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Poster for The Tin Drum
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Released
1979 · FILM

The Tin Drum

A defiant three‑year‑old boy who stops aging uses his tin drum and piercing voice to expose the absurdities of a nation spiraling into war, forcing those around him to confront the chaos he refuses to ignore.

“A savage, sweeping epic of society in chaos.”

Directed by
Volker Schlondorff
Written by
Gunter Grass, Jean Claude Carriere
Runtime
162 min
Language
DE
DramaWar
Streaming on
  • The Criterion Channel

Synopsis

Oskar Matzerath was born in 1924 in the Free City of Danzig. At the age of three, he fell down a flight of stairs and ceased to grow. In 1939, World War II began.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

Related titles

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 19

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Suzanne BaronShot by Igor LutherScored by Maurice JarreDesigned by Bernd Lepel

Box Office

1979 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 5.7× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$17.0M

Budget$3.0M
Worldwide gross$17.0M
break-even (2.5×)

Other versions & cuts

  • Die Blechtrommel - Director's Cutde

These are distinct edits of the film. Their own runtime and release year aren’t on file yet — we only have the alternate title so far.

Also known as

  • The Tin Drumen
  • El tambor de hojalataes
  • Le Tambourfr
  • Il tamburo di lattait

Community tags

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