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Lili Marleen

  • 1981
  • R
  • 2h
IMDb RATING
7.1/10
4.6K
YOUR RATING
Lili Marleen (1981)
DramaMusicRomanceWar

In 1938, a German singer falls in love with a Jewish composer in Zurich, who helps Jews flee Nazi Germany. She wants to help but is forced back to Germany. Her song "Lili Marleen" becomes a ... Read allIn 1938, a German singer falls in love with a Jewish composer in Zurich, who helps Jews flee Nazi Germany. She wants to help but is forced back to Germany. Her song "Lili Marleen" becomes a hit with soldiers and the Nazi top brass.In 1938, a German singer falls in love with a Jewish composer in Zurich, who helps Jews flee Nazi Germany. She wants to help but is forced back to Germany. Her song "Lili Marleen" becomes a hit with soldiers and the Nazi top brass.

  • Director
    • Rainer Werner Fassbinder
  • Writers
    • Manfred Purzer
    • Joshua Sinclair
    • Rainer Werner Fassbinder
  • Stars
    • Hanna Schygulla
    • Giancarlo Giannini
    • Mel Ferrer
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.1/10
    4.6K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Rainer Werner Fassbinder
    • Writers
      • Manfred Purzer
      • Joshua Sinclair
      • Rainer Werner Fassbinder
    • Stars
      • Hanna Schygulla
      • Giancarlo Giannini
      • Mel Ferrer
    • 13User reviews
    • 36Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 1 win & 4 nominations total

    Photos100

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    Top cast42

    Edit
    Hanna Schygulla
    Hanna Schygulla
    • Willie
    Giancarlo Giannini
    Giancarlo Giannini
    • Robert
    Mel Ferrer
    Mel Ferrer
    • David Mendelsson
    Karl-Heinz von Hassel
    • Henkel
    • (as Karl Heinz von Hassel)
    Erik Schumann
    Erik Schumann
    • von Strehlow
    Hark Bohm
    Hark Bohm
    • Taschner
    Gottfried John
    Gottfried John
    • Aaron
    Karin Baal
    Karin Baal
    • Anna Lederer
    Christine Kaufmann
    Christine Kaufmann
    • Miriam
    Udo Kier
    Udo Kier
    • Drewitz
    Roger Fritz
    Roger Fritz
    • Kauffmann
    Rainer Will
    • Bernt
    Raúl Gimenez
    • Blonsky
    • (as Raul Giminez)
    Adrian Hoven
    Adrian Hoven
    • Ginsberg
    Willy Harlander
    • Prosel
    Barbara Valentin
    Barbara Valentin
    • Eva
    Helen Vita
    Helen Vita
    • Grete
    Elisabeth Volkmann
    Elisabeth Volkmann
    • Marika
    • Director
      • Rainer Werner Fassbinder
    • Writers
      • Manfred Purzer
      • Joshua Sinclair
      • Rainer Werner Fassbinder
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews13

    7.14.6K
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    Featured reviews

    7frankde-jong

    A rather conventional Fassbinder movie

    Rainer Werner Fassbinder is an important (or maybe the most important) director of the "Neue Deutsche Welle" of the seventies and eighties.

    Until now I had seen only one of his films ("Angst essen Seele auf", 1974), preferring another director of the "Neue Deutsche Welle" (Werner Herzog) instead.

    Also with other filmmovements I often prefer another director above the leading figure. With the French "Nouvelle vague" for example I prefer Claude Chabrol above Jean Luc Godard.

    Nevertheless only one film of such an important director felt as too little to me and I decided to watch some more if the opportunity arose.

    The first opportunity was "Lili Marleen" (1981) and maybe this was not the best oppurtunity. "Lily Marleen" is from the later stages of Fassbinder's career. He was already a renowned director and for this production had the disposal over a big budget. His aim was a film that would also perform well at the American box office. The film was recorded in English but later dubbed in German when the American success failed to materialize.

