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Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum) (1979)

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Average Rating: N/A
Critic Reviews: 2
Fresh: 0 | Rotten: 2

audience

84

liked it
Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 6,860

My Rating

Movie Info

In Volker Schlöndorff's award-winning adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass' allegorical novel, David Bennent plays Oskar, the young son of a German rural family, circa 1925. On his third birthday, Oskar receives a shiny new tin drum. At this point, rather than mature into one of the miserable specimens of grown-up humanity that he sees around him, he vows never to get any older or any bigger. Whenever the world around him becomes too much to bear, the boy begins to hammer on his drum;

R,

Art House & International, Drama

Jean-Claude Carriere

Oct 12, 1999

Kinowelt

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All Critics (21) | Top Critics (4) | Fresh (16) | Rotten (4) | DVD (13)

Schlöndorff has a tendency to sketch the rest of the cast as simple grotesques or symbols of decadence that are unconvincingly humanized in the final third.

September 18, 2012 Full Review Source: Time Out New York
Time Out New York
Top Critic IconTop Critic

If ever [the characters in] a film embodied Hannah Arendt's principle of "the banality of evil", it's The Tin Drum...

January 23, 2013 Full Review Source: PopMatters
PopMatters

Criterion's release of Volker Schlöndorff's director's cut is occasion enough to bang The Tin Drum loudly. It doesn't hurt that they've provided an impressive new transfer and some choice new extras to round out the package.

January 21, 2013 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine

There are many themes running through The Tin Drum: resistance against an unkind world, the need for acceptance, the horrors of romance and war, and the final idea that growth is inevitable and unfortunately, necessary.

January 16, 2013 Full Review Source: Scene-Stealers.com
Scene-Stealers.com

In Volker Schlöndorff's restored version of his 1979 classic, Oskar Matzerath emerges as a tragic anti-hero, whose lustful imagination and prodigious magical gifts can't shield him from the juggernaut of war.

September 18, 2012 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine

The literal adaptation doesn't transfer that well to film.

January 30, 2011 Full Review Source: Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Ozus' World Movie Reviews

This movie rests on the small shoulders of David Bennent as 'three-year-old' Oskar Matzerath, and the undersized twelve-year-old comes up wonderful.

November 8, 2010 Full Review Source: ReelTalk Movie Reviews
ReelTalk Movie Reviews

Context is everything. Although often mistaken as a black comedy, Volker Schlöndorff's bold adaptation of Günter Grass's abstractly autobiographical 1959 novel is an exemplary model of European magic realist cinema.

April 15, 2009 Full Review Source: ColeSmithey.com
ColeSmithey.com

Fascinating allegory with war, death themes and little boy who won't grow up.

March 22, 2008
Video-Reviewmaster.com

Technically and stylistically, The Tin Drum is an astounding work. Thematically, it strives for an importance it only sometimes achieves

October 4, 2006 Full Review Source: Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)
Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)

the film is more memorable for its quirky commingling of the epic and the intimate and its often startling visuals than for any of its big themes

August 5, 2004 Full Review Source: Q Network Film Desk
Q Network Film Desk

the film is more memorable for its quirky commingling of the epic and the intimate and its often startling visuals than for any of its big themes

August 3, 2004 Full Review Source: Q Network Film Desk
Q Network Film Desk

Audience Reviews for Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum)

A little German boy decides to stop growing up at 3 and a half years old, then watches as Hitler rises to power. A classic comic nightmare about "little people's" acquiescence to Nazism.
January 31, 2013
366weirdmovies
Greg S

Super Reviewer

Darkly humor, surrealism and controversial, Die Blechtrommel is a dazzing, entertaning and unique film that bring to us a great direction, just like the screenplay and David Bennent's performance. One of the best films that I ever saw and also one of the most shocking. Fresh.
June 8, 2012
Lucas Martins

Super Reviewer

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Foreign Titles

  • Die Blechtrommel (DE)
  • Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel) (UK)
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