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The Tin Drum

PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2018 7:19 pm
by Arneb
I picked up on TV Friday Night, and I was impressed again, and again. I thingk the book is probably the best book in German tongue of the second half of the 20th century, and I urge you to read it if you read anything at all. It's available for a few bucks from a books deealer near you.

But the film, oh my, is this Schlöndorff guy brilliant. It featured basically every German actor who was anyone at the time. The young hottie, Maria, is supposed to be 16 in the film, but was played by then 25 yo Katharina Thalbach who is today the Grand Old Dame of the German acting scene. And they had Charles Aznavour - CHARLES! AZNAVOUR! - as the Jewish toy dealer from whom Oskar's mother obtained his steady supply of tin drums before he poisoned himself in the Reichskristallnacht and had his shop vandalized by brown Nazi scum.

If you can bear to watch it in German with subtitles, by all means, do. (It's not on Amazon Prime in the States, but Netflix, maybe?).
Watch on youtube.com

Re: The Tin Drum

PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2018 10:49 pm
by Мастер
I have a German language copy of the book, but Günter Grass is a bit too linguistically demanding for me. I do much better with Heinrich Böll.

Re: The Tin Drum

PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2018 12:24 pm
by Arneb
Oh yes, he is demanding. I bought a Spanish translation once, hoping to exercise my Spanish with a book I know well in German, but I put it away after a few pages.