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Memorable, crazy movie

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The film "Die Legende von Paul und Paula" is the answer of DEFA to the western Flower Power movement in the sixties. And although normally the Bolshevist film makers have a habit of ridiculing western (bourgeois) cultural phenomena, in this film they look kindly upon the sensual life of the hippies. The result is a bitter-sweet story. Bitter, because Flower Power is a counter culture, that revolts against the powers that be. The relation between the young lovers Paula and Paul is passionate and bold. For Paul is still married, albeit with a pawky and deceitful woman, a pauper and a pouter, in an affair that from the start never had a chance. And Paula is a mother of two children, just separated, because her husband could not remain faithful. Evidently marriage can be a vexation. The relation between Paula and Paul develops on feelings of passion and attraction. For on the level of cognition they are very different. Paul is a well-paid worker in the medical profession, and looks forward to a brilliant career. Paula works as check-out lady in a supermarket (does this mean something?). Some would call her a Paul Pry. But she possesses a fantasy, a despairing joy and a cheerful nature, that gradually undermine Pauls narrow-minded objections against a new steady relationship. There is sorrow too, for instance when Paulas little boy is killed in a road accident. Finally, after much amorous pow-pow, in the end the couple is united. But the union will not last. For Paula insists on having a child from Paul, even though because of physical inaptness the birth will most likely kill her. She is passionate until the end. Her death is the rebirth of Paul, who now under his own power adopts her sensual and joyous life style (with three kids, two from their former marriages, plus the mutual one). The timeless freedom of their affair is supported by the music of the GDR rock band "Die Puhdys", and by psychedelic scenes of Paula and Paul in a bed of flowers, floating on a river. The contrast with an earlier scene, where they make love in a pound, is immense. Of course this film is not unique. It follows the typical pattern of those days, just like for instance the Dutch film "Turks fruit" (also ending with the death of the female), and the American "Hair". But although I grew up in those years, I am still unable to give a convincing interpretation. There is something about sexual liberation and ill-fated relations. Beyond that, the behavior of the main characters is clearly unhealthy - just like Flower Power itself was unworldly and not viable. Perhaps the message is that there is always hope, and you should smile even in times of humanitarian shortcomings. We are just pawns in life's game. Let us call it a kind-hearted film with many qualities, that deserves more than it gets - like often on IMDb.

Die Legende von Paul und Paula captures the spirit of the changes and upheavals of the late 1960ies / early 1970ies upheaval like no other film. Outstanding acting and the on-screen chemistry between Angelica Domröse and Winfried Glatzeder (basically they're the Brangelina of early 1970ies East Germany) make up for the movie's slow and somewhat inane first third, and some dated flourishes such as the Sergeant Pepper-style scene on the barge. The movie manages to convey that the GDR wasn't the worker's paradise many like to remember it as, without ever being in-your-face type of critical.Unlike some reviewers have hinted, the movie was never banned in the GDR, although it can't have been popular with the party big whigs. In fact it was even the most popular homegrown movie on the other side of the wall.

"Die Legende von Paul und Paula" (1973), co-written and directed by Heiner Carow, is a famous film in Germany. The story seems tame enough now--a young woman is dissatisfied with her life and takes active steps to improve it.Angelica Domröse plays Paula, a single mother who has a dead-end job and no social life. Winfried Glatzeder portrays Paul, who is unhappily married and is drawn to the free-spirited Paula. (Glatzeder has been called East Germany's Jean-Paul Belmondo. He didn't look much like Belmondo, and wouldn't have struck me as leading man material. However, I don't know enough about East German cinema to be aware of his competition.)I've been told that the reason for this film's popularity in East Germany was because it contained subtle criticism of the regime, as well as depicting some PG-13 sex. I know East German films were subject to strict censorship, and, as in any similar regime, directors inserted criticisms in ways that were necessarily very indirect and symbolic.The problem is that this movie only works if you can think of how you would have viewed it in East Berlin in 1973. I don't believe it's strong enough to succeed on its own merits in 2006.

It's kind of weird. Angelica Domröse speaks in the movie of a Banana and why it's bent, yet she as an actress has probably never seen one. Also her parents most likely chose her name 'Angelica' (note: the name is spelt 'Angelika' in any German-speaking country) to mock the Soviet system and give credit to the American way of life. Just like pretty much anyone else in the GDR (note: if ever you meet a girl in Europe named 'Doreen', 'Melissa' or 'Mandy', it's pretty safe to say that she's from East Germany).Pretty much all of the home appliances shown are authentic, yet they had to introduce coffee and cosmetics (which didn't really exist in the GDR at that time) to make it suitable for the political demagogues. Imagine it: the fact that there is a sentence in English ("excuse me, only one glass for you") could have led to a total ban of the entire movie.What else is there to say? Try to understand the lyrics of the Band 'Puhdys' featured manifold in this flick and the in-between-the-lines-messages and how this was important to get thoughts of freedom past the GDR's government's census.Well you guys probably don't and will never understand what kind of fruit GDR's socialism sprouted, but watching 'Paul and Paula' could theoretically help you get at least a glimpse.