"David" is a West German German-language movie from 1979, so this one will soon have its 40th anniversary already. The director here is Peter Lilienthal and he is also one of the several writers who worked on this project. The outcome was a movie that runs for slightly over 2 hours and received a pretty solid deal of awards recognition, namely at the German Film Awards, but also at the Berlin Film Festival. You can check out who and what were awarded for yourself. The reason why this film is not more popular today is probably that the cast does not really include any big names, even if German film buffs will certainly recognize Horwitz, Zischler and Mattes. Another reason may be that the film is from the exact same year that the Oscar-winning "Die Blechtrommel" came out and both take place during the days of Nazi Germany, even if the approach and subject is entirely different I guess. My opinion about this film here is that it did not really look German. I have seen many other films about these dark years in Germany (there are really more than enough) and I personally found it looked more Polish or Czech perhaps. But maybe this is also because it is a film from the 1970s. We should not forget that.
Overall, the film is a war drama and even if it did not touch me as much as I hoped it would, it was still a decent informative watch. The argument that it does not bring anything new to the subject really is not valid in my opinion because we need to keep in mind that all the stuff you have seen is probably from way later, way after 1979. The performances were solid, the story was interesting too and some of the characters were pretty memorable even. For a film that crosses the 120-minute mark, it was delightful how it had almo0st no lengths at all and this time looking at the quantity of writers it was no case of too many cook spoiling the broth. Okay, admittedly I also would not say it is one of the defining films of the genre or one of the very best Nazi Germany films I have seen, but it is a good watch without a doubt and in my opinion it is even better than the highly overrated "Die Blechtrommel". I recommend "David". Thumbs-up for everybody working on this project. This is certainly a criminally underseen film.
Overall, the film is a war drama and even if it did not touch me as much as I hoped it would, it was still a decent informative watch. The argument that it does not bring anything new to the subject really is not valid in my opinion because we need to keep in mind that all the stuff you have seen is probably from way later, way after 1979. The performances were solid, the story was interesting too and some of the characters were pretty memorable even. For a film that crosses the 120-minute mark, it was delightful how it had almo0st no lengths at all and this time looking at the quantity of writers it was no case of too many cook spoiling the broth. Okay, admittedly I also would not say it is one of the defining films of the genre or one of the very best Nazi Germany films I have seen, but it is a good watch without a doubt and in my opinion it is even better than the highly overrated "Die Blechtrommel". I recommend "David". Thumbs-up for everybody working on this project. This is certainly a criminally underseen film.