The Legend of Paul and Paula (1973)

Great Film overall

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The legend of Paul and Paula is a very popular film in East Germany. By the way, its the favorite movie of Chancellor Angela Merkel.Before you watch that movie you must consider two things: the film was made in the GDR with the possibilities they had in the GDR-System and it was not possible to criticize the system in an open way. That means they always had to criticize between the lines.I don't like to reveal too much, but I like to explain what the film is about:We meet a single woman Paula which raises her child alone. She meets another bloke and becomes pregnant again, but he cheats on her as well. Paula is a 20 something and feels unhappy in her life. She is young, but it seems that nothing is going on in her life anymore. Paula watches all the happy couples around her, but she is alone. There is an older admirer (Herr Saft) which she could marry, but she does not love him. Paula makes an decision: it would be good to marry this older men in a material way and for her children. But before she agrees, she likes to paint the town red for a last time.In a disco she meets Paul, who is very successful in his job, but he is unhappy in his marriage. They fall in love with each other...but he will not leave his family because of the expectation of society etc. There are some heartbroken scenes. A wonderful love movie.It is up to you,if the film has an Happy End. Just be open and enjoy.

If you want to get the feel of life in East Germany and of life in the 70s, this is your film. It is critical of the socialist system (national socialism ended in 1945, afterwards there was no Nazi-propaganda anywhere anymore, especially not in the East! Sorry, but another reviewer got this wrong), offers a romantic story and good acting by well-known actors. It is still cult in Berlin, where you can regularly see in the cinema. It kicked off the wave of east-German nostalgia. The film was so successful that today you can still see references to it in other films (eg. "Sonnenallee") and that the city decided to name a path along a lake "Paul und Paula Ufer" with a Paul und Paula bench to sit on. Also the soundtrack is worth listening to (especially the lyrics) and marked the beginning of the Puhdys'huge career.

Paul and Paula go through life picking the wrong partners until they happen to hook up with each other and the legend begins. Low-budget German film has the look of a cheesy porno movie. The script is pretty standard boy-meets-girl story. The acting by Domrose (as Paula, who seems to work in an amazingly busy grocery store or something and has wild mood swings) and Glatzeder (as the goofy Paul) is not bad, considering the clichéd characters they are playing. The direction is amateurish, with incongruous shots of buildings being demolished thrown in. The soundtrack is filled with bad German pop songs, although it is interesting that they get the lyrics to rhyme even after translating to English.

"Die Legende von Paul und Paula" (1973), co-written and directed by Heiner Carow, is a famous film in Germany. The story seems tame enough now--a young woman is dissatisfied with her life and takes active steps to improve it.Angelica Domröse plays Paula, a single mother who has a dead-end job and no social life. Winfried Glatzeder portrays Paul, who is unhappily married and is drawn to the free-spirited Paula. (Glatzeder has been called East Germany's Jean-Paul Belmondo. He didn't look much like Belmondo, and wouldn't have struck me as leading man material. However, I don't know enough about East German cinema to be aware of his competition.)I've been told that the reason for this film's popularity in East Germany was because it contained subtle criticism of the regime, as well as depicting some PG-13 sex. I know East German films were subject to strict censorship, and, as in any similar regime, directors inserted criticisms in ways that were necessarily very indirect and symbolic.The problem is that this movie only works if you can think of how you would have viewed it in East Berlin in 1973. I don't believe it's strong enough to succeed on its own merits in 2006.