Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern [Hunting Scenes from Bavaria / The Hunters and the Hunted] (Peter Fleischmann, 1969)
Apr
6
Sorry Charlie Day
The townspeople gather to prepare the communal harvest meal. A dead sow is laid out on an improvised table. DP: Alain Derobe.
A scandal, that's what it was! In the late 1960s, Peter Fleischmann picked the picturesque Catholic village of #Landshut as the backdrop for Jagdszenen aus #Niederbayern, the film adaptation of Martin Sperr's #TheatrePlay with the same name.
A young man named Abram – played by Sperr – returns to his family village. Soon the townspeople's thorns move from the in their eyes other disgraceful villagers to the much-needed mechanic.
Where did he return from? He was in prison. What for? For being a homosexual. He's a Drecksau (a filthy pig), his mother says. The village whore can't turn him around. A sow is slaughtered in real time in celebration of a successful #harvest and plans for the town's future are forged.
While created when West Germany's #Paragrafen175 was in place [1872–1994], illegality of same-sex relations], the homosexual aspect wasn't the main cause of the outrage. Some of the Landshutter villagers who played alongside the professional actors felt they were depicted as being backwards. This isn't a movie about hunting, sigted some. Lifting the veil of the prevalence of, a #Fernweh in a sense, that Germany (hush) was another.
Catholic Mass is a theatrical re-enactment of the life and suffering of the son of God. When rites outstay their meaning, when invocations turn routine, the worshippers lose sight.