Morgen beginnt das Leben

Life Begins Tomorrow

Musician Robert Sand is released from prison in April 1933, after serving five years for manslaughter. Disappointed not to find his wife Marie waiting for him outside the prison gates, he heads into the city. At the same time, Marie makes her way in the other direction. For one portentous day, they look for each other in the noisy city of Berlin. Doubt, mistrust, and jealousy begin to germinate in Robert's breast…

Made after the end of the Weimar Republic, "Morgen beginnt das Leben" is a swan song to the qualities of Weimar cinema. With minimal, often deliberately incomprehensible dialogue, Hochbaum's film puts the focus on a visual experience. It is indebted to the tradition of films showing a cross-section of urban society; using documentary images, expressionist lighting, subjective camera angles, and experimental sound and picture montages, it traces a portrait of the metropolis, as well as the inner conflicts of its protagonist. But in the new dictatorial era, that had a price. In 1993, Karsten Witte wrote "the director, heir to the proletarian films of the Weimar Republic, depoliticised his methods to the same extent that he resurrected the rhetoric of the old avant-garde".

Source: 68. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)