A feminist survey of the early works of Margarethe von Trotta

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman

Amir Siadat

Katharina, a young and divorced worker who makes a living by doing household chores for a wealthy couple, meets a man (Luwig) by accident one night at a party and falls in love with him at first sight. Katharina, who previously worked many night shifts at weddings and parties to restore her humble life, suddenly finds herself in the center of a dreamy feast, holding the hands of someone who seems to have been waiting for him all her life. We see her dressed in white with a flower in her hair. It's her turn now, and this ceremony is her banquet. The magic of the look takes Katharina and Ludwig to the solitude of the night without exchanging a word between them; to Katharina's house, where they could continue their celebration until morning. This initial situation of The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum reminds us of fairy tales, and in fairy tales there is always a twelve o'clock when the bell rings to announce the end of the dream. The doorbell of Katharina's house rings early in the morning and before the poor girl has a chance to answer it, the security officers break down the door and enter. They look for Ludwig, but he left the house moments before their sudden invasion. The officers consider this as a document of Katharina's complicity with the fugitive anarchist. For them, the possibility that the girl met Ludwig for the very first-time last night by chance is ruled out and meaningless, and it is even more meaningless that she let Ludwig into her privacy right away. This is the irony of the story. Who are violating privacy? Does privacy have any meaning at all when everything is constantly exposed?

"Being under surveillance" seems to be the essence of the film from the beginning: the black and white shots that show the world through the lens of the security officers' cameras are colorless and full of suspicion, and hunting Ludwig constantly. Officers are everywhere, in nightclubs and parties, in disguise and equipped with hidden microphones. This "surveillance" which take the smallest movements of every citizen under continuous care, leaves no room for the illusory distinction between the personal and the political affairs. The smallest details of Katharina's private life (from her personal relationships to the information about her car) may be interpreted as a suspicious issue in the discourse of the interrogators. Of course, there are other cameras that can sometimes be more frightening than security officers' cameras: the cameras of photographers and journalists. They claim that the duty of the media is to record the reality, but a photo of Katharina printed on the front page of the newspaper (caught between the police troops, with an inflamed face and messy hair) informs of a kind of orientation and intentional confiscation of the event in front of the camera, which gives the subject the icon of an entrapped anarchist. This is how the film approaches the keywords of the postmodern situation. It talks about "the disintegration of the reality" and the world of "pretense". These are the ones that destroy Katharina Blum's reputation. Which one should you be more afraid of? Cameras or terrorism?

Although the officers finally acquits Katharina, since she did not know Ludwig before the party, but she is not only dealing with the irreverent and stubborn investigators. She must now answer everyone about the second part of the case, namely, having a private affair with a strange man, specifically during the first meeting. Here we are faced with the distribution of power through multiple channels and the number of nameless people who will not miss any opportunity to humiliate and blame Katharina. If we put this image of German society next to the similar image that Fassbinder presented a year ago with Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, a common concern resonates: despite the passage of several decades after the war, German society has not been yet separated from its fascist past. The New German Cinema wanted to show that, contrary to the traditional perception that politics is exclusive to the institution of the state, politics manifests itself as a cultural sensitivity in the realm of all public forms of life. Katharina breaks under the pressure of such relationships; She turns from an "angel at home" into what the media wants her to be: An Assassin. This female dichotomy was continued for almost a decade later in von Trotta's career and reached another "angel at Home" (again played by Angela Winkler) in Sheer Madness which, like Katharina, roars at the end and picks up a gun to pull the trigger and kill her husband - a constant observer and powerful interventionist. Taking into account the path taken between these two more or less similar endings, makes the double appearance of a woman as a dominant motif in von Trotta's career a debatable issue. Where did this double design come from? If we interpret it in relation to the divided land of Germany - which is not a very unlikely interpretation - we have practically ignored some bold theoretical backgrounds and, more importantly, the biographical aspects of the works.

The second wave of feminist film theory, which had turned "female desire" into a major axis in its discussions by relying on psychoanalysis, has clearly left its mark in von Trotta's cinema and her unconventional approach to narration. Today, one can see how much a film like Sheer Madness is in line with the viewpoints that in the mid-eighties talked about the two-dimensionality of female desire and the androgyny position of the female viewer, and how much it is in odds with the usual Oedipal conclusion in the conventional cinema of its time (the suppression of a woman's desire to Mother/Woman, in favor of her desire to father/man). Ruth in Sheer Madness is a subject with double desires who is not going to surrender in favor of a "conventional" relationship. Men in other films of von Trotta are not better off than Ruth's husband; Either they are killed halfway through and their beloved replaces them with a relationship - albeit platonic one - with a woman (The Second Awakening of Christa Klages), or they are abandoned by the woman for a more important "choice" (Sisters, or The Balance of Happiness, The German sisters / Marianne and Juliane, Rosa Luxemburg). In any case, they are on the sidelines and their presence is not that much effective. Probably, this unusual aspect of the works of von Trotta is partly rooted in her own life, because the early death of her father made her live alone with her mother for many years.

