Anonyma - Eine Frau in Berlin

To begin with the end note: When the anonymous memoir adapted here ('Anonyma - Eine Frau in Berlin') was published in Switzerland in 1959, it was greeted with such outrage among Germans the author allowed no further editions; she of course never revealed her name. Here we are, fifty years later, and the material is still incendiary and hard to get your head around. It concerns events that are unspeakable and incomprehensible.

As played by the strikingly handsome, elegant Nina Hoss, "Anonyma" is an ash blond who can wear odds and ends as if they were couturier fashions, a journalist fluent in French and Russian, at home in Paris and London, who comes back from assignment to be in the Führer's capital for the final victory she still believes in. The Third Reich for her and her pals seems a time of freshness and energy for Germany. The war is just a blip on the horizon soon to be done with. She parties with fellow supporters of the Fatherland's great endeavor who toast the troops and boast that the buffoonish Russians will fall by the wayside. They don't, and when they invade Berlin and begin the wholesale raping of the German women, she chooses to mete out her favors selectively for her own protection and that of her neighbors in the apartment building. This is the story of how that happens.

When Berlin crumbles apartment dwellers are hiding in the basement, like ghosts; then, like condemned men and women given an uneasy reprieve, they return to living in the remnants of apartments. "Anonyma" moves in with a group of others in a large flat and turns over the studio she occupied with her absent soldier boyfriend Gerd (August Diehl), for whom she keeps a diary of what happens, to an unrepentantly Nazi young woman and the adolescent German soldier boyfriend she hides (Sebastian Urzendowsky), who is armed. This unwise gesture is the pistol we know will go off eventually, endangering everybody.

The film shows only two public events: the invasion, and the official German declaration that the Germans have surrendered Berlin. The period in between is the main focus of the diary and the film. It's not specified but it was about three months.

The film focuses on a handful of neighbors, who include ; two lively sisters (Joerdis Triebel, Rosalie Thomass), a strong-willed widow (Irm Hermann); an elderly bookseller (Katharina Blaschke); a liquor dealer (Maria Hartmann); a pair of lesbian lovers (Sandra Hueller, Isabell Gerschke); a refugee girl in hiding (Anne Kanis) and a stolid octogenarian (Erni Mangold). And there are more, not to mention a half dozen clearly defined Russians, including the high ranking officer's Mongolian guard.

It's a bit difficult to keep track of all these, and Woman in Berlin is best at making us feel close to the narrator and conveying a sense of the chaos and uncertainty when the invasion and the raping begin. There seems to be no control. It's hard to see that anything is going on. The Russians are just there, wandering free, and brutalizing the German women. When these women meet the question they ask each other is not whether but "How often?" Anonyma sleeps with various Russians, willingly and not. Protesting the violations and seeking a protective officer she first becomes involved with Anatol (Roman Gribkov), a pretty, frivolous man who turns out to be not a career soldier but a dairyman. He comes and goes and is no real help. She calls him "a gypsy." Then she finds a battalion commander, Major Rybkin (the excellent, charismatic Yevgeni Sidikhin), who is unresponsive when she confronts him boldly in front of a lot of Russian soldiers, and then comes around to find her. Unlike the Germans, she says later in her diary (which we see her constantly scribbling in pencil), the Russians appreciate an educated woman.

A strength of the film is that it alternates naturally between noise and violence, drunken celebration when Russians and Germans fraternize in the big apartment, and "love," which has lost its usual meaning, but lingers on. These extremes never seem overwrought or manipulative. Here's a time when in a film the fact that nothing makes sense, makes sense. The protagonist recognizes that in the eyes of many she is now a whore, but she questions what a whore is.

