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Film Archive

The Boxer and Death

Tribute to Peter Solan 2009 / Boxer a smrť / Czechoslovakia 1962

A socio-psychological drama set in a Nazi concentration camp, where a prisoner, a former boxer, faces the camp commandant in the ring. The most important work by Slovak director and screenwriter Peter Solan, filmed during the "Golden Sixties”.

The Boxer and Death The Boxer and Death

Synopsis

The film opens to the sound of a series of punches, and the figure of a boxer gradually emerges from the darkness. After the training session, the shot of a concentration camp commandant’s uniform suddenly reveals the provisional boxing ring as part of a huge death factory. From the very first scene the character of these two locations is moulded into the story of two unequal opponents. At its beginning, both have a stroke of "luck”: the camp commandant Kraft finds a sparring partner and the prisoner Komínek, who was captured trying to escape, is thus spared execution at the last minute. For the commandant, who has absolute power over his surroundings, this is the ideal opportunity to hone his skills with a view to resuming his boxing career after the war. The inmate, on the other hand, becomes a worthless "fly”, fattened up "like a pig” before its imminent slaughter. However, ex-boxer Komínek grows stronger by the day, and it isn’t long before he begins to recognise Kraft’s weaknesses. The defenceless man hides his strength in order to save his own life. He defeats the commandant in a revenge match following the murder of a friend who was tortured to death. The next plan to execute him is averted by Kraft’s wife Helga, who thinks it would damage her husband’s image as an impartial sportsman. In the end, Komínek makes the decision himself to return to the death camp when he realises that the price of his release is the execution of forty fellow prisoners. This film, based on the short story of the same name by Polish writer Józef Hen, was the first Slovak psychological drama to be set in a concentration camp. Through his concept of the dual ring and dual contest as representing the fight for survival, Solan deliberately avoids specific and spectacular situations in order to move with greater discretion and directorial austerity towards the decisive factor in every borderline situation: failure, or strength of human nature and solidarity.

About the film

102 min / Black & white, 35 mm

Director Peter Solan / Screenplay Józef Hen, Tibor Vichta, Peter Solan / Dir. of Photography Tibor Biath / Music Wiliam Bukový / Editor Bedřich Voděrka / Producer Viliam Čánky / Production Filmová tvorba a distribúcia, Štúdio hraných filmov Bratislava-Koliba / Cast Štefan Kvietik, Manfred Krug, Valentina Thielová, Józef Kondrat, Edwin Marian, Gerhard Rachold, Jindřich Narenta, Edmund Ogrodziński / Contact Slovenský filmový ústav / Slovak Film Institute
www: www.sfd.sfu.sk

Contacts

Slovenský filmový ústav / Slovak Film Institute
Grösslingová 32, 811 09, Bratislava
Slovakia
Phone: +421 257 101 503
Fax: +421 252 963 461
E-mail: [email protected]

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