Spur der Steine

“You shall always strive to improve your performance, be thrifty, and strengthen socialist work discipline.” So reads Walter Ulbricht’s Ten Commandments of Socialist Morality. It is doubtful whether Hans Balla’s brigade members, toiling away on a massive building site, take this instruction seriously. They won’t let bureaucracy, a planned economy or restrictions hold them back: Right at the start, these down-to-earth lads sink the embodiment of state power – a policeman – into the duck pond … With humour, energy and strong characters, Frank Beyer’s widescreen construction-site western shows just how complicated the attempt was to reconcile ideals and reality with everyday life in the GDR: withdrawn from circulation shortly after its premiere, today one of the DEFA’s most significant works.
(Florian Widegger)