How does the film adaptation of Volker Schlöndorff's "Die Blechtrommel" work?

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Content

  Introduction  

  Narrative structure in the novel Die Blechtrommel  

  Framework story  

  Narrative perspective  

  Reliable or unreliable narrator?  

  First and third person narration  

  Schlöndorff’s approach in his film version  

  Necessary changes  

  What is left of the narrative structure of the novel?  

  Additional changes and criticism  

  d) Cinematic devices or why the film works on its own  

4.  Conclusion  

5.  Bibliography  

  Introduction  

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‘The key to understanding The Tin Drum lies in understanding the mind of its remarkable first-person narrator, Oskar Matzerath, that brilliantly conceived fictional eyewitness and personification of the Third Reich, its prehistory, and its aftermath.’ 1

This quote stresses the importance of the narrator in Günter Grass’ novel. In this essay, I should like to compare the narrative structure in the novel with the film adaptation. As my aim is to find out how the film version works, I would like to put forward the proposition that not only the understanding of the narrator’s mind is crucial for the understanding of the novel, but also the understanding of the narrative structure itself within Die Blechtrommel. Therefore, I will have a closer look at the novel first and then proceeding to the film, in order to examine the changes Volker Schlöndorff made and what effect they may have on the understanding of the film.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, a famous German poet and critic, described Günter Grass’ novel as a

‘Brocken, an dem Rezensenten und Philologen mindestens ein Jahrzehnt lang zu würgen haben, bis es [sic] reif zur Kanonisierung oder zur Aufbewahrung im Schauhaus der Literaturgeschichte ist.’ 2

This prophecy of 1959 came true and it was not until twenty years later that Volker Schlöndorff tried the first film adaptation of this complex work of literature. Nevertheless, the novel was a tremendous success, not only in post-war Germany. In the following paragraph, I will start with an explanation of the elements, which make the novel’s narrative structure so complicated and multilayered.

2. Narrative structure in the novel Die Blechtrommel

Framework story

First of all, there is the framework story of Oskar Matzerath being an inmate of a mental asylum and writing down the story of his life in retrospect, which also covers important parts of German history. Already in the famous first sentence, the reader is confronted with this truth and it is repeated often enough to stay in the reader’s mind. A typical beginning of a chapter for example is ‘Heute, im Bett meiner Heil-und Pflegeanstalt, vermisse ich oftmals

¹ Keele, Alan Frank. Understanding Günter Grass, page 11

² Richter, Frank. Die zerschlagene Wirklichkeit. Überlegungen zur Form der Danzig-Triologie von Günter Grass, page 7

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[...].’ ³ Thus, the framework story, which covers the years from 1952 to the time Oskar is being arrested in 1954 and also includes details about his male nurse Bruno Münsterberg and Oskar’s visitors, affects the reader’s assessment of every piece of information throughout the whole story. As a result, the reader is constantly forced to put the facts Oskar provides him with into question.

Out of the first two books of the novel, which are relevant for the film version, almost half of the 32 chapters are introduced by images of Oskar in the mental asylum. The actual story of his childhood is interrupted regularly and told in flashbacks. This creates in the reader a feeling of watching and keeping pace with Oskar while he is writing his lifetime story and, at the same time, it creates a greater distance to the events of the past. In addition, the narrator complains about his memory and openly admits that he needs his drum to recover the exact events:

‘Hätte ich nicht meine Trommel, der bei geschicktem [...] Gebrauch alles einfällt, [...]

wäre ich ein armer Mensch ohne nachweisliche Großeltern. Jedenfalls sagt meine

Trommel [...].’ (page 23)

In my opinion, the effect of this framework story is twofold. On the one hand, it strongly supports the idea of an autonomous narrator, especially through the creation of an ongoing writing process, which the reader is able to follow step by step. On the other hand, however, this support of the narrator is absolutely necessary because of the untrustworthy figure of the narrator, who is an inmate of a mental asylum and is dependent on his drum to remember the details of his story. Furthermore, he is not writing a daily diary, which would recount the immediate events of the past. When considering the time-scale, Oskar covers a large passage of time, which must have blurred some of the facts. He is constructing and reconstructing his story, to what an extent is a question, the reader has to ask himself.

Narrative perspective

Another remarkable feature of the novel is the unusual point-of-view of Oskar’s narration. As he had decided to stop growing at the age of three, he remains an outsider throughout the novel and, thus, is able to recall events from this childish perspective. He reports his experiences in the past out of his ‘weißlackiertes metallenes Anstaltsbett’ (page 9) and tells

³ Grass, Günter. Die Blechtrommel, page 171 (all further quotes out of this text are marked with page numbers only)

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the reader how he saw the world as a permanent three-year-old. This eccentric point-of-view allows Oskar to perceive insights in the mechanism of the adult’s world, which normally remain secrets. A typical and striking example for this perspective is the scene where Oskar hides under the table while the adults are playing cards:

‘Ich fühlte mich wohl unter der Tischplatte, im Windschatten des herabhängenden

Tischtuches.’ (page 82)

In this position, he is able to observe what his supposed father Jan is doing with his foot between the legs of his mother while they are playing skat. Through this ‘Froschperspektive’ in which we find Oskar again and again throughout the novel, he is able to reveal human affairs and the history of a whole epoch alike. Other examples for favourite hiding places are cupboards and the skirts of his grandmother. Even when he is in Paris, standing under the Eiffel Tower reminds him of his grandmother’s skirts (page 434). However, these impressions conveyed by the eyes of a self-declared ‘zurückgebliebenen Dreijährigen’ (page 165) also result in a totally unbiased description of events. It is crucial that Oskar just sees or observes what is going on around him - ‘there is no suggestion of his judging or criticising events or people.’ ⁴ The consequence of this exceptional narrative point-of-view, however, is that is leaves the reader without orientation in the first place, but also might be able to force him into a personal judgement of events.

Reliable or unreliable narrator?

In a first-person novel, the reader is subjected to the narrator in any way, which is due to the fact that the narrator is his only access to the story. Traditionally, in this kind of novel the reader counts on the reliability of the narrator, as the first-person perspective seems to support authenticity in a special way. In Die Blechtrommel however, this narrator is an inmate of a mental asylum and consciously plays with the uncertainty of the reader. Right in the beginning, Oskar states that he is lying when he tells his male nurse anecdotes out of his past (page 9). Shortly after that, he makes the reader fully conscious of the process of narrating by asking himself what the best way to tell a story finally is:

‘[...] wie fange ich an? Man kann eine Geschichte in der Mitte beginnen und vorwärts

wie rückwärts kühn ausschreitend Verwirrung anstiften. Man kann sich modern geben,

⁴ Thomas, Noel L. Grass. Die Blechtrommel, page 17