkswagens.