The Castle
The Wish To Be a Red Indian: Kafka and Cinema 2024 / Das Schloss / Germany 1968
Synopsis
Noelte’s adaptation of Kafka’s novel The Castle was unlucky to have been nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in a year when the festival was cancelled half way through due to student protests (the same could be said of the submissions from three of his fellow contenders, Czech filmmakers Forman, Němec and Menzel). The film features Maximilian Schell as the land surveyor K., who arrives to take up a post in a small village, yet everyone claims he was hired by mistake. Thanks also to Schell’s superb performance, Noelte succeeded in crafting a haunting cinematic vision of the terrifying dimension of power, applied through the agency of bureaucracy and hierarchical order. Noelte also added layers of the comic and tragically grotesque, elements so fundamental to Kafka’s world.
Lorenzo Esposito
About the film
89 min / Color, DCP
Director Rudolf Noelte
/ Screenplay Rudolf Noelte, Maximilian Schell podle stejnojmenného románu / based on the novel of the same name by Franz Kafka
/ Dir. of Photography Wolfgang Treu
/ Music Herbert Trantow
/ Sound Oskar Haarbrandt
/ Editor Dagmar Hirtz
/ Art Director Hertha Hareiter
/ Producer Rudolf Noelte, Maximilian Schell
/ Production Alfa Film, Rudolf Noelte Filmproduktion
/ Cast Maximilian Schell, Cordula Trantow, Helmut Qualtinger, Iva Janžurová
/ Sales Beta Cinema GmbH
/ Contact DFF - Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum e.V.
About the director
Rudolf Noelte (1921, Berlin – 2002, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany). Selected filmography: The Man Outside (Draußen vor der Tür, 1957), The Castle (Das Schloss, 1968), Danton's Death (Dantons Tod, 1981).
Contacts
Beta Cinema GmbH
Grünwalder Weg 28d, 820 41, Oberhaching/Munich
Germany
Phone: +49 896 734 698 828
E-mail: beta@betacinema.com
DFF - Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum e.V.
, 65203, Wiesbaden
Germany
Phone: +49 061 197 000 10
E-mail: wessolowski@dff.film
Guests
Iva Janžurová
Actress
