Drama · History · War
German (Die Blechtrommel)
1979 · Directed by Volker Schlöndorff · 162 min
Danzig, 1920s and 1930s. A boy named Oskar watches the grown-up world around him and decides, at the age of three, that he wants no part of it. With a toy drum and a piercing voice, he narrates a grotesque, comic and unsettling account of family, desire and a city sliding toward war.
Why it matters in cinema history
A defining international success of New German Cinema, it showed that West German filmmakers could confront the Nazi past through literary adaptation, satire and fable rather than through solemn historical reconstruction.
Watch with intention
Watch Oskar as an unreliable narrator whose child's body hides an adult's mind, and ask what the film wants you to see through him.
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