Germany,
1993, 137 min
Shown in 1994
CREDITS
- dir
-
Peter Sehr
- prod
-
Andreas Meyer
- scr
-
Peter Sehr
- cam
-
Gernot Roll
- editor
-
Susanne Hartmann
- cast
-
Andre Eisermann, Katharina Thalbach, Uwe Ochsenknecht, Udo Samel
- source
-
Cinepool
- premiere
-
U.S. Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Peter Sehr in person.
OTHER
In May 1828, an incoherent youth was found staggering along the streets of Nuremberg, Bavaria. The plight of this “wild child” captured the sympathetic imagination of the Romantic age. In his pocket, a piece of paper gave his name as Kaspar Hauser. It was theorized that in reality the boy had been born the crown prince of Baden and was switched at birth by the ruthless Duchess Hochberg and imprisoned in a tiny, dark dungeon cell, fed nothing but bread and water and totally deprived of human contact for the first 12 years of his life. The mystery surrounding his origins and early death engendered an oft-told legend of palace intrigue and tragic suffering. In Kaspar Hauser, director Peter Sehr found solving the historical mystery as intriguing as recounting Kaspar’s mythic tale. The result is a rare blend of lavish period piece, sardonic political thriller and moving personal drama. With great relish, Sehr plunges into post-Napoleonic Germany, an atavistic jumble of table-scrap duchies ruled by vindictive pocket autocrats. Scheming Bavarians eager to disrupt the line of succession of rival Baden kidnap the infant Kaspar, replacing him with a sickly child who soon dies. When King Ludwig of Bavaria finally releases the princeling, the well-intentioned Judge von Fuerbach befriends the helpless boy and seeks to hunt down his kidnappers. Kaspar (admirably portrayed by André Eiserman) struggles to overcome his deprivation, to become a “civilized human” and to solve the mystery of who he is.
—George Eldred
FACTOID #173
Though he starred in an Opening Night film (1967’s How I Won the War), lent his image and songs to 1968’s Festival entry Yellow Submarine and was scheduled to appear at the 1971 Festival with wife Yoko for an evening of their short films, John Lennon never attended the SFIFF.
