From Amazon.com
This Oscar-winning adaptation of Günter Grass's novel is an absurdist fantasy about a little German boy (David Bennent) who wills himself at the age of three not to grow up in protest of the Nazi regime. Made unnecessarily notorious in recent years due to overzealous censors in some parts of the United States, the film is more startling and surreal than obscene. Bennent is very good, and while the 1979 film doesn't meet the high standards of the best work from the then-renaissance of German film, it has a special place in the hearts of many who saw it upon its release. Directed by Volker Schlöndorff (
The Handmaid's Tale). The special-edition DVD release has a widescreen presentation, director commentary, isolated musical score, English subtitles, and production notes.
--Tom Keogh
Review
The first German film to win the Best Foreign Film Oscar, New German Cinema forefather Volker Schlndorff's adaptation of The Tin Drum is a potent Fellini-esque epic of intuitive rebellion against a corrupt world. Shot on location in Poland, Germany, and France, the film mixes the palpable reality of ordinary life in prewar and World War II Danzig with the surreal, innocent perspective of stunted boy/man Oskar as he raises instinctive hell against the horrors he witnesses, first in his family and then as the Nazis take over his hometown. Reaching the heights of comedy in a chaotic Nazi rally and the depths of tragedy during the Danzig post-office siege, Oskar's incessant drum-beating and glass-shattering shriek become a powerful, if futile, protest. Twelve-year-old neophyte David Bennent, cast partly for his striking eyes, anchors a superb German cast, while such memorable images as a lone matriarch, grotesque eels, and a midget circus act underscore a society unhinged. Co-winner of Cannes' Palme d'Or (with, appropriately, Apocalypse Now [1979]), The Tin Drum became an international hit and a '90s target for censors in the U.S. Though his film covers only the first two-thirds of Gnter Grass' novel, Schlndorff has refrained from a
Tin Drum 2. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide