Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (film)

Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children) 1961 East German film produced by DEFA documenting the Berliner Ensemble staging of Bertolt Brecht's play of the same name. The play ran from 1959 to 1961, with Manfred Wekwerth and Peter Palitzsch directing, and stars Helene Weigel in the title role; it was modelled after the original 1949 production by Brecht and Erich Engel. The film received a prize at the Locarno Film Festival.

History
Bertolt Brecht had directed his play Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder with the Berliner Ensemble, together with Erich Engel, in 1949. Manfred Wekwerth worked as his assistant for the production from 1951. After Brecht's death, the film Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder was intended to be a faithful rendering of this production on stage. It was shot in black and white in 1960 and 1961, with Wekwerth and Peter Palitzsch directing.

The film premiered on 10 February 1961 at the Berlin cinema Oranienburger Tor Lichtspiele, with the Minister of Culture Alexander Abusch in attendance. The film was shown simultaneously at 14 regional capitals of the GDR, marking the 63rd birthday of Brecht. The first screening in West Germany was in October 1962 at the Internationale Filmwoche Mannheim. It opened in other cinemas there on 12 March 1965, and was recommended in June 1965 by the Jury der Evangelischen Filmarbeit as best film of the month. The film was first aired by the Deutscher Fernsehfunk, the GDR television, on 27 March 1973.

Reception
Henryk Keisch wrote in the daily paper Neues Deutschland that the film was a faithful reproduction of the staging which had already been performed 400 times at the theatre of the Berliner Ensemble. Helmut Ullrich of Die Neue Zeit noted that facial expressions were dominant compared with a stage production of the same actors.

Award

 * 1961: Jugendliteraturdiplom at the Locarno Film Festival

Literature

 * F.-B. Habel: Das große Lexikon der DEFA-Spielfilme, Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7, pp. 424–425