The Tin Drum (1979) is the newest entry into our sub-label 'World Cinema' – directed by Volker Schlöndorff. This drama is an adaptation of the 1959 novel The Tin Drum by Günter Grass and was mostly shot in West Germany.
The film also won the Palme d'Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival and Best Foreign Language Film at the 1980 Academy Awards.
When Oskar Matzerath (the extraordinary David Bennent, just twelve at the time) receives a tin drum for his third birthday, he vows to stop growing there and then – and woe betide anyone who tries to take his beloved drum away from him, as he has a banshee shriek that can shatter glass.
As a result, he retains a permanent child’s-eye perspective on the rise of Nazism as experienced through petit-bourgeois life in his native Danzig, the ‘free city’ claimed by both Germany and Poland whose invasion in 1939 helped kick-start World War II.
With the help of Luis Buñuel’s favourite screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, director Volker Schlöndoff turns Günter Grass’ magical-realist masterpiece into a carnivalesque frenzy of bizarre, grotesque yet unnervingly compelling images as Oskar turns his increasingly jaded eye and caustic tongue on the insane follies of the adult world that he refuses to join.
Director: Volker Schlöndorff
Cast: David Bennent, Mario Adorf,Angela Winkler
Extras:
BANNED IN OKLAHOMA (2004) A film by Gary D. Rhodes (52min)
A documentary that covers the 1997 Oklahoma confiscation of the film "The Tin Drum" due to a judicial ruling of child pornography, and the six years of legal wranglings that ensued
An Interview by Volker Schlondorff
Volker Schlöndorff on the Director's Cut
Volker Schlöndorff on the Making of The Tin Drum, Cannes 2001 (French with English subtitles)
Theatrical Trailer (English subtitles)