Marguerite Duras' screenplay for 'Hiroshima Mon Amour' is poetic and overwrought, ut in its rhythmic repetitions it strongly conveys a sense of the aftermath of trauma isn't found in the somewhat overlong 'Woman in Berlin,' which is simply about the confusion of day-to-survival in a world where morality is turned on its head. As Anonyma knew however and as we see in the film, the defeated must capitulate or die, and the invaders have suffered horribly too. One young soldier reconts in Russian, demanding that she translate to all present, how invading Germans brutally slaughtered all the children in his village while he watched. Even Andreij's wife has been killed by the Germans. And the film shows the range of the then Russian people, the Ukrainians, Caucasians, Mongols, who are to be the Soviet Union.

Though reviewers and commentators seem to think they know what all this material means and proclaim judgments if not on the protagonist, on the filmmaker, this is primarily an example of Germans taking hard looks at repressed material that formerly was too ugly to examine. This isn't an impassioned indictment or defense, but a movie that uses an extraordinary diary (only published in Germany in 2003) to present an admirably complex picture of a crazy time. If it is both remarkable in its focus and at times quite old fashioned in its methods, that's as good a way as any to get things across. The result is both specific and wide-reaching, because there's ample time to ponder a basic issue for civilians in wartime: what does it cost you to survive?

Although I was aware of the awesomeness of German cinema in the past decades, I was still pleasantly surprised by this film. The title of the movie implies a specific point of view - the plight of a woman trapped in Berlin during the last days of WW2. The movie is however far less black-and-white (metaphorically speaking, of course) than it could have been. It goes beyond a simplistic right/wrong attitude and instead puts the audience in a position to ponder how in a war atrocities escalate and feed on themselves in a typical "chicken and egg" problem. Even the fact that the book on which the movie is based was met with outrage when it was first published in the 50's is ultimately part of this chain.

There are more complex answers to why horrible things happen in a war, and in the world in general - and Europe has had its share of it - and this film manages to capture these complexities masterfully.

rape is the particular plight of women during war and acknowledged at long last as a war crime.The plight of German women at the end of WW II was especially awful as they had protection from no one. General Eisenhower who punished rape committed by his men with execution outside of Germany (first rape took place six hours after invasion of Normandy had begun)but as for German women all men had free hands as these women were all declared "willing". The Americans are the only ones to have gone through archives as for army rape in WW II however the one recent book existing is not allowed for publishing in the US because of the war in Iraq (!!)so exists in French version only. The French and the British have preferred to turn a blind eye to what was done by their soldiers towards German women let alone the Russians. It is very important that this film has been made at long last. Subject concerns all not just its victims let alone the children born out of the horrors. Bravo Germany.

Anonyma - Eine Frau in Berlin – A Woman in Berlin - CATCH IT (B+) A Woman in Berlin (German: Eine Frau in Berlin) is an autobiographical account of the period from 20 April to 22 June 1945 in Berlin (Battle of Berlin). At the author's request, the work was published anonymously for her protection. The book purports to detail the writer's experiences as a rape victim during the Red Army occupation of the city. Two years after her death in 2003 the anonymous author was identified in the Süddeutsche Zeitung by Jens Bisky (a German literary editor) as Marta Hillers. (Wiki) The controversial German movie is about the women who survived the war by working as captivate prostitutes for the Russians. Just like every war all the men were killed and women were tortured and captured by the occupiers. The starting of the movie is really nice as how it shows how people have to go through and live through once Russians won over Germany. The women whose husbands were Nazi were bound to be raped and tortured by the occupiers. The performances by all the German actor and actresses and especially Nina Hoss, August Diehl & Evgeniy Sidikhin are admirable. Because the performances in these hard hitting movies makes you believe the situation. The beginning of the movie really good but the movie falls when they start showing the romance between German woman and the Red Army commander, it slowed down the phase. On the whole, A woman in Berlin is a really nice movie about the aftermaths of the War.

I watched the movie the same day I fonoshed readind the diary I loved the book so much, the movie wasn't that good, many important events were not captured in the movie Although in cinema you have more factors to attract and affect the audience, but the director messed it, the main important thing for me was Marta's complicated feelings during her journey to survive not the rape scenes, I felt it so much in the book but not in the movie Unfortunately I expected more for one of the most important historical diaries ever in my opinion when you can live the author's life and know how much war costs in your soul.