Balzac's scheming social climber gets a darkly comic twist in this forgotten East German curio.
France at the time of the Restoration. The young country gentleman Rastignac comes to Paris to study. He takes up residence in a poor boarding house, where his father Goriot, who has been excluded by his daughters, also lives. The penniless Rastignac is anxious to gain a foothold in Parisian society. His cousin advises him to take the rich banker's wife Delphine, one of Goriot's daughters, as his mistress, which he does. At the same time, however, he falls in love with the laundress Yvette. He is unable to make up his mind when boarding house guest Vautrin suggests a third option: To marry Victorine, the disinherited daughter of a millionaire, and kill her brother in a duel in order to get his inheritance after all. Rastignac agrees. This is his downfall. Instead of high society, he ends up in the gutter.
Acting
Ernst Legal's pathetic, heartbreaking Goriot.
Production
GDR-era design recreating Restoration Paris on a shoestring.
Director
Georg C. Klaren
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made in East Germany in 1952, this adaptation of Balzac's 'Le Père Goriot' carries socialist undertones—decadent Parisian aristocracy as capitalist cautionary tale.
Directors Klaren and Rudolph were former UFA employees who stayed in the Soviet zone; this was their rare collaboration before Klaren focused on DEFA literary adaptations.
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