Die Manns
The docudrama is a tricky genre. The dramatic component easily comes across as a series of ornamental vignettes jarring with or romanticising the documentary. Life is mostly duller than drama; so we are left feeling cheated, confronted with something that is neither quite real nor quite satisfying our thirst for fantasy. Heinrich Breloer’s Die Manns is an exception to this rule. True, Thomas Mann and his gifted entourage were not a ‘normal’ family: in their case realism was fantastic. There is at the same time a narrative rigour to the drama that presents a credible portrait, not only of a clan, but of a world before, during, and after World War II subject to cataclysmic change. It is an unsettling and appropriate film to watch again now, with so much coming undone. The serene commentary of Elisabeth Mann Borgese adds a note of paradoxical hopefulness. Marcel Reich-Ranicki called Die Manns a high point of German cinema. I’d say that is no exaggeration.
