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"The best description of freedom is the description of a prison cell. A film about political prisoners, about total isolation in prison, in solitary confinement; about the compulsion of a system which expresses itself in the repetition of the same images, the same gestures, the same sounds, the same dreams. A film about the rebellion against oppression, and how the resistance is broken; about the hope for change; the mild terror; the rehearsal of dying. The description of something which is completely absent; freedom,"
The Cell is a denunciation of the rape of liberty in prison confinement. Writer &ndash: director, Horst Bienek is deeply concerned with political prisoners psychologically manipulated day after day, until the spirit is sapped and confession becomes the final stage of unconditional surrender. Bienek himself was arrested in East Germany during the fifties, and spent four years in a Soviet prison camp. His experiences first became a novel, and now a film.
In the film, the principal victim is arrested in an unnamed country, without evidence, as co-instigator of a fatal political bombing. A teacher and intellectual, he symbolises all intellectuals forced to submit to a totalitarian system, or suffer the consequences. Suspense is developed is the victim is subjected to increasing jmotional stress in order to break tlis resistance and obtain a desired confession from him.
”The Cell is an exceptionally mature and well-directed first film ... it is a well structured political film, of considerable dramatic stature. Bienek is a new director worth watching.” Werb in Variety
“The changing effect of oppression and general destruction of the personality, in all its psychological mechanics, is observed with almost pedantic care” Neue Zuricher Zeitung
Golden Band, German Film Prize 1971; First Prize Strassburg.