Bernhard Wicki's last cinematic work is set 100 years ago in 1923 and offers a very accurate portrait of the times in this film about an unscrupulous right-wing national opportunist:
THE SPIDER'S WEB
DEU 1989 R: Bernhard Wicki. D: Ulrich Mühe, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Andrea Jonasson. 196 min. FSC: 16
Theodor Lohse, a lieutenant in the troops loyal to the Kaiser in 1918, earns his living five years later as a tutor in a Jewish banker's family, but above all tries to work his way up in national circles. As a spy for an extreme right-wing secret organization, he scouts out a communist group of artists. Lohse sees his chance to make a military and political career after all. To do so, he is willing to go over dead bodies - only the double agent Lenz, who meticulously follows Lohse's life, could get in his way.
Bernhard Wicki (DIE BRÜCKE) tells the story of an unsubstantial opportunist and of a society on its way to moral bankruptcy against the backdrop of different life worlds in the inflation year 1923: in November, when Lohse learns of the Hitler putsch in Munich, he is of course already a member of the NSDAP. "In a broad arc of images, Wicki sketches a contemporary history of the most terrible characteristics based on the career of a typical man without qualities." (Süddeutsche Zeitung 1989)
DAS SPINNENNETZ, based on the novel by Joseph Roth, has won many awards.
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