    The story is about the female singer Willie (Hanna Schygulla) who is very successful in Nazi circles, being with the resistance in her private life. As such the story has similarities with "Black book" (2006, Paul Verhoeven).

    The song Willie has success with is "Lili Marleen", which was a real existing song during the Second World War performed by Lale Andersen. Also Marlene Dietrich would occasionaly perform this song.

    In my opinion "Lili Marleen" is a rather conventional movie according to Fassbinder standards (or at least as I expect Fassbinder standards to be). The most striking scenes are those in which Willie is performing her song. These scenes are edited with both images of soldiers resting in their trenches and very brutal war violence. These scenes are however more theatrical than shocking.
    2haddock

    Daring for the Eighties, boring today

    I am terribly sorry, I know that Faßbinder still is called one of the greatest directors in post-war Germany and that most of his films are considered "master-pieces", but when I see "Lili Marleen" today, in 2004, I wonder what everyone is up and away about this movie! The acting is simply terrible - Hanna Schygulla is all the smiling like an idiot! -, the changings between Nazi-glamour and battlefields are ridiculous, the whole film looks as if it was made within two days in an attic. Probably it was exactly that way and many people seem to take this for "real art", but for me this movie is simply bad & cheap. Compare this to Viscontis "La Caduta degli Dei" and tell me again that "Lili Marleen" is a good movie...
    8RosanaBotafogo

    Could have done better...

    It is based on the song Lili Marleen, sung by Lale Andersen, and her romance with Rolf Liebermann in the movie Willie and Robert. The film tried to be very impartial in relation to Lale and Nazism, although she helped discreetly, and for Robert, the Allies, however in the end, she ended up surrendering to Nazism, to continue singing, to leave the Black List, had to change her famous song with a military air, she didn't marry Rolf, but kept an eternal friendship, could have done better...
    6kokkinoskitrinosmple

    Love in times of war

    Even though Lili Marleen's events take place right before, during and up to the end of World War II, it is a movie centered around people and their feelings in typical Fassbinder fashion.

    It is the story of Willie (played by the stunning Hanna Schygulla) and with her the story of Nazi Germany that follows a similar trajectory. She is a German that tries to make a living in Zurich as a singer/cabaret artist and falls in love with Robert (Giancarlo Giannini), a Jew and member of the anti-Nazi resistance camp. His family doesn't approve of their relationship, because she is German/Aryan and make sure they go their separate ways after her deportation. Back in Germany, she must find a way to survive and, seemingly out of nowhere, her song "Lili Marleen" becomes a monumental hit, a source of inspiration and courage for every German soldier, which brings Willie in a tricky spot, as it becomes harder and harder to maintain the balance between collaborating with the Nazis in an artistic level and taking part in the resistance against them all the while hoping for a reunion with Robert which seems more and more unlikely.

    An interesting element of the movie is that it presents both sides in a nuanced way, it avoids portraying the Nazis as the one-dimensional caricature villains. It also shows how thin the lines are and how hard it can be to fight prejudice and shake off a social or political stigma.

    And of course the song itself deserves its legendary status.
    10hasosch

    The Chiasm of Offender and Victim

    Many critics have felt offended that R.W. Fassbinder has portrayed both protagonist Wilkie and the Nazis in this movie in a human-like manner. Connoisseurs of other Fassbinder films, however, will realize that "Lili Marleen" (1981) belongs to Fassbinder's "women movies" like "The Marriage of Maria Braun" (1979) and "Lola" (1981). Fassbinder was convinced that "stories can be told much better with women than with men", because, according to Fassbinder, while men usually fulfill their determined roles in society, "women are capable of thinking in a dialectic manner". Dialectics, however, means that there is not only a thesis and its antithesis like usually in our black-and-white world, but a synthesis where the oppositions coincide. Moreover, dialectic means that because of the third instance of synthesis the absolute opposition of the difference between thesis and antithesis is abolished. Concretely speaking: Starting from a dialect point of view and portraying the fascist state, the underground fighters must necessarily use the basic means like the rulers do, and between offenders and victims there is thus a chiastic relation, so that every offender is also victim and every victim is also offender. Fassbinder has illustrated this abstract scheme, that transcends classical logic, in his play "The City, the Garbage and the Death" (1975) which was filmed by Daniel Schmid under the title "Shadow of Angels" (1976).

