Bevor der Blitz einschlägt (Before the Lightning Strikes) is an East German comedy film

Comedy film

Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

 directed by Richard Groschopp. It was released in 1959.

Plot

Heinz, an ambitious reporter of the Berlin am Morgen newspaper, had made a fatal error when he prepared an article about a locomotive's factory, confusing the successful and motivated Schneider Workers' Brigade with the negliegent Schindler Brigade. He also presented the tyrannical manager as a paragon of virtue. Heinz's editor, Christine, decides to send him to the factory for another mission, and this time he should mingle with workers by joining them. Heinz, who takes the new assigment with little enthusiasm, becomes a highly motivated laborer and even manages to influence the Brigades' members to stop quarrelling. He also helps the manager to reconnect with his subordinates. Heinz's second article is welcomed as brilliant.

Cast

• Christine Laszar as Christine Koch
• Horst Drinda as Heinz Engelhardt
• Johannes Arpe as Paul Jordan
• Margret Homeyer as Otti Schütz
• Traute Sense as Claudia Lindner
• Werner Dissel
  Werner Dissel
  Werner Friedrich Dissel was a German actor and director.-Biography:Dissel's began working as a newspaper photographer in the late 1920s. After the Nazis' rise to power, he became a member of an antifascist group headed by Harro Schulze-Boysen, and was involved in the resistance newspaper Wille zum...
  
   as Sylvio O. Schmitt
• Herwart Grosse as Argus
• Hannes Fischer as Rudi Molle
• Heinz Schröder
  Heinz Schröder
  Heinz Schröder was a German puppeteer. He became known in East Germany for puppeteering popular characters such as Pittiplatsch and Herr Fuchs in the children's program of the East German television...
  
   as Bruno Brause
• Gerd Biewer as Pfefferkorn
• Rudi Schiemann as butcher
• Friedrich Richter
  Friedrich Richter
  Friedrich-Wilhelm Heinrich Richter was a Sturmbannführer in the Waffen-SS during World War II. He was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, which was awarded to recognize extreme battlefield bravery or successful military leadership by Nazi Germany during World War...
  
   as entomologist
• Annemarie Hase as Aunt Else
• Rolf Herricht
  Rolf Herricht
  Rolf Oskar Ewald Günter Herricht , was an East German comedian.-Early life:Herricht graduated from school in 1943 after passing a 'War Abitur', a form of an Abitur designated to free school pupils to be mobilized...
  
   as locomotive constructor
• Hannjo Hasse
  Hannjo Hasse
  -Biography:Hasse began studying acting in 1938, and attended Lily Ackermann's Institute for Stage Artists' Education in Berlin. At 1941, he was drafted for the Labour Service, and later to the Army...
  
   as Dr. Schwarz

Production

Before the Lightning Strikes was part of a wave of light-hearted comedies released in the late 1950s to provide entertainment for the viewers, after the DEFA Board noticed the public's negative response to the ideological films made earlier in the decade. The picture still encountered several problems, and the DEFA Commission in the Socialist Unity Party of Germany

Socialist Unity Party of Germany

The Socialist Unity Party of Germany was the governing party of the German Democratic Republic from its formation on 7 October 1949 until the elections of March 1990. The SED was a communist political party with a Marxist-Leninist ideology...

's Politburo insisted on it featuring "contemporary socialist issues." It had to be completely revised before it was approved for screening. It was the third in a series of four comedies made in collaboration between director Richard Groschopp and writers Lothar Creutz and Carl Andriessen, who also worked on Sie kannten sich alle

Sie kannten sich alle

Sie kannten sich alle is an East German film. It was released in 1958....

(1958) Ware für Katalonien

Ware für Katalonien

Ware für Katalonien is an East German black-and-white film, directed by Richard Groschopp. It was released in 1959.-Plot:...

(1959) and Die Liebe und der Co-Pilot (1960).

Reception

The West German Catholic Film Service described the film as "combining entertainment with contemporary issues, made in a cabaret style." Dieter Reimer called it "a witty comedy."

External links

• Bevor der Blitz einschlägt on DEFA Sternstunden.
• Bevor der Blitz einschlägt on cinema.de.
• Bevor der Blitz einschlägt on film-zeit.de.