"Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum" or "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum" is a West German movie from 1975, so this one already had its 40th anniversary last year. the title certainly sounds like a Rainer Werner Fassbinder movie and the time when this came out also fits, but actually this is a film directed by Volker Schlöndorff with his wife Margarethe von Trotta, her first directorial effort, and the duo also adapted Heinrich Böll's novel together for the screen here. The lead actress is played by Angela Winkler around the age of 30. It was not her first successful performance, but maybe her first career-defining. She won a German Film Award for her turn here. The supporting cast consists of a bunch of male actors who were all among Germany's finest around that time and are still very well-known today, such as Mario Adorf, Jürgen Prochnow, Dieter Laser and Heinz Bennent.
This 105-minute movie is about a woman who really does nothing wrong, yet has to face severe consequences for her actions, which ultimately drive her to becoming a criminal herself. Winkler's character has a one-night stand with a terrorist. The next morning he is gone and police forces rush into her apartment. She gets taken to jail like a criminal and from that moment on not only struggles with police authorities, but also with the press, especially one particularly persistent journalist (Laser), who is not even scared of harassing the main character's very sick mother. The ending is particularly telling with the eulogy on freedom of press and the bad guy becoming a martyr, although it becomes obvious that this film is actually making a statement for the opposite site, namely for individual freedom and the right of not being harassed by press when you just want your calm.
I quite enjoyed the watch here. The film gets a bit weaker after the first hour when it moves a bit away from Winkler's, Laser's and Adorf's characters, certainly the most interesting, but the last 15 minutes make up for it again. I am generally not too big on Schlöndorff's or von Trotta's works such as "Young Törless" or "Hannah Arendt" and I also find "The Tin Drum" vastly overrated, but I think the spouses reached a convincing result with their collaboration here. Maybe they should have just made more films together. "Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum" is clearly worth checking out, especially for Winkler's and Laser's performances. Give it a chance.
This 105-minute movie is about a woman who really does nothing wrong, yet has to face severe consequences for her actions, which ultimately drive her to becoming a criminal herself. Winkler's character has a one-night stand with a terrorist. The next morning he is gone and police forces rush into her apartment. She gets taken to jail like a criminal and from that moment on not only struggles with police authorities, but also with the press, especially one particularly persistent journalist (Laser), who is not even scared of harassing the main character's very sick mother. The ending is particularly telling with the eulogy on freedom of press and the bad guy becoming a martyr, although it becomes obvious that this film is actually making a statement for the opposite site, namely for individual freedom and the right of not being harassed by press when you just want your calm.
I quite enjoyed the watch here. The film gets a bit weaker after the first hour when it moves a bit away from Winkler's, Laser's and Adorf's characters, certainly the most interesting, but the last 15 minutes make up for it again. I am generally not too big on Schlöndorff's or von Trotta's works such as "Young Törless" or "Hannah Arendt" and I also find "The Tin Drum" vastly overrated, but I think the spouses reached a convincing result with their collaboration here. Maybe they should have just made more films together. "Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum" is clearly worth checking out, especially for Winkler's and Laser's performances. Give it a chance.