Uwe Nettelbeck

Keine Ahnung von Kunst und wenig vom Geschäft
Filmkritik 1963–1968
VOLUME 196

A Critic Who Did Everything Except Hype Whatever Was Playing Right Now

This film critic lost his heart in the movie hall down by the station. He loved the arthouse classics, but he had no less love for westerns, thrillers, comedies, and more westerns, and he had a keen eye for their wit, their elegance, their beauty. He skipped the Sunday matinee and went to see movies by Will Tremper, Sam Peckinpah, or Sergio Leone instead. And when he turned his attention to Jean-Luc Godard or Stanley Kubrick, they had to live up to standards set by Budd Boetticher or Anthony Mann. Not a big fan of political films that wore their messages on their sleeves, he always saw the cinema, and especially the seemingly trivial cinema, as an integral factor and protagonist in social upheavals and political contentions. Uwe Nettelbeck became the stalwart defender of those who dared to defy the German cultural establishment of his time: Hellmuth Costard, Vlado Kristl, Martin Müller, Jean-Marie Straub. He attacked the film censors in pugnacious polemics. He patiently honed a language that seconded the pictures without forfeiting its critical distance. He wrote “essays of such vividness, perspicacity, and density of reflection the likes of which would never again be read in the arts sections … Walter Benjamin’s ideal of an ‘analytical description,’ in Nettelbeck’s best writings it became reality.”—Peter von Becker in Der Tagesspiegel. This book is the first to gather a selection from Uwe Nettelbeck’s legendary film reviews.

AUTHORS

Uwe Nettelbeck (1940–2007) was one of the most brilliant and best-hated journalists of the 1960s. He abandoned journalism in 1969, produced the band Faust until 1975, and went on to found the literary magazine Die Republik together with his wife, Petra Nettelbeck.

Sandra Nettelbeck (b. 1966) is a screenwriter and feature film director and the writer’s daughter. Her cinematic debut Mostly Martha (2002) drew international acclaim; Sergeant Pepper followed in 2005. Helen (2009), which was released in theaters in numerous countries, was based on her first English-language screenplay and filmed in Canada.