The Tin Drum

Director: Volker Schlöndorff Volker Schlöndorff

Overview

In Volker Schlöndorff's award-winning adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass' allegorical novel, David Bennent plays Oskar, the young son of a German rural family, circa 1925. 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 older or any bigger. 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 literally shatters glass. As Germany goes to hell during the 1930s and '40s, the never-aging Oskar continues savagely beating his drum, serving as the angry conscience of a world gone mad. The intense and visceral Tin Drum was one of the most financially successful German films of the 1970s and won the 1979 Oscar for Best Foreign Film and the 1979 Golden Palm (which it shared with Apocalypse Now). In the late '90s, the film became the center of a censorship controversy when some U.S. videotapes were confiscated because of the film's supposed violation of a child pornography statute.

Product Details

Release Date:	01/15/2013
UPC:	0715515101813
Original Release:	1979
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[Wide Screen, Color]
Time:	2:43:00
Sales rank:	13,895

Special Features

New, restored high-definition digital transfer of the complete version, approved by director Volker Schlöndorff; Newly remastered 5.1 surround soundtrack, approved by Schlöndorff and presented in DTS-HD master audio; New interview with Schlöndorff about the making of the film and the creation of the complete version; New interview with film scholar Timothy Corrigan; German audio recording of Günter Grass reading an excerpt from his novel; The Tin Drum, illustrated with the corresponding scene from the film; Television interview excerpts featuring Schlöndorff, Grass, actors David Bennent and Mario Adorf, and cowriter Jean-Claude Carrière; Trailer; New english subtitle translation; ; Plus: a booklet featuring an essay by critic Geoffrey Macnab and 1978 statements by Grass about the adaptation of his novel

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Mario Adorf	Alfred Matzerath
Angela Winkler	Agnes Matzerath
David Bennent	Oskar Matzerath
Daniel Olbrychski	Jan Bronski
Katharina Thalbach	Maria Matzerath
Heinz Bennent	Greff
Fritz Hakl	Bebra, midget
Mariella Oliveri	Raswitha Raguna
Tina Engel	The Young Anna Kollaiczek
Ernst Jacobi	Gauleiter Lobsack
Ilse Page	Gretchen Schemer
Otto Sander	Meyn the Musician
Andréa Ferréol	Lina Graff
Charles Aznavour	Sigismund Markus
Roland Beubner	Joseph Kollaiczek
Gerda Blisse	Miss Spollenhauer
Werner Rehm	Scheffler
Emil Feist	Clown #1
Marek Walczewski	Schugger-Leo
Wojciech Pszoniak	Faingold
Henning Schluter	Dr. Hollatz
Bruno Thost	Private Lankes
Berta Drews	The Old Anna Kollaiczek
Helmut Brasch	Old Heilandt

Technical Credits

Volker Schlöndorff

Jean-Claude Carrière

Franz Seitz

Volker Schlöndorff	Director,Screenwriter
Suzanne Baron	Editor
Rino Carboni	Makeup
Jean-Claude Carrière	Screenwriter
Anatole Dauman	Producer
Maurice Jarre	Score Composer
Eberhard Junkersdorf	Production Manager
Branko Lustig	Asst. Director
Igor Luther	Cinematographer
Friedrich Meyer	Score Composer
Dagmar Niefind	Costumes/Costume Designer
Nicos Perakis	Art Director
Franz Seitz	Producer,Screenwriter
Alfredo Tiberi	Makeup

Editorial Reviews

The first German film to win the Best Foreign Film Oscar, New German Cinema forefather Volker Schlöndorff's adaptation of The Tin Drum is a potent Fellini-esque epic of intuitive rebellion against a corrupt world. Shot on location in Poland, Germany, and France, the film mixes the palpable reality of ordinary life in prewar and World War II Danzig with the surreal, innocent perspective of stunted boy/man Oskar as he raises instinctive hell against the horrors he witnesses, first in his family and then as the Nazis take over his hometown. Reaching the heights of comedy in a chaotic Nazi rally and the depths of tragedy during the Danzig post-office siege, Oskar's incessant drum-beating and glass-shattering shriek become a powerful, if futile, protest. Twelve-year-old neophyte David Bennent, cast partly for his striking eyes, anchors a superb German cast, while such memorable images as a lone matriarch, grotesque eels, and a midget circus act underscore a society unhinged. Co-winner of Cannes' Palme d'Or (with, appropriately, Apocalypse Now [1979]), The Tin Drum became an international hit and a '90s target for censors in the U.S. Though his film covers only the first two-thirds of Günter Grass' novel, Schlöndorff has refrained from a Tin Drum 2.

All Movie Guide - Lucia Bozzola