    Therefore, approaching an a priori controversial topic like Nazi Germany, in a dialectic manner, the depiction of this time in the form of a movie gets even more controversial, especially for people who cannot or do not want to see that our recognition of the world is by far not exhausted with a primitive light-switch schema, but needs the third instance of synthesis as controlling instance of its opposite members thesis and antithesis. The mutual relationship between offenders and victims has to scrutinized, since it is simply not true that the offenders are the bad ones and the victims the good ones. In a synthetic viewpoint, the bad ones participate on the goodness as the good ones participate on the badness. They are mutually related. In a world-view based on classical logic, a relation between good and bad cannot even been established, and in an ethics based on this insufficient system of logic, the bad conscience of the survivors of Nazi Germany, feeling (illogically enough) responsible for the deeds of their ancestors, exclude the possibility of a relationship between the two extremes and thus a synthesis in the form a new evaluation based on this relationship as well. From Fassbinder's dialectic viewpoint, it follows that neither Lili Marleen nor Lola nor Maria Braun can be condemned for their "misuse" of the ruling system for their private purposes, because they don't misuse them, they just use them. In the opposite, since victims must repeat the actions of the offenders as the offenders must repeat the actions of the victims, because "good" and "bad" are no longer simple mirror images of one another like in two-valued logic, their strategies are legitimated by the chiastic structure of a logic that describes our world, that is not black and white at all, much better than a black-and-white logic.

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    Related interests

    Mahershala Ali and Alex R. Hibbert in Moonlight (2016)
    Drama
    Prince and Apollonia Kotero in Purple Rain (1984)
    Music
    Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (1942)
    Romance
    Frères d'armes (2001)
    War

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Shot in English for American distribution; later dubbed in German
    • Goofs
      Kaufmann, the German officer who arrests Robert on the train, wears the uniform of an SS-Gruppenfuhrer (General) - it is highly unlikely that an SS General of such rank would be checking identity papers at random on a train.
    • Quotes

      Willie: In front of the barracks / In front of the big gate / Stood a lantern / And there it stands today / And so we want / To see each other / There again / By the lantern we want to stand / Just like Lili Marleen back then / Like Lili Marleen

    • Connections
      Featured in Century of Cinema: 100 ans de cinéma: Le cinéma allemand par Edgar Reitz - La nuit des cinéastes (1995)
    • Soundtracks
      Lili Marleen
      (German Version)

      (based on a poem from the 1915 book "Die kleine Hafenorgel" by Hans Leip)

      Music By Norbert Schultze,

      Vocals Hanna Schygulla

      (p) 1981 Schlicht Musikverlag, Phonogram, GmbH, DRG Records, Inc., Philips

      © Metropolis Records

      Published By Brampton Music Ltd., Chappell Music Ltd., Peter Maurice Music,

      EMI Music

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    FAQ18

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • April 15, 1981 (France)
    • Country of origin
      • West Germany
    • Languages
      • English
      • German
      • Swiss German
      • Polish
      • French
    • Also known as
      • La vida íntima de Lili Marleen
    • Filming locations
      • Berlin, Germany
    • Production companies
      • Rialto Film
      • Roxy-Film GmbH & Co. KG
      • Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR)
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • DEM 10,500,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $8,144
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $11,623
      • Feb 16, 2003
    • Gross worldwide
      • $8,158
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      • 2h(120 min)
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.66 : 1

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