In von Trottas cinema, the emphasis is always on female connections and the representation of the hidden sides of women's lives. They do not belong to the inner sphere of female melodramas. They are out of the house and rejecting the role of mothers with high hopes in their minds (if they stay at home like Ruth in Sheer madness, they envy the independent and ambitious ones like Olga). In a scene from The German sisters/ Marianne and Juliane, we see a documentary in which Hitler is praising the position of mother. This scene, which clearly points to the patriarchal principle regarding the reproduction and upbringing of the child - the future soldiers - may also explain why Marianne left her husband and child for a "greater purpose" (the kids of Lebanon), and why her sister, Juliane, is not willing to take the responsibility of taking care of this child? And von Trotta tries to make us sympathize with all her rebellious characters; Even with Christa, who is a criminal and wanted. She has robbed the bank to finance the expenses of a kindergarten. Christa also has a child who, by separating from her, has to pay the price for her breaking the norms.

Von Trotta herself, too, did not want her married life that had resulted in a child and left it for the sake of marrying Schlondorff and a path that was more related to her goal (cinema). In the mid-sixties, when the conditions were still not favorable for women's filmmaking, she started acting, but she soon realized that with acting she wouldnt achieve what she is looking for. Then, she experienced different fields in cinema with screenwriting and in an ambitious adventure, after co-directing of The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, with The Second Awakening of Christa Klages she separated her way as a director from Schlondorff; However, this independence in filmmaking cant (and shouldnt) be taken to mean her stylistic independence. In The Second Awakening of Christa Klages, she is concerned with formulating the passionate and radical elements in a detailed way, that spontaneously emerged in The French New Wave almost two decades before. The thematic and structural commonalities are so obvious as if Godard, Chabrol and Truffaut are wandering around each scene of the film and exposing themselves. Von Trotta, who had her first serious encounter with cinema during the years of emigration at the Cinematheque of Paris, not only declares this influence, but even in the scene of Werner's being shot, tries to recreate the final scene of The Breathless as a tribute to her favorite filmmaker. Apart from this, the extroverted dramatic act and - in other words - the "action" of the film, was the result of von Trotta's learning from her previous experience with Schlondorff, which has little to do with her later works. From Sisters, or The Balance of Happiness onwards, the dramatic action is not necessarily identified with the external conflict, but rather with the movement from the outside to the inside. It is possible to review how a spectacular "incident" is reduced to a verbal argument between the two sisters: the new relationship of Maria causes Anna's jealousy. According to what we have seen, Maria is not only Anna's sister, but also a mother to her. And now the little sister must determine how should she cope with her loneliness, after Marias departure. Maria escapes Anna's gaze; She goes to the window, her image blurs in the background. She looks out of reach. The sunlight is shining on her and she is gazing at outside; It's as if an inner desire has been embodied for us: to go to the future and get rid of this sickening dependence. Her clothes have two colors: black and white. Whiteness connects her to the light outside and blackness is her connection with her all dark-clad sister. The images meaning is her confrontation with affection and resentment, staying and leaving. The younger sister is standing in foreground, close to camera. The frame of the image makes the space look narrower for her. She is leaning on a pillar (in need of support, more than ever) and with closed eyes, maybe closed to the world (a tiny sign to depict the mood which eventually will lead to suicide). Two sisters keep getting closer and further apart. They stare at each other for a moment and then take away their glances. Von Trotta presents what she has learned from Bergman with her combined mise-en-scene, nested and crossover corridor she makes between the two sisters. This subtle way of putting thought into action has nothing to do with the pretentious and second-hand formalism of The Second Awakening of Christa Klages.

