The two most famous German stories of self-confessing drinkers are Joseph Roth's "Legend of the holy drinker" (1938) and Hans Fallada's "The drinker" (1944). Fallada (1893-1947) is one of Germany's most famous novelists. "The drinker" and the subsequent novel "The incubus" (1947), in which he described his addiction to morphine, are Fallada's most personal novels. While "The drinker" has already been filmed in 1967 with Siegfried Lowitz in the main role (for which Lowitz was awarded with the Golden Camera), the present movie shows the unforgettable Harald Juhnke as the protagonist Erwin Sommer. As every German knows, Juhnke was a self-confessed alcoholic himself and a most renowned actor, and therefore predestined for this role.
The film which follows Fallada's novel pretty closely (except the end), shows Erwin Sommer's way from a successful businessman to an inmate of a closed psychiatric clinic. Sommer's career starts to fail. Because of his negligence, he loses a great job to his young concurrent. Sommer makes a business trip to Hamburg and starts drinking heavily. After his return, his wife learns about the miserable situation of their business and her husband's addiction. Against his will, she commits him to a psychiatric clinic, but Erwin Sommer jumps out of the ambulance. He tries to finance his further life by criminality, is arrested and brought first to prison and later into an asylum. When his wife visits him, she discloses him that she wants the divorce, because she got into a personal relationship with his young concurrent. Sommer flies into rage, and, after years long forced abstinence from alcohol, drinks ethanol that he finds in a medical cabinet. After that his stay in the asylum is prolonged until the end of his days. Desperate of having no possibility neither to get out nor to kill himself, he visits the department where the tubercular patients are and swallows their sputum. Shortly after, Sommer happily diagnoses in himself an increasing coughing. The end of his sufferings is close.
The film which follows Fallada's novel pretty closely (except the end), shows Erwin Sommer's way from a successful businessman to an inmate of a closed psychiatric clinic. Sommer's career starts to fail. Because of his negligence, he loses a great job to his young concurrent. Sommer makes a business trip to Hamburg and starts drinking heavily. After his return, his wife learns about the miserable situation of their business and her husband's addiction. Against his will, she commits him to a psychiatric clinic, but Erwin Sommer jumps out of the ambulance. He tries to finance his further life by criminality, is arrested and brought first to prison and later into an asylum. When his wife visits him, she discloses him that she wants the divorce, because she got into a personal relationship with his young concurrent. Sommer flies into rage, and, after years long forced abstinence from alcohol, drinks ethanol that he finds in a medical cabinet. After that his stay in the asylum is prolonged until the end of his days. Desperate of having no possibility neither to get out nor to kill himself, he visits the department where the tubercular patients are and swallows their sputum. Shortly after, Sommer happily diagnoses in himself an increasing coughing. The end of his sufferings is close.