Quarterly 2 · 2008 - German Films

contact with his agent and she has always read each new version of
the screenplay.”
“It wasn’t such an easy thing when we began work on creating film
images from Tabori’s wonderful text,” Lehwald continues, pointing
out that they wanted to avoid at all costs anything slapstick, like in
Dani Levy’s My Fuehrer.
“We didn’t just want to have something like a filmed theater performance,
but are aiming rather for the greatest possible historical au -
thenti city, a historical realism where there is the suggestion that it
could have been like this. At the same time, one will have the feeling
of theater in Tabori’s funny dialogues and the wit which we didn’t
want to translate completely into colloquial speech.”
While the film team will be using some original locations in Vienna
such as the Schoenbrunn Palace and the Hofburg, much of the
Austrian capital will be recreated at specially built sets in Zittau in the
south-eastern part of Saxony near to the borders with Poland and the
Czech Republic.
Moreover, the fact that, architecturally, Zittau has similarities with
Vienna has also proven to be fortuitous for the producers since shoot -
ing in the Austrian capital will be restricted from May onwards due to
the EURO 2008 Football Championships being held in Austria and
Switzerland this June and July.
Lehwald stresses, though, that George Taboris Mein Kampf
will be far from being a chamber piece between the young Hitler
(played by Tom Schilling who appeared opposite Max Riemelt in
Dennis Gansel’s Napola) and Herzl (cast with the veteran German
film and TV actor Goetz George): “We have more than 35 different
locations for the film,” he notes. “We will be going to the Arts
Academy for Hitler’s entrance examination, to the bridge where he
tries to commit suicide, and so on. Showing the historical Vienna of
that time is not so easy now, so we will have some locations digitally
reproduced by Magna Mana in Hessen.”
MB
Die Geschichte vom
Brandner Kaspar
Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Family
Entertainment Production Companies Clasart Film/Munich,
Perathon Film/Gruenwald With backing from FilmFernsehFonds
Bayern, German Federal Film Fund (DFFF), Filmfoerderungsanstalt
(FFA), CineTirol Producers Markus Zimmer, Joseph Vilsmaier
Director Joseph Vilsmaier Screenplay Klaus Richter Directors
of Photography Joseph Vilsmaier, Joerg Widmer Editor Uli
Schoen Music by Chris Heyne Production Design Anton Gerg
Principal Cast Franz Xaver Kroetz, Michael “Bully” Herbig, Lisa
Potthof, Peter Ketnath, Sebastian Bezzel, Alexander Held, Detlev
Buck, Joerg Hube, Elisabeth Trissenaar Special Effects Christoph
Hierl Format 35 mm, color, cs, Dolby Digital Shooting
Language German Shooting in Munich and surroundings, Tyrol
German Distributor Concorde Filmverleih/Munich
Contact
Clasart Filmproduktion · Markus Zimmer
Kaufingerstrasse 24 · 80331 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-45 06 10 24 · fax +49-89-45 06 10 11
email: zimmer@tmg.de · www.concorde-film.de
One of the most popular folk tales in Germany, Brandner Kaspar is a
widower who lives in the middle of the 19th century with his niece,
Nannerl. Together with young Toni, who’s courting Nannerl, Kaspar
improves his meager income by poaching in the local forests. Shortly
before his 70th birthday he’s visited by Death. But Kaspar’s no fool
and gets his unwelcome guest drunk! Then he cheats at cards in order
to gain another twenty years life!
But Kaspar soon notices that extra life has a price. When Nannerl dies
in an accident he accepts Death’s offer to have a look at heaven and
to decide whether or not he wouldn’t like to join the saints that bit
sooner after all.
“This is actually the third filmed version,” says co-producer Markus
Zimmer. “The others were in 1949 and 1975. We’re staying true to
the original story but tuning it for a modern child and family audience.
So playing Death is none other than top comedian Michael
“Bully” Herbig.”
Where to start? Herbig only made and starred in Der Schuh des
Manitu – the most successful film (let alone comedy) in Germany and
german films quarterly in production
2 · 2008 30
Scene from “Brandner Kaspar”
(photo © Concorde Filmverleih 2008)