"Tom Sawyers and Huckleberry Finn's Adventures": Politically Incorrect for Equality and Freedom

On January 3, 2022, 3sat will show the legendary ZDF four-part “Tom Sawyers and Huckleberry Finns Adventure” in full.

Did you know that the Mississippi flows through Romania? If you rediscover the legendary ZDF four-part series “Tom Sawyers and Huckleberry Finns Adventure” (original title “Les Aventures de Tom Sawyer”) from 1968 today (03.01.2022) in 3sat, you will be taught better. Because of the relatively low costs, the film was shot in the Danube Delta, which screenwriter and co-producer Walter Ulbrich (June 15, 1910 in Metz to November 13, 1991 in Unterpfaffenhofen) found “much more original” than the original landscape, as well as in four studios near Bucharest.

The cinematic trick worked: The congenial adaptation of the most famous novels by Mark Twain (actually Samuel Langhorne Clemens, November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri to April 21, 1910 in Redding, Connecticut), “Tom Sawyer’s Adventure and Streiches “(1876) and” Huckleberry Finn’s Adventures and Rides “(1884, German edition: 1890), which are supplemented by the volume” Leben auf dem Mississippi “(1883), more American than all 20 (US) versions since 1917 together.

3sat shows legendary ZDF four-part series “Tom Sawyers and Huckleberry Finns Adventure”

There are several reasons for this: Under the careful direction of Wolfgang Liebeneiner (October 6, 1905 in Liebau, Province of Silesia – November 28, 1987 in Vienna), who was once an actor himself (“Liebelei”, 1933), but also the National Socialist propaganda strips ” Bismarck ”(1940),“ I accuse ”(1941),“ The Discharge ”(1942) and“ Life Goes On ”(1945) retained the title roles – Roland Demongeot as Tom and Marc Di Napoli as Huck – their carefree.

After his denazification – the British occupation authorities classified him as “harmless” because he was exonerated by statements from Jewish employees who confirmed that he had helped them quietly and discreetly – he succeeded with “Liebe 47” based on Wolfgang Borchert’s drama “Draußen vor der Door “a first post-war masterpiece.

Two years before “Tom Sawyers and Huckleberry Finns Adventure” he had already demonstrated that he was able to work particularly well with young actors with his wonderful, also four-part version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” (all four episodes on January 4th on 3sat ), where he led the 21-year-old Michael Ande as Jim Hawkins to an absolutely authentic-looking brilliant performance.

Walter Ulbrich was also called “Father of the Advent four-parters” since “The strange and unique adventures of Robinson Crusoe from York, reports by himself” (1964), screenwriter and with his DEROPA Film- und Fernseh GmBH (later Tele München) co-producer. Business partner was Henri Deutschmeister, born in Romania (May 21, 1902 as Heinrich Fritz Deutschmeister in Brăila – February 20, 1969 in Paris) with Franco London Film.

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The latter had an unmistakable nose for trends and box office hits. Deutschmeister signed almost all the stars of French entertainment films of the 1950s and early 1960s, including Jean Gabin, Brigitte Bardot, Gérard Philipe, Louis de Funès and Bourvil. But he also produced sophisticated works such as René Clair’s Faust variant “The Pact with the Devil” (1950) and André Cayatte’s advertising film for Franco-German international understanding, “Beyond the Rhine” (1960), with Charles Aznavour and Cordula Trantow. So what should go wrong with Tom Sawyers and Huckleberry Finn’s Adventures?

“Tom Sawyers and Huckleberry Finns Adventure”: 344 exciting (film) minutes

The meticulous preparation almost anticipated Stanley Kubrick’s selection process for Danny Lloyd, who was recruited from 5000 children, in the horror classic “Shining” (1980): twelve-year-old Roland Demongeot (German dubbing: Conny Thomas) scored over 150 during the casting for the role of Tom Sawyer other applicants. He acts as a real rascal – intelligent but lazy, romantic but cheeky.

He is thievingly happy when he has the garden fence of his aunt Polly (Lina Carstens) painted by the other boys in the town on the Mississippi in Missouri above St. Louis and still gets paid for it because he suggests to them that there is nothing nicer on it the world than to voluntarily paint this garden fence on a work-free Sunday. In innocent but passionate love, he is inclined to his classmate Becky Thatcher (Lucia Ocrain, who played Humphrey van Weyden’s little sister Bessy in “The Sea Wolf” three years later).

But sometimes he gets a thirst for adventure and then he sets off with Huckleberry Finn: This is embodied by the French teen swarm of the Swinging Sixties Marc Di Napoli (German dubbing voice: Thomas Margulies). As a perpetual drifter, the fourteen-year-old boy, who hates fixed time management and decent clothing, does not allow himself to be pressed into any scheme. Like the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes, he sleeps in a barrel and fends off the care of the widow Douglas (Marcella Russu).

Together, in 344 (film) minutes, the two experience as much as others in their entire youth: They free the innocent incarcerated village carpenter Muff Potter (Otto Ambros) from prison and expose Indian Joe (Jacques Bilodeau) as a murderer. Later they find the treasure of the escaped criminal who perishes in a cave labyrinth when the couple Tom and Becky, who get lost on a school trip, narrowly escape death themselves, and they get rich. Huck finally allows himself to be adopted by the widow Douglas and moves in with her.

Tired of the well-tended life, he flees in the fourth part, which is borrowed from the classic youth book “The Adventures and Journeys of Huckleberry Finn” (for Ernest Hemingway “ the key work of US literature”), but together with Douglas’ slave Jim (Serge Nubret) on a raft. As a result, Huck and Tom parted ways. In stark contrast to the novel, where the two friends meet again at the end, the story is not told from Huck’s perspective, but by the narrator Ernst Fritz Fürbringer, who also speaks the voiceover in the three previous episodes.

