All language subtitles for Rote Sonne (1970)-rmx-D-HDT.ak-eng

How did the negotiations go?

Quite well, actually.

I was afraid of him
because he was famous.

You'd see him in the newspaper
almost every day.

He was very sceptical
about the whole thing.

It actually went very well.

He even helped out now and again.

Normally, a stranger is hell
to deal with on set.

It causes trouble.

But he integrated really well
and didn't cause any trouble.

He'd help us out sometimes.

Why was she there?

It is a lot of trouble.
— I kept an eye on her.

On Uschi Obermaier?
— Sorry?

Obermaier.
— Yes.

What do you think?

It was a complicated process
to get Uschi for this film.

Today, I can tell you how that went.

I shot a film with Uschi
called Detectives.

It was being shown
in theatres in Munich.

The film's producer
watched the film and told me...

"I'll only fund Red Sun
if you get Bohm and Obermaier.

That's the only way."

That was it.

Who was the producer?
— Heinz Angermeyer.

There weren't any problems
with Marquard.

He was definitely going to do it.

I had to fly to Berlin
three times to convince Uschi.

Each time she'd ask for more money.

I had to invite the whole of Kommune 1
to lunch

at the Chinese place
on Stuttgarter Platz.

We talked through the process.

We agreed on 20,000 marks.

I would've gone up to 50,000!

That wouldn't have been good.

But she didn't know that.

Kommune 1 was totally for it.

They made plans during lunch
on what they needed to buy.

A new refrigerator, a TV...

After food, we went to Stephanstrasse

which was where Kommune 1 was

and signed the contract
there and then.

There was one point in the contract

that Rainer Langhans insisted upon.

Uschi would work four days a week
and fly back to Berlin for three.

We had to pay for
her flights there and back

so that she didn't feel disconnected
from Kommune 1.

That was her condition.

Rainer insisted upon it.

I remember that we...

Shooting the film was trivial for us.

Being from Berlin,
we didn't think much of Munich.

They were middle-class.

Munich. My god.

Then you came along
and really fought for it.

I had to.

I was afraid of you all.

We weren't against you taking over.

We said, "Let him come.

We've got more interesting
things to do than shoot a film."

Although Uschi was good
in Detectives

she wasn't very keen.

But she always said she couldn't act.

She said if it was good enough for us
then it was OK.

But she didn't want to leave Berlin.

Didn't she do it for the money?

I don't think it was
because she didn't want to become an actor.

She had too much on her plate.

You kept saying you wanted her
and made a great effort to get her.

That was enough for us.

We did it despite the back and forth.

Uschi didn't want to do it by herself
and needed assistance.

We lived next to the Women's Commune
at the time, and so...

But that the film would become
the film of the '68 protests--

We had no idea.

At a later point in time,
I saw the story in a different light.

I have you to thank

because you and Max had a vision.

You went further than we would have.

Our jumping-off point was
the story with Valerie Solanas

who wrote Society for Cutting Up Men

as well as pamphlets for it.

She shot Andy Warhol as her first act.

What also inspired Zihimann and I
in developing the story

was an article in Der Spiegel about
a student congregation in Frankfurt.

The women protested as they weren't
allowed to participate.

They also wrote and published
while we sat there and protested.

I was...

shocked.

It was...

They were right.
Men are like that.

"Free the socialist eminences
from their civil absence."

Exactly.

That was the inspiration for our idea.

It's your most iconic film.

It had the longest lasting impact.

It's been distributed again and again
by different distributors.

It's never seen great success.

But it has always spoken
to the younger generations.

I held a seminar
in Berlin six years ago.

Six films of mine were being shown.

I only showed films
which would attract young people.

Red Sun had a huge impact on them.

Would you say it's the most modern
or successful film you've made?

Hello?

It's you. One moment.

Uwe, could we speak at about 2 o'clock?
I'm in an interview.

It can wait, right?

See you.

Sorry.

I'll turn it off.

I'm not sure if it was
the most successful one.

It definitely wasn't commercially.

But it made some
strange developments.

When it was finished

a lot of people loved it.

But an equal number of people
thought it was stupid.

It was well received in one showing
and not so much in another.

For example, I went
to Wiesbaden on my 30th birthday

and I showed it in the FSK and FBW.

The FSK chairman came up to me
and congratulated me.

He told me it was a Greek tragedy
and he really liked it.

Then came the FBW owner.

The boss came up to me and said

"Unfortunately it wasn't a success.
It wasn't worthy of any awards."

I said, "You don't have any either."

That's how the showings went.

Over the years,
that has built up, such that...

I mean, if you look on my website

there are critiques from Austria

published in the late '80s

that called it
the best German film of all time

or at least
the best German film with sound.

There's something about it
that still works today.

But we've yet to see
if that's the case with my other films.

I don't know.

