Trace of Stones (1966)

{Winner! FIPRESCI Award-- Berlin Int'l Film Festival 1990}

Foreman Balla is the swaggering, self-proclaimed king of a massive construction site, and his co-workers stick close to him like musketeers. But when a new Party Secretary is sent in to bring the site under control, along with a beautiful young engineer named Kati, a love triangle ensues. Originally banned for its perceived anti-establishment message, this DEFA masterpiece was shown to great acclaim after the unification of Germany. Product Description

The Magnificent Seven

East German film director Frank Beyer was 34 when he made Traces of Stones in 1966. This black and white film is proof that the New Wave aesthetics of self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and youthful iconoclasm infiltrated the Iron Curtain as it were. Traces of Stones gently examines social and political upheavals of the era, and its extended flashback narrative interrupted again and again by present time showcases the director's experiments with editing, visual style, and narrative parts.

When the lead construction worker's team appear for the first time, dressed in cowboy's attire, lined up in battle formation, and beaming with energy and self-confidence, this image of these seven men is a reference to the film The Magnificent Seven and also homage to Akira Kuosawa's Seven Samurai. It also gives the film a Jim Jarmusch quality.

The plot involves a young Party secretary, Werner Horrath, who has arrived at a large construction site. From an academic background, he brings with him not only ideology but even more so idealism, and thus also the courage to correct mistakes in the sacrosanct site plan.

Both he and Hannes Balla, the leader of a group of carpenters, fall in love with the young engineer, Kati Klee, the priviliged daughter of a Party boss. At first it is the intellectual and not the carpenter who wins the young woman's heart; however, the Party does not permit the married man to indulge in any unrestricted passions. Horrath's rival Balla is actually the real boss at the construction site; he argues with the representatives of the political authorities and procures every kind of needed building material in a highly unconventional way. Actually Balla and Horrath are very much alike, and it is only the circumstances that make them opponents.

After a long period of arguing over the film, The Trace of Stone was shown for the first time in the GDR in the summer of 1966, but after a number of organised protests it was withdrawn from the movie theatres a short time later. This example of the state's power also gives an idea of why the GDR always had so much difficulty with its own development: whatever cannot be tamed is regarded as anarchistic and dangerous - like Beyer's fearless protagonists, Balia and Horrath, or like the film itself.

In the story no threat to the system and no fundamental doubts about it are expressed. It is, more importantly, a vigorous plea for a more open, more courageous and more human way of dealing with people, and against the less endangered moral cowards and opportunists.



July 5, 2008

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