15/02/2007

Following the Panorama screening at the Berlinale of German documentary The Red Elvis [+see also:
trailer
film profile] , director Leopold Grün and his team, roses in hand, were met with lengthy applause from the audience, which was won over by the unusual story of charismatic singer Dean Reed, a US citizen by birth who eventually emigrated to his spiritual home, East Germany.

The documentary first sets out, as the title implies, to question why the singer-actor, unsuccessful in his native land, became a legend on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Reed – who early in his career went to Chile to support President Salvador Allende and became a resident of East Germany towards the end of his life, and who was also worshipped on Moscow’s Red Square and fought for Palestine – perplexed the Western world. From the Communist perspective, however, the fact that an American could get angry at his country to the point of burning his national flag was proof that capitalism was flawed. And that is how Reed the man became Reed the legend.

But then the legend became a man again. Gradually, we realise that the so-called anti-Americanism Reed proclaimed was, in fact, a manifestation of the dream of freedom on which the US was founded. And the singer’s constant travelling – to the West, South and, ultimately, the East – was quite simply an extension of the American “frontier”.

The documentary’s strong point is that it does not let viewers be blinded by the young rebel’s energy, also depicting less glamorous sides of Reed, such as his boorish manner with women, a man victimised by success and, lastly, that of an outdated singer whose positions never evolved in a changing Socialist world.

Despite his flaws, this twilight of an idol did bring a smile to viewers’ faces. The various contrasting accounts by speakers, and the way in which they are filmed, are also not short on irony. The film, a look at the history of the GDR and the Socialist dream it espoused, provides audiences with a snapshot of images and faces that still amaze after 20 years.

The Red Elvis – produced by Thomas Janze for Totho cmp, who are also handling international sales – will be released in Germany by Neue Visionen.

(Translated from French)