Konrad Wolf: Solo Sunny

The fresh portrait of the uncompromising Sunny who holds on to her dream to make a career as a singer marked a shift in Konrad Wolf’s approach to depicting contemporary themes. One of the great Berlin films, celebrated for its authentic cityscapes and sharp dialogue, it became one of the most DEFA’s most popular films.

Sunny is a pop singer in her early thirties — independent, outspoken, and determined. Part of the week she tours the East German provinces with the Tornados, a mediocre band, and a variety troupe of acrobats and second-rate cabaret acts. On her days off, she returns to her flat in a run-down tenement in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg, where neighbors have reported her to the police for loud music, too many male visitors, and pigeons nesting on the inside her flat. Sunny couldn’t care less; she’s more concerned with finding a meaningful relationship. The substitute saxophone player and philosopher Ralph seems promising, but he lets her down just as the band decides to let her go. At rock bottom and plagued by self-doubt, Sunny goes back to her old factory job — yet she won’t abandon her dream of becoming a singer that people will really listen to.

After Mama, I’m Alive, which was set during World War II, Konrad Wolf wanted to make a film about the present — a 'Gegenwartsfilm'. The material came from Wolfgang Kohlhaase, who not only wrote the script for Solo Sunny but also co-directed their fourth collaboration. Kohlhaase had come across an unpublished interview by journalist Jutta Voigt with singer Sanije Torka, titled ‘Solo Sanje’. The interview was never published. Torka was possibly too much of a soloist and not enough of a socialist. Although the connection to the film could not be openly acknowledged and the script had to be toned down, some of Torka’s words made it into the film's dialogue almost verbatim. Renate Krößner, who plays Sunny, later recalled that she saw aspects of the story as more drastic, and argued with Wolf, urging him to be more radical. The role made her a star and earned her the Silver Bear at the Berlinale in 1980, yet she wasn’t offered attractive roles — perhaps because Sunny had been too radical after all. Unable to repeat her great success, Krößner emigrated to West Germany in 1985.

Attracting 1.6 million viewers, Solo Sunny became one of DEFA’s most popular films, and Konrad Wolf attended countless post-screening discussions. Yet the film faced criticism similar to that which had suppressed the original interview: Why portray a character so focused on personal fulfillment rather than collective ideals? Wolf defended both Sunny and his film: “There are people like that. And what should we do with them? I, for one, believe that people like Sunny, who, incidentally, is never glorified, who has her rough edges, who is not just negative or just positive, but dialectically contradictory. But who stands up for her ideas about her life goals and fights for her personality. I think that's something to strive for. That attitude.” That attitude was something many women could identify with.

Solo Sunny is above all one of the great Berlin films, which ows much to Kohlhaase’s affection and feel for the city and its people. Some of his brash dialogue lines have become classics. But it is also the cityscape, the run-down tenement where Sunny lives one of the upper floors, cat and pigeons at the window, the view from Ralph’s window where he and sunny have their beers, the different modes of transport – car, tram and S-Bahn in parallel, Sunny’s train rides through the city, the camera following the tracks, and then on the outskirts, where her friend Christine lives, the widely spaced new apartment blocks, between them the clutter of machines and materials for more buildings still under construction.

GDR, 1979, 102 min, color, German with English subtitles
Directed by Konrad Wolf, script: Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase, dramaturgy: Dieter Wolf, editor: Evelyn Carow, camera: Eberhard Geick, set design: Alfred Hirschmeier, costume design: Rita Bieler, music (score): Günther Fischer, music (performance): Regine Dobberschütz, Günther Fischer Quintet.
With Ulrich Anschütz, Klaus Brasch, Ursula Braun, Michael Christian, Regine Doreen, Fred Düren, Heide Kipp, Renate Krößner, Alexander Lang, Dieter Montag.