1976, Volker Schlondorff, 97 mins.
A story of obsessive love set in the Baltic during 1919.
Few readers will be familiar with this German film but it
deserves your attention as a tremendously powerful piece of cinema. Set in 1919
during the fag-end of the Russian Civil War, it portrays a story of obsessive
love set against a land in turmoil. Shot in steely monochrome by Igor Luther
and designed with impressive authenticity by Jurgen Kiebach, it is
distinguished by a combination of radical politics with a strong narrative drive.
Margarethe von Trotte is astonishing as Sophie, an aristocrat whose unrequited love
for an officer leads inexorably to her own willed destruction as she plays
sexual games and, when these fail to satisfy her, becomes a Bolshevik revolutionary. The script and direction are unerring in their
psychological accuracy, and the final scene – a tracking shot which sums-up the
tragic themes of the film – is sublime.
The best way to get
hold of this is on Criterion’s excellent DVD.
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