'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

politics has been shown to be completely false. In an interview with Peter Brunette,
Sanders-Brahms reveals her belief that personal relationships are affected by the
historical, social, and political contexts in which they take place. She states, “The
political situation we‟re living in has enormous influence on our love life […] Cinema
has the tendency to make believe that the political situation has nothing to do with the
love of a man for a women, but it‟s not true” (quoted in Brunette 41).
In the fairy tale segment, the effect of images evoking postmemories of the
Holocaust is heightened by their appearance in tandem with narrative elements of the
fairy tale. In my opinion, the synergy of narration and images creates even more
poignant postmemories of the Jewish genocide than the images would alone. Some of
these connections are very explicit. One example of this takes place when Lene tells how
the robber bridegroom directs the miller‟s daughter to find his house, stating: “Und damit
du auch den Weg findest, will ich dir Asche streuen” (Sanders-Brahms, Film-Erzählung
92). 69 When Lene recounts these lines, she and Anna happen upon the abandoned
factory. The camera pans slowly up the length of a very tall smokestack. The literary
reference to the path scattered with ashes, and the shot of the towering chimney could
evoke in the viewer a postmemory of a concentration camp chimney blowing out ashes of
cremated inmates. This allusion is reinforced by the image of heavy ovens reminiscent of
a crematorium shown in tandem with Lene‟s first telling of the fairy tale bird‟s refrain,
“Kehr um, kehr um, du junge Braut. Du bist in einem Mörderhaus” (Sanders-Brahms,
Film-Erzählung 93). 70 As Davies suggests: “Just as ashes lead the Grimms‟ heroine to
the murderer‟s house, in the film too, the motif of the cold ovens are emphasized and we
69 “And so that you find the way, I will spread ashes for you” (Sanders-Brahms, Film-Erzählung 92).
70 “Turn around, turn around, you young bride. You are in a murderer‟s house” (Sanders-Brahms, Film-
Erzählung 93).
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