The Tin Drum

Synopsis: Danzig in the 1920s/1930s. Oskar Matzerath, son of a local dealer, is a most unusual boy. Equipped with full intellect right from his birth he decides at his third birthday not to grow up as he sees the crazy world around him at the eve of World War II. So he refuses the society and his tin drum symbolizes his protest against the middle-class mentality of his family and neighborhood, which stand for all passive people in Nazi Germany at that time. However, (almost) nobody listens to him, so the catastrophe goes on...

Genre: Drama, War

Director(s): Volker Schlöndorff

Actors: Mario Adorf, Angela Winkler, David Bennent, Katharina Thalbach

Production: Kinowelt

Won 1 Oscar. Another 15 wins & 5 nominations.


IMDB:: 7.6
Rotten Tomatoes:: 80%

The Tin Drum Movie Quotes »

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: R
Year:: 1979
: 142 min
: 437 Views

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THE TIN DRUM:
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I'll begin long before
I ever existed.
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01:57,200 -- 00:02:01,161
When the time came
for my poor mama to be born,
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my grandmother, Anna Bronski,
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a young and unsuspecting girl,
sat in her four skirts
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at the edge of a potato field.
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That was in 1899,
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in the heart of Kashubia.
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02:20,140 -- 00:02:23,058
Something was moving
on the horizon,
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as ifjumping about.
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I beg you!
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Anybody come this way?
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Name of Koljaiczek?
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A firebug.
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Short with broad shoulders.
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I saw him.
Running like a bat out of hell.
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03:40,678 -- 00:03:42,095
Which way?
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I don't believe it.
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He's gone.
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Must be in Bissau.
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If he's not here.
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Has to be one or the other.
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There's nowhere else.
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And now it's raining.
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All right, Koljaiczek.
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My name is Joseph.
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My grandfather was an arsonist.
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A repeat arsonist,
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because in all of West Prussia,
sawmills
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were the tinder for the blazing
nationalism of the Poles.
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Joseph and Anna
hid with the raftsmen
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for almost a year.
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That's how long it took the police
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to catch up
with my grandfather.
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Run!
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Don't shoot him!
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After that dive,
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Koljaiczek was never seen again.
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Some say he drowned.
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Others say
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he escaped to America,
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where, in Chicago,
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under the name of Joe Colchic,
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he became a millionaire.
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They say he made his pile in lumber,
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in matches,
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and in fire insurance.
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As for my grandmother,
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she sat year after year
in her four skirts,
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hawking her wares in the market.
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Geese!
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Not too fat and not too lean!
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And she grew older.
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The First World War came,
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and instead of geese,
she had only turnips to sell.
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Turnips!
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My poor mama grew older too.
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She was worried
about her cousin Jan.
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Jan had been called to war,
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but he wanted to be near her.
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- Name?
- Bronski, Jan.
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- Year?
- 1898.
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Cough.
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Again.
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Rejected!
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No ass, no neck,
to the army I'm a wreck!
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For the first time, my mother
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held her cousin Jan in her arms,
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and I doubt
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if they ever embraced more happily.
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This young wartime romance
was untroubled
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until the appearance of Mr. Alfred
Matzerath, born in the Rhineland.
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At the Silberhammer Hospital,
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he was the favourite
of all the nurses.
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What did she say?
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She said you're a born cook,
Mr. Matzerath.
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You know how to turn feelings
into soup.
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The war had spent itself.
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Danzig was declared a Free State.
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The Poles
were given their own post office,
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where stamp collector
Jan Bronski went to work.
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Alfred Matzerath
also stayed in Danzig.
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We Kashubians
have always been here.
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Long before the Poles,
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and, naturally,
long before the Germans.
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That's old news, Jan.
Now we've got peace.
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Germans, Poles, Kashubians,
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we'll all live together in peace.
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I don't know.
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Well, you'll see.
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The two men, so different
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despite their similar feelings
for Mama,
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liked each other,
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and from that trinity
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they brought me, Oskar,
into the world.
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The Sun was in the sign of Virgo.
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Neptune moved
into the tenth house of middle life,
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anchoring Oskar somewhere
between wonder and illusion.
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Push!
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Push, Agnes, push!
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It's coming!
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I first saw the light of this world
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in the form of a 60-watt bulb.
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Alfred!
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It's a boy!
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I knew it would be a boy,
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even if I sometimes said
it would be a girl.
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Not so hot.
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Crying and impersonating
a meat-coloured baby,
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I listened keenly
and with a critical ear
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to my parents'

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Günter Grass

Günter Wilhelm Grass (German: [ˈɡʏntɐ ˈɡʁas]; 16 October 1927 – 13 April 2015) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature.He was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). As a teenager, he served as a drafted soldier from late 1944 in the Waffen-SS and was taken prisoner of war by US forces at the end of the war in May 1945. He was released in April 1946. Trained as a stonemason and sculptor, Grass began writing in the 1950s. In his fiction, he frequently returned to the Danzig of his childhood. Grass is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic realism. It was the first book of his Danzig Trilogy, the other two being Cat and Mouse and Dog Years. His works are frequently considered to have a left-wing political dimension, and Grass was an active supporter of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The Tin Drum was adapted as a film of the same name, which won both the 1979 Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 1999, the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature, praising him as a writer "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history". more…

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Submitted on August 05, 2018

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The Tin Drum

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