“You don't forget silent again. He is not a character of a novel, but an individual, a character experienced in every train,” wrote writer Hermann Hesse once the protagonist from the novel of his contemporary Swiss authoral colleague Max Frisch. And indeed: those with the famous words “I'm not silent!” Introduced main character of the novel translated into numerous languages, which freshly brought his breakthrough in the 1950s, is a fascinating and puzzling man. His opaque being and the motives for his actions approach the more than 400 -page novel in the form of an often excessive identity finding bit by bit – and still leaves some empty spaces.
The bulky literary work, in which sentences peppered with dozens of commas, extends over several pages with dozens of commata, under the direction of Stefan Haupt (“Zwingli-the Reformer”), now extends the way to the large screen for the first time after some theater adaptations. The film adaptation “Silent“It is also recommended to those who could not find a lot of praised book in his home country, but also to find the template divided into two very long halves for the plot.
James Larkin White or Anatol Stiller? This is the question of which the man (Albrecht Schuch) may not even know the answer.
Zurich, in the fall of 1952: When he arrived in Switzerland, the authorities arrest a man who traveled in (Albrecht Schuch), in whose American passport is the obviously wrong name “James Larkin White”. Although the arrested person stubbornly denied it, he seems to be the sculptor Anatol Stiller (Sven Schelker), which may have been involved in a espionage affair, who has returned to his home country after a long stay. His woman, who suffered from tuberculosis, also fell ill, the former ballet dancer Julika (Paula Beer), recognizes her husband during her visit to custody. Or is she wrong?
Julika met Stiller after the end of the Spanish civil war, but he let his wife sit a few years later. The same applies to the busy legal wife Sibylle Rehberg (Marie Leuenberger): While Julika was in a sanatorium in Davos because of her serious illness, Stiller fell into an affair with her. The detained white has no idea that Sibylle has abolished a child from Stiller after the separation and is now sitting towards her husband: Prosecutor Rolf Rehberg (Max Simonischek), who wants to bring him to trial. White, who looks very similar, manufactures Dr. Bohnenblust (Stefan Kurt) notes about his life of recent years and tells the prison guard Knobel (Marius Ahrendt) adventurous stories that he supposedly experienced far away from home …
A game of Vexier with identities
White or not white, that's the question here! And unlike in the novel, in which it quickly sounds that the man in the man who has actually traveled is actually silent, the search for the answer to this central question is driving the cinema adaptation for a good hour. Director Stefan Haupt, who also wrote the script with Alex Burgesch (“Youth without God”) and, apart from the dialogues and the deletion of the partly after the detention, hangs closely along the literary original, contests justified doubts that White is actually silent. In addition to the unfainability of the detainee, there are about a striking scar on the ear, clear differences between two X -ray images and, last but not least, alibis that White gives itself. Before these doubts can be cleared out, we already suspect that the detainee wants to tie up a bear – we just ask ourselves why?
And soon find out: “Stiller” initially feels like a classic amnesia comedy that generates the ignorance of the patient (“We are married”-“Oh, I know that!”), The film soon changes to the multi-layered character study, which filles the denied identity and the soul life of its puzzling main figure. Haupt always relies on conventional patterns: the colored dialogues in the here and now of the film are regularly interrupted by (mostly) in black and white, which Siler's marriage to Julika and his decline as self-critical artists (and man) describe. The initially so positive silent, in which Julika falls in love, changes to the horny nihilist, who does his wife's success as a dancer and does his own artistic work.
The ballet dancer Julika (Paula Beer) is also certain that she recognizes her ex-husband Stiller.
To the last consistent, however, this does not always work: some reviews (such as getting to know Stillers with Sibylle on a masked ball) are then kept in color again-and while the white, sitting in custody initially, switches back and forth between English and German sentences, he simply takes off this obscure of his everyday language at some point. The humorous relationship with his guard is also increasingly in the second half of the film: If the good -faith puzzle initially hangs on his lips to listen to adventure stories from the states, the figure in the second half of the film has almost a comparsence and only comes to its right again on the home stretch of the dramas.
Nevertheless, the fresh adaptation, which is shot at magnificent locations such as the Swiss Alps or the Zürisee, is rarely bored-and that is also due to the great cast. With Albrecht Schuch (“Dear Thomas”) and Paula Beer (“Miroirs No. 3”), two of the biggest stars of the German Arthouse cinema play in the front row-and also in the supporting roles is the seven-person piece that the fully happy youth friend Sturzenegger (Martin Vischer) completes, fabulous. In some moments, however, the initially great love between Stiller and Julika has something saying: If you compare the film with Florian Henckel from Donnersmarck's epochal “work without author”, in which Beer also mimics a young woman in a passionate relationship with a young artist, the spark does not always jump between Schuch and Beer.
Can you shake off your own past?
Sometimes he shouldn't do that at all: with increasing playing time, “quieter” is increasingly focusing on the question of whether his fellow human beings may never have known and understood the self -critical sculptor – and whether a person who struggles with the supposed failure of his past can ever emancipate from this. How should you prove that you are no longer the one that everyone holds all? By the way, the “Smyrnov affair”, in which Stiller was supposedly involved, only plays a very subordinate role, as in the novel-the filmmakers add up a smart final point that we know them from classic Whodunit crime novels.
Conclusion: “I'm not silent!” – Stefan Haupt translates the bulky novel template by Max Frisch into a much easier digestible cinema version cast in compact 99 minutes. His strongly occupied identity drama scores with a multi -layered study by his main character, daring to narrative but not always consistent.
We saw “Stiller” at the Munich Film Festival in 2025, where he celebrated its world premiere in the “Competition Cinecro” series.