Alfons Zitterbacke

• Helmut Rossmann: Alfons Zitterbacke
• Claudia Mögenburg: Micki
• Günther Simon: Father Zitterbacke
• Angela Brunner: Mother Zitterbacke
• Alois Herrmann: Grandpa Thielecke
• Helge Vollbrecht: Maxie
• Uwe Pietsch: Peter
• Erik S. Klein: Alfred
• Evamaria Bath: Alfred's wife
• Horst Jonischkan: Teacher Giertzig

Alfons Zitterbacke is a children's film DEFA from the year 1966.

Action

The ten-year Alfons Zitterbacke goes along with his best friend Micki on the fairground. He must then prove his courage before his girlfriend, because a classmate teases him, he was afraid to go into the haunted house. On the way to the ghost train Alfons fears and depends therefore on chaos.

Even otherwise, Alfons seems like unlucky and it is not always understood by his surroundings. Alfons it annoys his surname Zitterbacke is teased repeatedly. When he proposes to his father to change the name, this is why his son is acidic. Even otherwise, it can make Alfonso his father never right, be it fishing or diving. Here, however, it turns out that Alfonso, after trying these things, soon better than his father is.

Only his girlfriend Micki always keeps Alfons, even if they can understand the ideas are not always, the Alfons has so. So, for example, Alfonso decides to become a cosmonaut and invents a kind of cosmonaut training. The tests were, for example, "cosmonaut food ": Alfons assumes that cosmonauts eat any solid food but feed exclusively from tubes and tried it with mustard, toothpaste and anchovy paste. Furthermore, he tried to train for weightlessness - by 10 laps on the whirligig without interruption. Ultimately, he stuffed cotton in my ears to find out what it's like nothing left to hear. This led, inter alia, conflicts at school, because the communication was not working. Also Micki found Alfons gradually exhausting, so Alfons this eventually has to go it alone.

Finally, Alfons and Micki make their way to Moscow to become cosmonauts. Your money is enough for a short train ride through the GDR. Then she takes with a truck driver who finds quickly that the children have run away from home. He alerted the police, but the children run away from him. But eventually she finds Alfonso's father brings the children back home. But Alfonso does not let himself be discouraged and already has new imaginative ideas.

Production

As a backdrop for the film served Jena, including the still existing school in the North Dornburger road. The apartment of Zitterbacke family was located in the old city center on Locust Street Oak Square, where today stands the JenTower (popularly Uniturm or " Keksrolle "). The houses in St. John Street still stand today. It is also in close proximity nor the bronze sculpture " Children at Play " to find, however, no longer in a fountain but on a separate base. According to the cameraman Eberhard Borkmann the pool shots (jump scenes) ( Friedrichshain probably) took place in Berlin,

The world premiere of the film took place on 25 February 1966. Until 1998, the film saw 2,565,125 visitors.

The film is based on the eponymous children's books by Gerhard Holtz- Baumert. It single episodes of the books were used for the film, but it also invented new people. After the work had to be cut to state transfer through individual scenes from the film, so director Konrad Petzold had his name removed from the opening credits of the film in protest.

Criticism

" Episodic children's film that reaches the originality of humorous and satirical presentation only in its infancy. "