Congenial Film adaptation of Klaus Mann'sJorney into Freedom, his first novel written in exile: In 1933, the young anti-fascist Johanna flees Germany to escape the Nazis. Although she plans to join the resistance in France, she initially finds refuge on an estate in Finland that belongs to the family of a friend. There she meets Ragnar and begins a passionate affair with him. The two of them set off on a journey north together, traveling through the timeless beauty of the Finnish landscape to the Arctic Ocean, the northernmost point of their journey. Here Johanna has to make a decision: Does she want a happy life with Ragnar or continue to pursue her political goals?
The films
Flucht in den Norden / Flight North - West Germany 1986 - Directed and written by: Ingemo Engström, based on the novel "Flucht in den Norden" (Journey into Freedom) by Klaus Mann - Cinematography by: Axel Block - Edited by: Thomas Balkenhol - Cast: Katharina Thalbach, Jukka-Pekka Palo, Lena Olin, Tom Pöysti, Britta Pohland, Käbi Laretei - Produced by: Theuring-Engström Filmproduktion, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Jörn Donner Productions - Premiere: February 1986 (Berlin Film Festival)
Interview mit Ingemo Engström - West Germany 1986 - Produced by: Bayerischer Rundfunk, Munich - Premiere: February 1986 (Kino Kino)
Ingemo Engström about Flucht in den Norden
While filming ESCAPE ROUTE TO MARSEILLES, which is about German refugees fleeing the nazis through France, I read Klaus Mann's novel "Journey into Freedom" (1934), which was not published in West Germany until 1977. I immediately noticed that it combined several of the themes I was seeking for a film about the relationship between Finland and Germany during the period between the two world wars. For a long time I'd wanted to make a film in my native land, but it had to be a film that took place in both countries, going from one to the other. Nevertheless, I hesitated for some time before deciding on the novel, first because I was already involved in the preparations for another film (LAST LOVE, 1979), whose main theme, 'Liebestod', was similar to that in Klaus Mann's novel. So it was a theme I'd already worked out myself. What's more, for a film I prefer fragmentary ideas about a journey of discovery to something as final as a work of fiction. But the novel is in itself quite fragmentary, in any case it is free, a bit like a sketch. Written hastily in hotel rooms in Amsterdam, Paris and Budapest during Klaus Mann's first year in exile, the novel's attraction lies in its portrayal of a passionate love affair interwoven with scenes of political resistance and in the attempt to attain a synthesis between morality and beauty, perception and ecstasy. For Johanna, the young woman fleeing Nazi Germany to reach her comrades-in-arms in France, passes through Finland as though through purgatory, faltering between loyalty to the man she meets there and the political demands of the day. The meticulous description of the countryside the lovers pass through on their way to the northernmost tip of Finland is remarkable, a journey which seems timeless and yet threatened by premonitions of war and destruction. Finland is the country that Klaus Mann had crossed two years earlier, before his exile, on the way up to Petsamo and across Norway; you could almost say 'a preparation for exile'.
In the book we follow their journey from place to place until they reach Finnish Lapland, the area that was to be laid waste a decade later, in 1944, when the German army retreated after Finland had signed a separate peace with the Soviet Union. The description is of a journey made in a trance. When they reach the North Cape, at the end of their journey, he still in his native land and she in flight, they find strength for one final confrontation of their visions of society and violence. Here we meet the true and disturbing reality in Klaus Mann's book: the premonition of a struggle which is still going on and which has not lost any of its destructive power.
DVD features
- Flucht in den Norden 1986, 122'
- Interview mit Ingemo Engström 1986, 4'
- 20page booklet with texts by Ingemo Engström, Norbert Grob and others
DVD edited by: Filmmuseum München
DVD authoring: Tobias Dressel, Gunther Bittmann
DVD supervision: Stefan Drössler
First edition November 2024
