In this shot from
Trace of Stones (East German title:
Spur Der Steine) [1966], Heinz Bleibtreu (right) hears (Communist) party secretary Werner Horrath admit that he is divorcing his wife because he has had an illicit affair with engineer Kati Klee, one of the employees working on a construction site he is overseeing. This particular scene is ripe with symbolism: on Werner’s right (our left) is a photo of an old Communist party ideologue. On his left is the reality of the party, Bleibtrau, who urges Werner to cover up his affair for the good of the work site and the party. Werner, stuck between his own ideological views and the reality, refuses to play this game to save face.Banned in East Germany days after its initial release,
Trace of Stones is probably one of the most potent comments on Communist East Germany, which is often considered the most dogmatic of the former Eastern Bloc countries. Director Frank Beyer obviously realized the conflict between emotion and party loyalty created by the East German system early on, and this was one of the last DEFA Films (East Germany’s state-sanctioned film studio) to convey a subversive message. Its ban in the country lasted into the 1990s only being shown and widely distributed after the Berlin Wall fell.
