By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
Translator: Zhu Puyi
Proofreading: Issac
Source: Senses of Cinema
Falk Schrondorff's Tin Drum (1979), adapted from Günter Glass's 1959 novel, is one of the most tragic German films about World War II, even by today's standards. There is no doubt that much of this strong feeling stems from the film's special depiction of sex and violence.
Tin Drum (1979)
From Fritz Lang's masterpiece M is the Murderer (1931) to Eric Houmai's The Marquise O (1976), sexual violence has been presented in German films. Arguably, Tin Drum is still one of the most widely recognized new German films today.
"Marquis O" (1976)
According to Aristides Gazesta, the movement was characterized by a collective focus on "the political and social conditions arising from the postwar American occupation", and the films generally "explored gender identity, delusions, and disillusionment within the political framework of the radical left".
This aspect of sexual violence is described in particular detail in films depicting World War II during the New German Cinema Period, such as Horma Sanders-Brahms's Germany, Pale Mother (1979), which tells the story of a woman's post-war experience (including her being gang-raped by soldiers).
Germany, Pale Mother (1979)
Schrondorff's second feature film, Love to Kill, is a rare work from this perspective, especially since its central narrative revolves around rape and revenge. While it has great ties to American exploitation films of the seventies and eighties, including I Spit on Your Grave (Mel Zach, 1978), The Magic House (Wes Craven, 1972), Raptor Freak (Michael Winner, 1974), and Girl of Four or Five Calibers (Abel Ferrara, 1981), the motif is presented in European art films dating back at least to Ingmar Bergman's Oscar-winning Fountain of Virgins (1960).
Virgin Springs (1960)
Schrondorff's debut novel, Young Telus, was critically acclaimed, and the subsequent Love to Kill did not reach the heights of its predecessors in terms of word-of-mouth and box office, despite the appearance of the now-lost score of Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, despite being hailed by Fassbinder as one of the top ten new German films.
Both Love to Kill and Antonioni's Zoom focus on the decadents who roam the city, with the former's loose narrative structure accurately capturing the zeitgeist. Mary (Playa Parriberg) is a young waitress who, at the beginning of the film, gets into an argument with her drunken ex-boyfriend Hans (Werner Enk) in her apartment, shooting and killing mary after he beats or even tries to rape her.
Zoom in (1966)
In a state of panic, trauma, and confusion, she becomes friends with Gunther (Hans Peter Halvasis) at the coffee shop where she works, confesses her crimes to him, and pays for Gunther's help. Tempted by monetary rewards, Gunther agreed, and they discussed countermeasures while drinking coffee and having sex in Mary's apartment.
After borrowing a car from where Gunther worked, they went home and wrapped Hans's body in a carpet and drove to the countryside with Gunther's friend Fritz (Manfred Fishbeck) with whom Mary had sex too, and buried Hans's body on the highway construction site.
After visiting Fritz's mother, the trio returned to the city. Time flew by and Mary happily worked in the café again. At the end of the film, Hans's body is found by workers at the construction site.
With a series of almost unrelated vignettes, most of the film's plot revolves aimlessly around the protagonist, spending time in the marble-playing shop, shopping, chatting, arguing, and driving.
Love to Kill (1967)
With elements of road film and black humor, Love Kills is intertwined with the core rape-revenge narrative, and the entire film is constructed around Mary killing the man who tries to rape herself. Hans-Bernhard Mueller and Georges Lyles shrewdly labeled the film "anti-horror" because "within the framework of traditional crime films, the film shows a contradictory mentality towards closely following genre rules".
This is clear from the beginning: As the opening credits scroll, Mary, Gunther, and Fritz happily chase each other with guns near the highway construction site. From the perspective of an "anti-horror film", Muller and Lelis regard this film as the originator of Quentin Tarantino's Shameless Bastards, who, like this film, adopts a postmodern and pop culture-influenced approach to the use of quotations and establishing styles.
By contrasting Love To Kill with Ridley Scott's The End of the Road (1991), Mueller and Lelis inadvertently discover the latter's inevitable connection to rape-revenge films. In 1990, Schlöndorff adapted Margaret Atwood's Booker Prize-winning novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985), in which she continued to explain the shift in gender power, power, and gender differences, which are at the heart of Love to Kill.
The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
In a way, in the relaxed, wandering atmosphere of the film, the rough attacks and rape attempts at the beginning may be mistakenly seen as exploitative, mechanical, functional plots that are used only to advance the narrative. But this idea ignores Mary's brief but constant subjective flashbacks at the beginning, which has a quiet but disturbing energy, and self-evident control, interrupting the film from time to time with seemingly random moments throughout the film.
Although she did not do her best to tell the trauma, this memory will suddenly come: the trauma has always followed her, when she travels in the car, when she spends time, when she plays football...
This deep and long-term trauma was most evident when she returned to her apartment after burying Hans's body. Seeing the picture of Hans at the bedside, she shouted hysterically in a very sharp voice, a movement that was clearly out of step with everything that was happening around her.
Love To Kill can be seen as a succinct and straightforward fable about guilt in postwar Germany, but we forget the powerful but poignant fact that Mary (including Fritz and Gunther, who helped her dispose of the body), is powerless to deal with the fact in that situation. When they desperately show a carefree state of urban youth, they are morally, emotionally, and psychologically decadent—forced by irresistible harsh conditions.