Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum

It's funny, but the recent Criterion DVD release of "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum" gives it a whole new perspective. Next to "The Legend of Rita", "Lost Honor" is almost like "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead". But in this case, it's dead serious.

Katharina Blum is a normal German woman who has a one-night state with a man she meets at a party. Later, she finds out that he is an anarchist and part of a Baader-Meinhoff-type gang; the group Rita from "Legend of Rita" is supposed to be a member of.

Responding to the activities of German urban guerrillas, there is a national dragnet to hunt them down. Blum is arrested and gets caught up in the hunt, revealing a myopic government at it's most abusive. Equally revealing is the insidious nature of the media and it's role in repression. You can't help but get a chill watching it not because you can't believe it ever happened. But because you can't believe it happens all the time. Life in America is a lot like Katharina Blum's for many people.

Schlöndorff is an intellectual. Both of these films are great reflections of that. They're smart, challenging while being well paced and lithe. "Lost Honor" marked the directorial debut of Margarethe Von Trotta (in some ways a protégé of Schlöndorff's not to mention lover) who would go on to great things including "Rosa Luxembourg".

Excellent film, well-worth searching out. According to the director's feature on the DVD,Boll wrote the novel after being smeared by a journalist who claimed Boll was a spiritual father to the terrorists, when in fact Boll was only trying to establish a dialogue with them.

Excellennt acting throughout, with Jurgen Prochnow (Das Boot, English Patient) as the terrorist Ludgwig. And a true sign of a great film, it doesn't feel dated at all (other than the clothing- dig those crazy bell-bottoms!).

I think some commentators are over-stating the obvious as far as civil liberties and left-wing/right-wing agendas. Governments always over-react that way. Our own Prime Minister Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act in the 1970s when the FLQ in Quebec kidnapped and killed a British diplomat.

And Katherina herself is not totally without guilt, as she does aid and abet Ludwig. Also there is a scene with her in detention where she pulls a hankerchef out of her purse and what look like raw diamonds fall out onto her lap.

I think the worst slime in the film is the print journalist, and the way the police collaborate with him, allowing him to get the "inside" first.

The impressive funeral, complete with boy's choir, sponsored by the journal owner-manager, and his "spin" on freedom of the press show the propaganda war at work. Those in attendance include her "mystery lover", whose main concern is obviously protecting his reputation, understandably perhaps after seeing up close how the press destroyed Katherina's life.

A great score by the German modernist composer Hans Werner Henze adds to the surreal Carnival atmosphere and environment.

I read before the novel I saw the film (in my german class) and I have to say this adaption is way better than the book. The book by Heinrich Böll is not easy to read, it's actually very boring and sometimes you just want to throw it at the wall because Böll often just philosophies about some unimportant things. The film concentrates on the "real" story of Katharina Blum and creates an intense portrait of a young woman who becomes a victim of the tabloid press. It's really good and Angela Winkler gives us a superb performance. 7/10.

A mild-mannered divorced woman Katharina Blum (Angela Winkler) meets a nice guy called Ludwig (Jürgen Prochnow) at a party and spends a night with him. The next morning, she is shocked to wake up to see a special police unit storming into her apartment, seeking to arrest Ludwig to no avail as he has already left. It turns out Ludwig is a highly wanted criminal involved in anarchist activity and Katharina is arrested as well as a potential associate. Her name and pictures are published in trashy tabloids and particularly an almost caricature-like journalist called Tötges (Dieter Laser) is completely unashamed of dragging her whole life through dirt by selling fabricated stories to his magazine.

The film examines the effects of the witch-hunt caused by the press and was inspired by writer Heinrich Böll's own experiences. The atmosphere of anxiety is created subtly with some avant-garde music and bleak photography. Some of the scenes during Katharina's imprisonment have Kafkaesque loneliness written all over them in an effective, distressing manner. Angela Winkler shows all these feelings naturally without much dialogue.

Even though the exploration of Katharina's emotions during the media spectacle is interesting, the slow-paced film feels a little too long at times and could have benefited from being trimmed down a bit in the middle. On the other hand, in the beginning I would have liked to see more of Katharina and Ludwig's short relationship as it could have explained her fondness for him better. Now it doesn't seem all clear why she wants to protect him despite all the troubles it causes her. Also, the film is understandably completely on Katharina's side but the ending comes across as a little heavy-handed, partly due to the overwrought performance of the priest in the epilogue.

In spite of minor complaints, I think Katharina Blum is a good and still highly relevant film and I recommend it to anyone interested in slow-paced character studies and bleak dramas. Those interested in the power of the Press and the hypocrisy of the public should also check it out.

"The Lost Honor of..." not only tells an interesting story with powerful writing, acting and cinematography, but is also a must see for those disturbed by the power

authoritarian governments (communist, fascist, and everything in between) possess to exploit individual human rights. I wish we could view this film as a well made relic of the past, but unfortunately its subject matter is as relevent today as it was in 1970's West Germany. As in Katarina's world, terrorism is again the favored epithet of the day as the U.S.'s social and political climate moves away from a conversation between differing individual view points and towards an 'on message' insistence on absolute conformity.

Katarina is a young maid with little money, who sleeps with a man she barely knows, a man who is under surveillance as a suspected terrorist. Because she was seen with the supposed terrorist, her life is torn apart by police interrogators and a press that only reports "facts" which support its particular ideology, even if the details must be fabricated. Although those who know Katarina tell the press and police of a bright, sweet, and quiet girl, her reputation is run through the gutter by the men who translate her private life to the public world. Eventually, Katarina takes on the attributes of a stereotypical terrorist because the state has given her no choice but to become radicalized. Simply because Katarina will not give up her dignity and privacy, she becomes an enemy of the state.

For Katarina, her private life becomes glaringly public, and the public judges her based on both the fabricated evidence presented by her accusers (both press and government) as well as their own assumptions about how a woman should behave. In the society that surrounds Katarina, the state functions through conformity, and those who do not conform instantly become the enemy. As a woman, Katarina bears the brunt of this brutality, as her sexuality becomes both exploited and demonized. The young maid becomes a media fixation, a beautiful sexual terrorist.

Although much of this might sound familiar, the film relates these political and social paradoxes on an individual, personal level. As in Katarina's case, sensational news stories rarely investigate the cogs which make them front page headlines-they only reinforce easy reactions of judgemental outrage. "The Lost Honor of ..." shines a bright light on the lives that are trampled beneath the broad strokes of an unyielding and inhuman militarized state and the press and public which supports it.