Huck (leberry) Finn really existed. His name was Tom (sic!) Blankenship, was born in 1839 and grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, together with Samuel Langhorne Clemens (alias Mark Twain!), Who was four years his senior. Both families lived in the immediate vicinity. Mark Twain characterized him in “My Secret Autobiography” (1906) as follows: “In Huckleberry Finn, I drew Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, and inadequately fed, but he had as good a heart as anyone. His freedom was limitless. He was the only truly independent person in the community – boy or man; consequently he was serene and ceaseless and the rest of us envied him. We liked him; we enjoyed his company. And since we were forbidden from dealing with him by our parents, that tripled or quadrupled the value, and so we sought his company more often than that of any other boy. “

However, the writer knew next to nothing about the rest of his life, because the two friends actually lost sight of each other. The real Huck is said to have later served as justice of the peace in the Indian territories of Oklahoma and Montana, other sources say that he perished in one of the cholera epidemics that swept up the Mississippi.

ZDF four-part series “Tom Sawyers and Huckleberry Finns Adventure” is well cast

Roland Demongeot, who now lives withdrawn from the public, and the now celebrated painter Marc Di Napoli, who was still in Claude Chabrol’s thriller “The Beast Must Die” (1969) as Philippe Decourt and in the Jules Verne four-part series “Two Years of Vacation ”(1974) when Doniphan Weldon was convincing, they were real“ Bravo ”stars at the time. Homestories in the teenage postil kept the readership as much in suspense as their television adventures, which were repeated only one year after the television broadcast from December 1 to 22, 1968 on ZDF, which was extremely rare at the time.

The four-part series, which received excellent contemporary reviews and the Perla TV Prize in Milan, is cast right down to the smallest supporting role: The strict but kind-hearted Aunt Polly, with whom Tom lives with his ambitious brother Sid (Robert Hecker), finds herself in the unforgettable Lina Carstens, who in 1962 wrote radio play history together with the genius actor Oskar Werner as the title character “Raskolnikoff” in Leopold Ahlen’s radio play of the same name as usurious pawnbroker Aljona Ivanovna, her ideal embodiment. And Jack Bilodeau, as the antagonist of Indian Joe, with his hard-nosed manner, appears much more dangerous than the charging Benno Fürrmann in Hermine Huntgeburth’s smooth new filming of “Tom Sawyer” in 2011.

The film music by the Romanian-French composer Vladimir Cosma (“The big blonde with the black shoe”, 1972; “Schach dem Roboter”, 1976; “La Boum – Die Fete”, 1980) adds to the fascination: year olds had their breakthrough in their twenties with “Tom Sawyers and Huckleberry Finns Adventure”. The bizarre, comedic theme music is juxtaposed with the longing “Mississippi steamers” theme with its stuffed trumpets and heartfelt strings. In addition to two EPs with the best pieces, Roland Demongeot was allowed to sing the main melody on a CBS single (“Tom Sawyer” / “La fête au pays”). In 1975 Vladimir Cosma was commissioned with the equally successful soundtrack for the Jules Verne four-part television series “Michael Strogoff (Der Kurier des Zaren”, with Raimund Harmstorf). “The adventures of David Balfour” (1978) and the last classic ZDF four-part adventure “Der Mann von Suez” (1983) were also musically refined by him.

ZDF four-part “Tom Sawyers and Huckleberry Finns Adventure”: Satirical sharpness remains

The satirical sharpness of Mark Twain has been preserved through the voiceover by Ernst Fritz Fürbringer on “Tom Sawyers and Huckleberry Finns Adventure”. The everyday racism to which the “People of Color”, i.e. the indigenous peoples and Afro-Americans, were (and unfortunately still are) exposed in the so-called “Land of Unlimited Possibilities”, can be seen through, as with their creator, his protagonists Tom and Huck in the four-part Movie. They hold up a mirror to the hypocrisy and mendacity of the prevailing circumstances through their wandering around and the freeing of the slave Jim: They embody the new, freer America.

1968 in times when political correctness was actually still a foreign word, but student unrest caused a sensation worldwide, especially in France and the Federal Republic of Germany, Afro-Americans were still referred to as “negroes”. Both the template and the television series, however, provide a detailed description of the people and places on the banks of the Mississippi and give sobering and biting insights into the firmly rooted behaviors of this time. Mark Twain’s books are sometimes misunderstood as racist themselves because Jim is consistently referred to as a “nigger” in them. It would be unfair to give the television classic, which is committed to abolition and equality, this negative rating as well. Then the films by Quentin Tarantino – “Django Unchained” (2012) and “The Hateful 8” (2015), where the “N” word keeps appearing, should be called racist. Besides Ruth Scheerbarth’s six-part Arioloa “m-Records” radio play from the 1970s with Claus Biederstaedt as narrator, Viktor Schneider as Tom and Mathias Einert as Huck, no other interpretation has come as close to the original Twains as the TV event “made in Romania, France & Germany “.

A suggestion at the end: After the successful eight-part remake of Jules Verne’s bestseller “Around the World in 80 Days” ran on ZDF shortly before Christmas, the broadcaster, which has set up a co-production forge with the European Alliance, could perhaps think about an adaptation of the rather unknown satirical novel sequels “Tom Sawyer abroad” (1894) and “Tom Sawyer as a detective” (1896). Humorous and sophisticated television entertainment for young and old shouldn’t just be in 1968, but also in 2022 … (Marc Hairapetian)

Our author Marc Hairapetian wrote the chapter “In search of lost time” about the radio play adaptations of the four-part adventure on ZDF in the second edition of the illustrated book “Seewolf and Co.” (Oliver Kellner / Ulf Marek, Schwarzkopf and Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2005, Euro 29.80).