Schlösser und Katen (Castles And Cottages) is an East German black-and-white film, directed by Kurt Maetzig.
Annegret, now a zoologist, returns to the countryside to implement reforms in livestock management that would improve productivity, as the government intends to collectivize the farms.
According to director Kurt Maetzig, the idea to make the film came to him during the brief period of liberalization that took place in East Germany after Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech.
The main obstacle that faced Maetzig was the alcoholism of actor Raimund Schelcher, who was constantly drunk on set and often failed to show up for filming.
[5] Joshua Feinstein asserted that while the film still featured subversive agents from the West and other typical communist themes, it had a historical and psychological depth rare to East German pictures.
[7] Andrea Brockmann wrote that Castles and Cottages was one of the few East German pictures which made a reference to the 17 June 1953 uprising, portraying it as a complex event rather than a counterrevolutionary putsch.
[8] Maetzig himself told interviewer Martin Brady that the interpretation of the June events was his own, and different from the view held by the governments of both German states; he stressed that he depicted the uprising neither as a purely popular act of resistance to the communists, nor as a consequence of Western subversion, but rather as resulting from the combination of external influence across the border and frustration with the rashness of the government's reforms.
[11] Helmut Pflügl and Raimund Fritz wrote that it was one of "surprisingly few" East German films to deal with the problems that arose due to the nationalization and later collectivization of the former feudal estates.