The Thomas Mann Collection (Buddenbrooks / Doktor Faustus / The Magic Mountain)
by Franz Peter Wirth, Hans W. Geissend?rfer, Franz Seitz (II)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Armin Pianka, Carl Raddatz, Katharina Brauren, Martin Benrath, Ruth LeuwerikDirector: Franz Peter Wirth, Franz Seitz (II), Hans W. Geissend?rfer
Brand: Koch International
Audio: German (Original Language); English (Original Language); English (Subtitled)
Format: Box set, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 1140 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-04-10
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Koch Vision
Movie Reviews of The Thomas Mann Collection (Buddenbrooks / Doktor Faustus / The Magic Mountain)
Movie Review: the bliss of the (un)commonplace
Summary: 5 Stars
Magic Mountain:
At 324 minutes, this transliteration of Thomas Mann's psycho-sexual-socio-politico odyssey, The Magic Mountain, is a mesmerizing experience. Magic Mountain tells the fin de siecle coming-of-age story of Hans Castorp--a young engineer fresh out of school who has yet to gain a sense of himself or of the world around him. Possessing neither genius nor ambition, Hans has nonetheless succeeded well enough in school and is destined to succeed well enough as a shipbuilder. But before he begins a professional career that he chose only because it seemed practical enough, he decides to visit an ailing cousin, Joachim, and spend a few weeks with him at the world famous Berghof Sanatorium that is tucked away in the Swiss Alps, high above the ordinary world that he quite willingly leaves behind. When we join Hans he is traveling by train through the mountains and fondly dreaming about a past attraction. Since Hans has no definitite sense of himself or what he values or desires he is highly susceptible to outer influences and the suggestions of others. This impressionability and penchant for daydreaming/fantasy will play a key part in his odyssey.
Once he arrives at the sanatorium, Hans immediately feels the undeniable allure of the location, the exquisite architecture, the eccentric clientele, and the indolent carefree way of life (patients spend their days lounging on deck chairs that overlook a pristine mountain range lined with majestic firs). The sanatorium is really more like an exotic spa. Some of the clientele are truly sick (evidenced by the almost daily removal of coffins), but others seem to be there for less specific reasons. What unites them all is that none of them seem to know what they want from life and this quality makes them each unfit for the goal-oriented drudgery of middle class existence. The sanatorium provides all of these unfinished types with a sanctuary, but a sanctuary that is also a kind of finishing school for the unfinished. Each character may be seen to be engaged in their own private odyssey and this makes the sanatorium not only a sanctuary but a hothouse of philosophic and sexual experimentation, speculation and intrigue.
Although Hans is only supposed to stay a few weeks, the world of the sanatorium -- which is a world that seems to exist outside of time (and much is made of the way we experience time differently when subjected to new routines) -- is a perfect fit for him and so he finds it simply too alluring to leave. So when Dr.'s Behrens and Krokowski (the former a physician, the latter a psychoanalyst) who are not only trained doctors but also expert at keeping their holistic health care facility at full capacity, diagnose Hans with tuberculosis, these physic and psychic "experts" give 24 year old Hans the excuse that he needs to retire from the world before he has even begun to live in it. In the culture of the spa, illness is not equated with failure, rather it is equated with sublimated desire and unfulfilled wishes (an equation fostered by Dr. Krokowski who lectures on the subject). The day one is diagnosed with an illness is the day one is freed from bourgeois responsibility and routine and the day one becomes a member of an effete social elite (this sense of exclusivity, of false nobility, is fostered by Krokowski but also by the patients themselves). Philosophically, Hans is drawn to (though does not always know whether he agrees with) the ramblings of the outlandish humanist Settembrini who preaches a liberal doctrine of enlightement, free will, and progress and whose meditations on the difference between the irrational indolent east and the rational industrious west seem particularly ripe in this location where everyone has surrendered their free will and deferred judgement to a couple of questionable experts and where indolence and irresponsibiity is the rule. Although Settembrini might distrust irrational things like music and love and anything that excites and awakens the irrational impulses and emotions, Settembrini himself does not always seem to practice his doctrine of pure reason and progress. Like the others, he has chosen to remove himself from the world and live in the safety of the sanctuary instead of acting on his oft-professed beliefs.
Adding to the overall allure of the Berghof Sanatorium is the presence of the magnificently beautiful Clavdia Chauchat. At first sight Hans is smitten by her and thereafter his every waking and sleeping hour is haunted by her. Hans hears rumors that she feigns a recurring illness so that she can spend her time flirting in various sanatoriums and shirk the responsibilities of adult life. This both repulses and attracts the always uncertain Hans. Hans nonetheless lives for their chance encounters...
This is an incredibly rich viewing experience. The locations alone cast a spell that cannot be resisted. And the narrative itself unfolds as if it were a slow luxurious dream, tenuous and delicate. You will view this gilded and delerious world as Hans does, and, like Hans, you will feel that this is a world that you do not want to leave.
The last 100 minutes are much more accelerated and much more fragmented than the elegantly paced first 224, and are thematically dominated by the ever increasing threat of war. Clavdia's new "traveling companion" Mr. Peperkorn (Rod Steiger), Krokowski's theatrical seances, and Settembrini and Naphta's (Charles Aznavour) escalating philosophical debates all reflect growing discontent with current realities and growing desperation to find new ways to cope with those realities and/or new ways to distract oneself from them. The crass and ill-mannered egomanical charlatan/visionary Peperkorn arrives on the scene espousing earthy life embracing-and-affirming notions one minute and prophecies of impotence and doom the next. Despite their ability to keep up a grandiose and elegant front, Hans begins to see that Peperkorn and Cladvia are simply bound by a mutual fear of inner loneliness. Krokowski continues to exploit the fears and desires of others with his extravagantly staged seances in which he evokes the spirits of the dead. And, finally, Naphta challenges Settembrini's liberal values (which he sees as grossly tainted by capitalist imperatives) and believes anarchy is the only way for man to find out what he truly believes. When the two philosophers fight a duel it would seem that an entire age is at odds with itself and bent on self-destruction. Once Germany begins fighting Russia, the clients of the sanatorium must leave and the days of gilded delerium vanish in the chaos of World War I. The narrator gives us no definitive ending, but suggests that the outlook is not good for Hans Castorp.
Summary of The Thomas Mann Collection (Buddenbrooks / Doktor Faustus / The Magic Mountain)
Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929, Thomas Mann was honored for a body of work that began with his first novel, Buddenbrooks, and whose other milestones included The Magic Mountain and Doktor Faustus . These three novels are brought to life in this outstanding 7-disc collection, which pays tribute to Mann's most celebrated and famous works.Buddenbrooks As seen on PBS Great Performances . A stimulating adaptation of Mann's most famous novel and one of the most widely read German novels in the world, Buddenbrooks is the sweeping tale of the rise and fall of a wealthy merchant family torn between family loyalty and personal freedom.
Doktor Faustus Driven by a single-minded search for a totally new musical idiom, composer Adrian Leverk?hn, makes a pact with the devil with a very high price: the total renunciation of love and the gradual deterioration of the mind and body.
The Magic Mountain Hans Castorp, son of a distinguished Hamburg family, spends seven years in a Swiss sanatorium. Drawn to the hermetic society, he receives an erotic and philosophical initiation but abruptly leaves at the launch of the Great War to learn true life experience and responsibility.
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