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The Tin Drum (1979)

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From Time Out Film Guide

Sumptuously shot and designed, Schlöndorff's respectful film of Günter Grass's epic novel is nevertheless inevitably inferior to the original. The problem perhaps is that it is all too literal an adaptation of the book, which looked at the realities of German history from the fantastic, subjective viewpoint of a child who, by sheer will-power, refuses ever to grow up; the result is that, as the kid witnesses the rise of the Nazis, what we see is rarely convincing in itself, while the complexities of Grass's book are largely sacrificed for eye-catching scenes of the grotesque and the bizarre. Still, the performances are strong and the film just about works as middlebrow entertainment for those put off by the length of the novel.

Author: GA

Time Out Film Guide

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Technoguy said...

Posted on Apr 10 2008 17:56 This film is not a good translation from novel to screen.This is based on an allegory about the rise and fall of Nazism through the subjective viewpoint of a child who refuses to grow up and who bangs on a tin drum and shatters glass by screaming.Grass the Nobel Laureate had to find a picaresque new way of facing the horrors of Germany's past,retelling everything through the counter-thrust of a dwarfish eye.It is an earthy grotesque novel.The film is all too literal.We get the potato-eating grandmother hiding an escapee under her skirts.You get the shattering of glass and glasses and the foetus dropping on the floor.There is the horse's head with eels coming out of it.The most effective scene is with Oskar beneath the seats at the Nazi rally beating his drum to a different tune and forcing the orchestra to play a waltz.The young actor
David Bennent had a manic children of the damned look and seemed as cruelly malevolent as the Nazis he was 'against'.The book was supposed to have gone on long after where the film finishes to show how things continue in the same way.An interesting failure.

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