That jumping-off point you mentioned...

about the aggression towards men.

These women and the leaflets.

The whole protest you saw.

I didn't see it.
— You didn't?

You read about it afterwards?

I only read it in Der Spiegel.

By the way, I wasn't on the leaflet.

I was exempt from the whole thing.

I didn't understand
what you were doing.

But later on I saw
that aggression differently.

It's more a film for women
rather than a film against men.

You had this jumping-off point
of men being attacked.

That wasn't the reaction of the people
who had an issue with it.

Yes, that's...

It's not such a serious thing
to be dealt with.

It's more about
the shenanigans and the humour.

It's more so that.

But you... This film is sometimes
compared to Godard, no?

No.
— No?

That's more American.

The flat's similar to mine.

Why do you think it still works today?

I think it's to do with the theme
but also the way it's made.

Because all the other films try...

to handle the theme ordinarily.

The theme's just there.
They're not thesis films.

The themes are incidental.

The girls kill some guy in the flat
and then have breakfast.

Just like that.

It's more science fiction
than reality.

No one ever does that kind of thing.

And this weirdness is presented
as completely normal.

That's the provocation,
which still works today.

It was a fluke that
the two lead actors pulled it off.

Even if Obermaier isn't a good actor,
she still does well in this film.

It was good you were able
to convince her.

You said you wanted her
because she's not an actor

and that you didn't want her to "act" it

but to do it in her way.

We didn't know
you wanted Uschi--

We thought you saw her
as she really was.

She wasn't an actor by nature.

She wasn't nice
and didn't smirk in her photos.

She was convinced
because you wanted her just like that.

She didn't want to make faces
or portray someone she wasn't.

She basically said, "If you're fine
with me not doing or saying much

then I'll do it."

Do you agree?

I didn't--
— She was a particular type.

We'd already worked together
on Detectives.

I knew how she moved,
how she talked...

I knew it'd work.

Marquard isn't an actor either.

I think he's more capable.
— But he's not an actor.

He isn't--
— Just look at what he does.

He's a natural in front of the camera.

He has a special talent.

Today, I see some of the scenes
in a more political light.

Could I tell you about it?

Of course you can tell me.

I think it's stayed relevant today

because it's so forward-looking
and our present hasn't caught up.

You said yourself that you pretended
as if everything could be understood.

You were about 40 years
ahead of the times.

I'm interested in the things
that are relevant today.

The way I see it...

Women kind of have
to have a harem experience.

We could say this is a harem.

Not an Asian one,
but a modern, Western one.

Where women are stronger than men
and do things men don't understand.

Where women ensure
that men are in such a weak state

such that they don't have to
restrict themselves

which they have to do today everywhere
because of men

who rule the entire system,
are the bosses and have connections.

Here, it's the opposite.

Men are granted the secondary role
that women are normally granted.

It's this incredible utopian vision.

The way it's presented
as a matter of course

that they're from different planets

and the way you show
these things is fantastic.

In that respect,
I didn't understand it initially.

I personally find the film as exciting today
just as I did back then.

I live in a similar situation
where women dominate

where I hardly see any men,
such as yourself.

I've been living
only among women for 30 years.

So I understand the film better now.

I didn't understand it as well
when I was living among men

which I found interesting.

That's what matters in films.

It's not about pulling faces.

It's about looks.

Like her looking up, for example.

Do you know anything about the remake?

Did you read about it?

Read?
— They wrote a script.

Who?

You know R.P. Kahl?
— Yes.

The guy who wants to make the remake.

Of Red Sun?

Who?
— R.P. Kahl.

That's right! Rolf Peter Kahl.

Yes, of course.

You knew.
— He needs the rights.

You didn't know.

I didn't know much about R. P. Kahl.

But I haven't read it.

Uschi's meant to make a cameo in it too.

They're making some odd changes.

I read it.

I have to admit I didn't trust him.
— Yes, same here.

He turned up at my office

and we talked about
anything and everything for two hours.

I told him to get down to business.
I knew what it was about anyway.

He wanted to do a remake of Red Sun.

Which one could you--?
— I saw one of his films.

He's the kind of guy
who can get something in motion

which isn't that easy.

The contract I made with him...

wasn't easy
since I'm not that keen, really.

Not really.

It didn't work out?

Humphrey Bogart.

Or Belmondo as well.
But Bogart was his role model.

Philip Marlowe
from Chandler's novels

who was played by Humphrey Bogart

drank like a fish as well.

That was just a part of the lifestyle
that he observed at that time.

It wasn't something we could do.

Actors are different today.

Ones like Marquard Bohm
don't exist anymore.

Would you change anything
about the film today?

I never change my films.

They represent the conditions...

under which they were produced.

That's how it is.

Of course, you can always do better.

But it couldn't have been better
than the way we did it.

