"Wir Kellerkinder" or "We Cellar Children" is a West German German-language movie from 1960, so this one is already more than 55 years old. At this age, it is a black-and-white film still and the runtime here is roughly 83 minutes, not a very long film by any means. It is probably the most known work by director Wolfgang Bellenbaum and the script is by Wolfgang Neuss and that's why it is also not a surprise the title is so similar to the probably more known "Wir Wunderkinder". But we talked about that one on another occasion already. Now lets take a look at this one. The cast includes several names that are still somewhat known in Germany today, such as co-writer Neuss, Karin Baal, Ingrid von Bergen or Ralf Wolter ("Winnetou"), even if it was somebody else from the cast who was the only one that received awards recognition.
About the story, the film perhaps tried to be too much for its own good. It is comedy as well as drama, even if I felt the comedy aspect was more dominant. And there are also war and history references in there from start to finish of course. Also the movie is not just about the War (2nd World War, that is), but also focuses on the years after 1945 at times. So yeah, this is a whole lot for a film that stays easily under 90 minutes. And maybe they tried to make too big of an impact here. I personally saw nothing awards-worthy in this movie. The narration got a bit annoying honestly the longer it went, even if I see this idea inspired voice-over narration even in modern German films still, also in stuff like Goodbye Lenin for example. If this film here was remade today, then maybe Florian Lukas would be the narrator. The voice reminded me a lot of him. Another problem would be that the film kept introducing one character after the other instead of keeping the number of key players low and properly elaborating on them. Also the film / the narrator made an impression as if he was really desperate to entertain the audience here with his constant jokes and references and sometimes less is more, also in this case here as it really felt a case of quantity over quality. This is a bit of a shame as the film doesn't start bad with the reporters trying to find somebody that would put a swastika on a wall for them. But the idea of how the simple man has the most interesting stories to tell did not work out here. I give this one a thumbs-down. Not recommended.
About the story, the film perhaps tried to be too much for its own good. It is comedy as well as drama, even if I felt the comedy aspect was more dominant. And there are also war and history references in there from start to finish of course. Also the movie is not just about the War (2nd World War, that is), but also focuses on the years after 1945 at times. So yeah, this is a whole lot for a film that stays easily under 90 minutes. And maybe they tried to make too big of an impact here. I personally saw nothing awards-worthy in this movie. The narration got a bit annoying honestly the longer it went, even if I see this idea inspired voice-over narration even in modern German films still, also in stuff like Goodbye Lenin for example. If this film here was remade today, then maybe Florian Lukas would be the narrator. The voice reminded me a lot of him. Another problem would be that the film kept introducing one character after the other instead of keeping the number of key players low and properly elaborating on them. Also the film / the narrator made an impression as if he was really desperate to entertain the audience here with his constant jokes and references and sometimes less is more, also in this case here as it really felt a case of quantity over quality. This is a bit of a shame as the film doesn't start bad with the reporters trying to find somebody that would put a swastika on a wall for them. But the idea of how the simple man has the most interesting stories to tell did not work out here. I give this one a thumbs-down. Not recommended.
