Distribution / Italian Classics / "The Prince of Homburg"

THE PRINCE OF HOMBURG

A classical tragedy by Heinrich von Kleist, The Prince of Homburg, has been made into a film by Marco Bellocchio.
The hero (Homburg) is a general who ignores his orders and launches his cavalry into battle ahead of time. Despite the victory won because of his courage, he is condemned to death. Faced with capital punishment, Prince Friedrich Arthur von Homburg is possessed by fear, and fights for survival, literally 'forgetting' that he is, or was, a hero. But, at the moment he is offered a way out that he deems dishonourable, he accepts his condemnation willingly, obeying his father's law. Catharsis and moral victory come together in this great drama with its many levels of inetrpretation, sometimes enveloped in an unreal-magical atmosphere in the utopian vision of a universe founded upon reasonable humanity, in which we are allowed to maturely glimpse the freedom within ourselves with clarity and lucidity. The drama of this romantic hero expresses the travail of a young man, at once judicial and inward: the conflict between reason of sentiment, youth and enthu siasm against the necessity for reasons of State.

Directed by: Marco Bellocchio
Cast: Andrea di Stefano, Barbora Bobulova, Toni Bertorelli
89 min.