The film is a historical document.

I'd never change anything about it.

I spent half a year shooting
Study of an Island in the South Pacific.

The first version was nine hours long,
which I wish could've been shown.

But for it to be shown in cinemas,
I needed to cut it down by half.

I cut it down to three hours
and twenty minutes.

That's still long.

I've thought about recreating...

the nine-hour version for a long time.

But the time and effort
would be too much.

Almost as much as
re-shooting the film.

It's important for films to represent
the situations they're produced in.

And you have to leave them like that.

Then you'll see...

how the films
change over the years.

We spoke a lot about it before.

It's great what you said about the film

how it's a utopia that hasn't come to be.

That's why it's relevant today.
It'll never come to be.

Not quite, but I tend to agree.

But...

It's almost as unattainable now
as it was back then.

Yes, exactly.

For example, we have
things like the internet

where women can express these ideas.

If they could express themselves
without fear or pleasantries

which women always have to do
in order to be accepted

then bad stuff would come out.

You can read such things online
or hear it from a female friend.

I hope something's being done.

It doesn't have
to be malicious, though.

But it's malicious at first,
which isn't great.

You took it a step further
because they're very calm.

Whereas men have to be scared.

It's true that us men are scared.

We could say,
"How could women do this?"

They could be a lot nicer.

"Stop being such monsters."

They don't understand at all.

Men don't understand that there's
a whole other world outside this one.

Did women and men react
differently to your film?

They didn't, actually.

No.

My theory is that men and women
can't be differentiated like that.

Men and women don't differ
on such a base level.

But you can differentiate
them in other ways.

Yes, on a deeper level.

This is a film made by a man,
and not by a woman.

A woman wouldn't have
made the film like this.

That's true.

I don't understand
where you get that from.

Why do you imagine it like that?

I made my very first short film in 1964.

I made four short films
before my feature length.

What was the first one?

The first feature length?
— Yes.

Detectives with Uschi.

In my short films,
before I made Detectives

an article was written about
those four short films.

It said...

that I was the pioneer
of women's emancipation.

In all these films, women are
the ones doing the things.

The men...

just put up with that.

The women take the initiative.

The women are the strong ones
and take control.

That's the way I saw the issue.

Whenever I met a woman,
I used to always say the same thing.

We'd talk a lot about men and women.

When something happens
between two people

it always comes from the woman.

Howard Hawks is one
of my favourite directors

and he also had
strong female characters

which I loved, and inspired me.

So from my very first short film,
the women were always the strong ones.

This is the culmination
of an idea for a story

that I'd always had in my head.

Do you think this story
from 1968 presents themes

that are more prominent now
at least in retrospect?

Or is it a story that's
the opposite of our reality?

Maybe less part of the Kommune
but definitely of the whole '68 movement.

Do you think we get more
out of this female-driven film

in retrospect than in 19687?

Or do you disagree?

This is the way I see it.

In reality...

it's the first time
the female side entered history.

It's the first time
feminine aspects shaped things.

Sympathy, all-encompassing love...

This is a world that was
suddenly covered in feelings of love

where everyone from the Eastern Bloc
to China reacted in their own way.

But everyone had this feeling.

This strong feeling emphasised
that which we call feminine.

That was the driving force.

This still isn't acknowledged today,
particularly by men who write books.

It skipped a generation,
but young people welcomed it.

So I think young people
will understand this film.

The generation in between won't.

The yuppies and people from 1978 won't

but young people,
our grandchildren will.

But it also works for them.

The in-between generation has
experience with it, too.

It works for them, too.

The 1968 story was a story
about men, of course.

But like you said,
if it was subliminally--

It won and men lost.

The tender themes won,
like therapy...

Relationship stories
and sexual evolution won.

That's why we've changed so much today

and why people call it
cultural evolution.

Not politically, but it's true.

It's true in that respect, right?

You could say that.

In that case, the film expressed
this "cultural revolution"

before it became visible
to the outside world.

It captured something
people didn't understand back then

because we have to abandon
the whole male narrative.

That wasn't a conscious decision
by me or Zihlmann.

We didn't plan it.

But then I got that pamphlet
from the student women movement.

It had a huge effect on us.

They were women.

That's true.

There was a film made about it.

Marquard was drunk in this scene

because he was really anxious.

Marquard was the opposite of me.

He felt more comfortable
around men than women.

He was anxious around women.

He had a new woman every night.

Beautiful women, too.

At first glance, he doesn't
seem all that appealing.

But...

Do you see a connection
to the Schatzchen film?

No.

I know the films too well to judge.

No, I don't see it.

But you could say that your film

is a greater departure from
the masculinity of that time.

But Marquard is
a sort of Werner Enke.

No.

But they're also--

That's true but Marquard's
roots are very different.

Enke is...
— Of course.

