1740 and All That

Back when we started this salon, I rewatched Der Thronfolger, a 1980 tv two parter on YouTube (where it's no longer to be found, alas) for the first time since the original broadcast, and provided a quick summary. This Christmas, I got the DVD, and thus can now provide screencaps. Also, I did another rewatch, with far more historical detail in the back of my head than I had relatively early in our salon, and also now with the confirmation that scriptwriter Helmut Pigge based this (losely, bot noticably) on Jochen Klepper's FW novel Der Vater. (Change of title telling of change of emphasis, as Der Vater covers FW's entire life, while Der Thronfolger is strictly about the father/son conflict and focuses on the years between 1727 - 1730.) (The Klepper basis means, among other things, that the - considerable - facts worked into this fiction are still those available in the 1930s, when Klepper wrote his book and had only a few more years to live.) As German tv two parters go, I find it holds up pretty well. Not perfect, but it tells the story it wants to tell - the family tragedy -, the acting is good, and however much budget they got, they used it well. (No filming on location, since this was a West German production and thus they couldn't go to Potsdam, and of course there isn't enough left of Küstrin anyway. But whichever palaces they used instead work.) It's not perfect, but I really like it, and as opposed to some other fictionalizations can see the reasons for most of the alterations. But even if you, faithful reader, should dislike said two parter, prepare to enjoy the screencaps as useful illustrations, because the costuming department really worked hard here.



( Lots and lots of pictures await beneath the cut )