For von Trotta, "what to say" was very important, and the clarity that her enlightened ideas demanded gradually led her to more conventional patterns in directing. The desire to release the narrative from the normalized concepts of the patriarchy and to remember the ups and downs of Germany's history in the era of collective oblivion after the war were her main concern. From this point of view, The German Sisters should be considered not only as her manifestation, but also as the soliloquy of von Trotta and her generation. All the familiar elements of her cinema are gathered: a story based on reality, the presence of feminist and political elements, anarchism, the deconstruction of women and the re-centering of the relationship between two women, one is Juliane, a journalist and feminist activist, the other is Marianne, a member of a terrorist group; Once again, sisters are in constant connection and disconnection. The first one is outside, exposed and in the realm of official authorized frameworks; The second one, on the contrary, is constantly on the run, a companion of darkness and closed inner spaces - wherever that one could hide - and finally, prison. The latter does not believe in the former. She thinks Juliane's visions are too conservative and will lead nowhere. She is in favor of "direct action" and violent tactics. She inherited violence and wildness from her father and like him belongs to the world of ideas and ideals; Even when she is a prisoner, she imposes her demands on Juliane. She always has a reprehensible tone and she despises not only the lives of housewives, but also the practices of people like Juliane, whose political activities are limited to legal spheres. She does not consider the peoples privacy. In the middle of the night, she and her anarchist comrades enter Juliane's house with the intention of drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. She goes to her sister's closet without permission to choose a dress, but in the end, she drops all the clothes and leaves. These are the clothes of a typical woman. When we go back to the childhood of the two sisters, we see them playing in complete harmony and peace with each other. They go up the stairs hand in hand and see a painting with the design of crucifixion. They look at the image of the crucified Christ with perplexity. It seems that they are not familiar with suffering. We deeply believe Marianne's sufferings only when the effects of physical pain appear on her face, because physical pain is many times more tangible and humane than the sublime suffering that we claim to derive from abstract concepts such as injustice and exploitation. Perhaps Rosa Luxemburg, the film that von Trotta made five years later, is precisely because of neglecting the personal matter and relying too much on historical events and falling into the cycle of speech scenes and political meetings, that does not have the depth and impact of The German Sisters. Von Trotta 's Rosa Luxemburg is always the leader of the socialists, before she is a real person, and even when she is lying on the bed in the corner of the prison and crying, her image is immediately linked to images of war and famine so that we do not forget those tears are not for the sake of personal issues, but has a much higher meaning! Rosa Luxemburg very late, in the scene of Rosa's execution, unveils the truly human image of its "heroine", a moment that should be considered the opposite point of the filmmaker's general procedure in the rest of the film: in a close-up, Rosa is weak and impotent, and with a pleading tone asks the executioner not to shoot. By cutting to a long shot, Rosa becomes distant and smaller in our view. Shortly after the shooting, Rosa's body is thrown from the top of the bridge into the river so that it would be lost in the playfulness of water and light. If Rosa is remembered more with this conclusion than with those speeches, meetings and imprisonments, it is because von Trotta avoided making her death grand and epic.

In the last meeting of Marianne and Juliane in The German Sisters, Marianne is exhausted and morbid, and her image in Juliane's gaze from behind the glass is like a ghost. Von Trotta has interesting ideas for the reflection of the two sisters' faces in the glass: the faces reflex on each other and become one; One disappears and leaves the other alone. There is no more arguing, just like in the childhood. Marianne's physical and mental weakness has made her a child and needy again. She is impatient to know when Juliane will come back to her again (does she remember that she did not accept her the first time? ).

As Juliane cries after seeing Marianne's wounded body, church music is heard. Von Trotta blames the Church for not seeing the Marianne's (and Juliane's) suffering. In addition, she still distrusts the media. They will not tell the truth about Marianne's death, and Juliane has no choice but to start the historiography by her own. The film talks about the frozen and forgotten history from the very scene of the two sisters meeting among the huge statues. The documentary images related to Hitler and the pile of corpses left behind also point out to the same issues. Those years of guilt-ridden humiliation had led the German nation to forget (or hide) their history, and the young generation did not know much about this past. Perhaps for this reason, it is difficult to separate concepts such as history and responsibility from The New German Cinema. In the last scene of the film, Marianne's son is sat in front of Juliane and is waiting to hear what has happened to his mother. Julianne would tell him the truth. So as von Trotta. We can hardly name a film by her that is not rooted in a historical event. The German Sisters was based on the events that happened to members of Baader-Meinhof's group - Gudrun Ensslin in particular. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum was derived from Heinrich Boll's personal experience - again in connection with Bader-Meinhoff - and The Second Awakening of Christa Klages was also based on true cases. Von Trotta followed the narrative of the dark and unspoken strains of German history with Rosa Luxemburg and continued this practice until recently with works such as Rosenstrasse and Hannah Arendt.