What I remember about Enke is...

that he constantly talks about
his ailments and such stories.

He's like that both
in film and in real life.

Enke in real life is basically
the same as he is in film.

Yes or no.

He has cinematic role models.

He plays a role...

He constructs his persona.

Like I said with Humphrey Bogart,
it's an important aspect for him.

Marquard has
an incredible understanding of film.

He knows many, many films.

He has them all in his head.

He's a fictional character he created.

But I don't think he lived on.

He died.

We sat there every evening

and we were surrounded
by a bunch of young people.

They were the generation below us.
Fresh out of school.

A few other people,
like Fassbinder, went to that pub.

Hanna Schygulla...

and Irm Hermann also went.

You cast Irm.
— Yes.

She was in the previous film.

Tigerstreifenbaby.

Irm was the first actor who came to my office
and introduced herself.

I never took her on
over all those years.

It was 1968.

In May, 1968.

I offered her
the role for Tigerstreifenbaby.

I called her and then went to see her
to give her the script personally

so as to make it up to her

for the fact that I never
considered her for 30 years.

I think it has to do
with the rivalry with Fassbinder.

He makes one film after the other.
That'd drive me crazy.

It would've been torture for me.

But then Fassbinder comes along.

I couldn't even consider it.

But it was great.

Irm came to me
after we shot Tigerstreifenbaby

and said they were the best shoots
she'd ever experienced.

She really enjoyed it.

So I took her on for this film.

But that wasn't so easy.

This is a significant scene.

She explains what the women are up to.

Marquard learns about it
for the first time.

It's just a close-up of her.

Marquard is completely off-screen.

The scene was shot like that
because Marquard was so drunk

that he couldn't act anymore.

He was slurring his speech
and talking nonsense.

I had him go away
and I just did it with her.

That's why we did a close-up of her
and why she doesn't look at him.

Marquard wasn't there at all.

That became your style.

You did it because--

It wouldn't have worked otherwise.

You did what worked for him.
— That's right.

You still need to say
what you had against Kommune 1.

It was the opposite of
your Swabian film world, right?

I didn't belong
in the Swabian film world.

I didn't...

I didn't feel like I was part of it.

But in my opinion,
the whole political side...

I wouldn't say suspicious

but you'd see the same story
again and again in all the papers

about what everyone was up to.

I didn't take it all that seriously.

The actual revolution took place
in Munich in 1969 with the riots.

It was at Sylvie's house
in central Schwabing.

There were six girls
who worked for Mars.

The company Mars hired
six beautiful girls

to distribute Mars chocolate
to the people.

They told them to go
to the revolution that evening

and distribute Mars chocolate to
the demonstrators and the police.

It was important to give it
to the police officers too.

They went and did it
and it worked beautifully.

They got rid of all their chocolate
and their job was done.

That's what I saw of it.

I think the women were
more important than the revolution.

But I was arrested.

At the first Schwabing riots.

In 19627
— Yes.

At the first Schwabing riots.

I don't know how it happened.

Maybe I looked away for a second,
but we were suddenly surrounded.

I was there with my first wife
and we were suddenly being surrounded.

We were being surrounded
so that we could be taken away.

We were loaded into vans
and taken to the police headquarters.

There were a hundred people squashed
into a room about the size of this one.

We were there for
about eight to ten hours.

Dreadful.

The Morocco scene's coming up.

It was still a chequebook back then.

I must remind myself of Gaby Go.
I don't remember her anymore.

She was the only actor--
— Diana Korner too.

And of course
Henry van Lyck had minor roles.

And Peter Muller.

I didn't trust actors at all.

With non-actors,
I had to do everything I could

to make sure they weren't anxious.

After three or four days,
they'd get used to it.

With actors,
I had to do everything I could

to get them to stop acting.

Both were
equally difficult in theory.

But I preferred working
with non-actors.

That only changed much later on.

Why I did that was because--

That scene's playing now.

The reason why I've been
working with non-actors

for 15 years

is that you change the life
of the non-actor so significantly.

For four to six weeks, they get
the undivided attention and care

of an entire film crew.

Then it's over, and they miss it.

It's hard for non-actors
to deal with that.

That was the reason.

I understand.

I'm still distrustful
of actors today.

We'd driven out to
Lake Starnberg five times

by the time we got to this scene
in order to catch the sun.

We had to go early in the morning
since the sun comes up early in summer.

We'd get up at 2am
and there'd be no sun.

Then...

Schroeter was there once or twice.

Werner Schroeter?
— Yes.

He asked to come so he could see
how a professional film is made.

So he joined us for the shoot.

[indistinct]

He walks there.

I didn't tell him to do that.

He just did it. It's great.

It's interesting that
when the cinema was full

people used to laugh so much
but in this scene they'd tear up.

If there were only
a few people in the cinema

it was often the case
that no one came in.