The Tin Drum – Director’s Cut (Die Blechtrommel)
Saturday, September 29, 8:45 pm
Castro Theatre
In Person: Actor Mario Adorf
US West Coast Premiere of the Newly-Restored Version
Danzig, Germany, 1924. Oskar Matzerath is born with an intellect beyond his infancy. As he witnesses the hypocrisy of adulthood and the irresponsibility of society, Oskar rejects both, and, at his third birthday, refuses to grow older. Caught in a baffling state of perpetual childhood, Oskar lashes out at all he surveys with piercing screams and frantic poundings on his tin drum, while the unheeding, chaotic world marches onward to the madness and folly of World War II. Honored with the Palme d’Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival and the 1979 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film, Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel) is a truly visionary adaptation of Nobel laureate Günter Grass’s acclaimed novel, an unforgettable fantasia of surreal imagery, striking eroticism, and unflinching satire. —Criterion Collection
Germany (1979), 164 min. (digital projection); in German with English subtitles
Director: Volker Schlöndorff
Screenwriters: Jean-Claude Carrière, Franz Seitz, Volker Schlöndorff
Cast: David Bennent, Mario Adorf, Angela Winkler, Daniel Olbrychski, Katharina Thalbach
US Distributor: Janus Films
Community Copresenters:
- Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive
- San Francisco Film Society
This Director’s Cut of The Tin Drum premiered in 2010 at the Cannes Film Festival to acclaim, and includes 22 minutes of previously-cut footage, including stirring extended scenes featuring Lifetime Achievement Award honoree, Mario Adorf.
Director Volker Schlöndorff was born in Wiesbaden in 1939. He trained in France under the apprenticeship of Alain Resnais, Jean-Pierre Melville and Louis Malle. His 1996 debut, Young Törless, launched the New German Cinema movement and garnered the 1966 Cannes Film Festival International Critics’ Prize. His well-known works include The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (co-directed with Margarethe von Trotta); Coup de grace; and The Tin Drum.
