Phoenix.

One of my favourite German actresses has got to be Nina Hoss. The 39-year-old actress was born in West Germany, her father was a trade unionist and her mother was a stage actress. Radio plays at seven and stage appearances from 14 years old have led on to a film career beginning in 1996. The films I have seen her in are Atomised (2006) where she appeared opposite another great German actress Martina Gedeck, Yella (2007) for which she won two Best Actress Awards, Barbara (2012) set in East Germany in 1980, the German ‘western’ Gold (2013) about settlers in Canada, A Most Wanted Man (2014) which is a tale of contempory intrigue and one of Philip Seymour Hoffman last films, and just recently has appeared in the excellent TV series Homeland as Astrid, Peter Quinn’s German girlfriend who works in the German Embassy in Islamabad.  Her latest film Phoenix (2014) is her sixth collaboration with German director Christian Petzold. Premiering at the London Film Festival in October 2014 and released this week we were given an early opportunity to see this outstanding post war melodrama, written and directed by Petzold, at the 2015 Glasgow Film Festival.

The bandaged face of a Gestapo victim.

Lene Winter the Jewish agency worker.

June 1945, a car travels towards an American checkpoint. In the car is the driver Lene Winter, a Jewish Agency worker and in the passenger seat is Nelly Lenz her face heavy bandaged who has just been released from a concentration camp and is on her way home to Berlin to have reconstructive facial surgery and hopefully able to pick up her life since being arrested by the Gestapo. The Nazis have killed all her family, and once things settle down, post war, Lene will help Nelly claim her inheritance and assist her passage to Palestine. Having barely recovered from facial surgery, Nelly ignores Lene’s warnings and sets out to find her husband Johnny the love of her life that, by refusing to abandon their marriage, protected her from Nazi persecution for so long. It is a cracking story, which involves a great twist, but I will not spoil it for you only to say the ending is something to saviour.

With her looks gradually returning Nelly Lenz sets out....

....to find her husband.

A dark compelling movie, that brings to mind the very best of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, is really a love story, but one that’s completely different from Mills and Boon.  It involves a stubborn, some would say obsessive woman played with a lot of conviction by Hoff, Ronald Zehrfeld, who you may recognise as the doctor in Barbara, plays Johnny her husband, with Nina Kunzendorf as Lene Winter. This movie is a fine example where everything comes together, the acting, the screenplay and the cinematography, to give us a really inspired drama that will grip the viewer from beginning to end. If you get the chance to see this movie – take it - believe me you will not be disappointed.

Barbara.

It would seem that UK audiences for German stories (films) have been more commonly drawn to political fare. The Communist era in East Berlin, in particular, has given rise to Good Bye Lenin (2003), The Lives of Others (2007) and now the 1980’s set Barbara (2012).[1]

Barbara Wolff.

All those that take up the ‘host’ mantle for the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club are enthusiastic cineaste and always do their best to make each Monday evening rather special. This week we were fortunate to have a host who has great background knowledge of Germany and especially Berlin.  Thanks to Tony Barbour our enjoyment of Barbara (2012) was greatly enhanced, not only did he give a well informed introduction but returned after the coffee break to enthral us with tales of his life and travels in Berlin before and after the Wall. Its evenings like this that really makes the RBC Film Club worthwhile.

 Barbara Wolff’s story is of a woman torn between her Hippocratic oath and an intolerable autocratic regime. Set in the German Democratic Republic in the early 1980’s it involves a young doctor who has been exiled to an unnamed backwater to work in the local hospital. Her crime is that she applied for an exit visa so she could leave East Germany to join her West German lover. Living under constant surveillance from Stasi officer Klaus Schutz she appears as being aloof and wary but in truth she has no idea who she can trust. Even the head doctor, Andre Reiser, who its obvious has feeling for her; she is unable to confide in. The only person she does bond with is a teenage patient called Stella who has escaped from a local socialist work camp and is suffering from meningitis and who, it is discovered, is pregnant.

Barbara with Andre Reiser

Directed and written by German film director Christian Petzold, this his first period drama won him the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 2012 Berlin Film Festival and has been chosen as the German entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the Academy Awards in February 2013. The film stars Nina Hoss who has previously worked with the director on five other occasions including Yella (2007) for which she won the Berlin Silver Bear for Best Actress, Rainer Block as Klaus Schutz a German actor you will probably know from Inglourious Basterds (2009) and as the doctor in Haneke’s White Ribbon (2009) with Ronald Zehrfeld, who was brought up in East Berlin, playing Andre.  

This film is an example of how good modern German cinema can be. It’s a very sad and moving film helped by the intensity of Hoss’s brilliant portrayal of a character that can hide her feeling from all those around her but not the cinema audience and Petzold’s underplayed direction.  The highlight for me is the beautifully constructed final scene between Hoss and Zehrfeld where simple facial movements tell you all you need to know. The film is totally realistic and it’s period feel, using soft colours and natural sounds, totally authentic. This is a movie where the fear of living under the treat of a ‘knock on the door’ is undoubtedly convincing. 

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[1] Charles Grant Sight and Sound Dec 2012.