The Legend of Paul and Paula

Die Legende von Paul und Paula (English: The Legend of Paul and Paula) is a 1973 tragicomic East German film directed by Heiner Carow. A novel by Ulrich Plenzdorf named Die Legende vom Glück ohne Ende was based on this film.

The film was extremely popular on release and had drawn 3,294,985 viewers (the GDR had a population at the time of around 17 million). However, due to the film's political overtones it was almost not released; East German leader Erich Honecker personally decided to allow it to be shown. Today it is considered one of the best-known East German films.

Plot summary

Paul is a minor bureaucrat in East Berlin, where he lives with his wife and their son in a modern high-rise apartment building. While he is well educated and professionally ambitious, he is generally bored with his life. He cannot relate to his unsophisticated wife, who is repeatedly unfaithful, even bringing men home to their apartment when Paul is away. Paula, a grocery store cashier and single mother of two, lives in a run-down, prewar building directly across from Paul's modern high-rise. Having thrown out her philandering live-in lover (and father of her younger child), she is seeking more happiness in her tedious life.

UND

UND or Und may refer to:

Howard Barker

Howard E. Barker (born 28 June 1946) is a British playwright.

The Theatre of Catastrophe

Barker has coined the term "Theatre of Catastrophe" to describe his work. His plays often explore violence, sexuality, the desire for power, and human motivation.

Rejecting the widespread notion that an audience should share a single response to the events onstage, Barker works to fragment response, forcing each viewer to wrestle with the play alone. "We must overcome the urge to do things in unison" he writes. "To chant together, to hum banal tunes together, is not collectivity." Where other playwrights might clarify a scene, Barker seeks to render it more complex, ambiguous, and unstable.

Only through a tragic renaissance, Barker argues, will beauty and poetry return to the stage. "Tragedy liberates language from banality" he asserts. "It returns poetry to speech."

Themes

Barker frequently turns to historical events for inspiration. His play Scenes from an Execution, for example, centers on the aftermath of the Battle of Lepanto (1571) and a fictional female artist commissioned to create a commemorative painting of the Venetian victory over the Ottoman fleet. Scenes from an Execution, originally written for Radio 3 and starring Glenda Jackson in 1984, was later adapted for the stage. The short play Judith revolves around the Biblical story of Judith, the legendary heroine who decapitated the invading general Holofernes.