The Tin Drum (film)

The Tin Drum
Original German film poster
German	Die Blechtrommel
Directed by	Volker Schlöndorff
Written by	Jean-Claude Carrière Franz Seitz Volker Schlöndorff
Based on	The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
Produced by	Franz Seitz
Starring	David Bennent Mario Adorf Angela Winkler Katharina Thalbach Daniel Olbrychski Charles Aznavour
Cinematography	Igor Luther
Edited by	Suzanne Baron
Music by	Maurice Jarre
Production companies	Franz Seitz Filmproduktion Bioskop Film Argos Films Jadran Film
Distributed by	United Artists
Release dates	3 May 1979 (1979-05-03) (Wiesbaden) 19 September 1979 (1979-09-19) (France)
Running time	142 minutes 162 minutes (Director's cut)
Countries	West Germany France Yugoslavia
Language	German
Budget	$3 million[1]
Box office	$13 million (Germany – 25 million Marks)[2] $2 million[3] or $4 million[4] (U.S.)

The Tin Drum (German: Die Blechtrommel) is a 1979 internationally co-produced magical realistic dark comedy anti-war film adaptation of Günter Grass's novel of the same name, directed by Volker Schlöndorff from a screenplay co-written by Schlöndorff, Jean-Claude Carrière, and Franz Seitz. It stars Mario Adorf, Angela Winkler, Katharina Thalbach, Daniel Olbrychski, and Charles Aznavour, with David Bennent in the lead role of Oskar Matzerath, a young boy who willfully arrests his own physical development and remains in the body of a child even as he enters adulthood.

A darkly comic war drama with magical realist elements, the film follows Oskar, a precocious child living in Danzig, who wields seemingly preternatural abilities. He lives in contempt of the adults around him and witnesses firsthand their potential for cruelty, first via the rise of the Nazi Party and then the subsequent war. The title refers to Oskar's toy drum, which he loudly plays whenever he is displeased or upset. The German-language film was a co-production of West German, French, and Yugoslavian companies.

The film won the Palme d'Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival and was a major financial success in West Germany, where it won the German Film Award for Best Fiction Film. It was received more controversially internationally, and was targeted by censorship campaigns in Ireland, Canada, and the United States. Despite the notoriety, the film won Best Foreign Language Film at the 1980 Academy Awards. In 2003, The New York Times placed the film on its Best 1000 Movies Ever list.^[5]