'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

and calm camera movements. In contrast, Hans‟ violence is filmed in rapid camera cuts
and close-ups of Lene‟s face. Lene turns the cheek Hans slaps to the camera, and
notably, this is the same cheek that will later be affected by the facial paralysis. The
focus of the camera on Lene‟s beaten face not only brings Hans‟ act of aggression closer
to the audience, but it also emphasizes Lene‟s failure to react to the abuse (Smith 248).
Lene‟s reaction to Hans‟ violence is almost identical to her reaction to being attacked by
the German shepherd. Suppressing her emotions, she covers her face in her hands and
runs out of the room in order to regain her composure in solitude. As has already been
examined, the third time that Lene experiences male violence is when she is raped by two
American servicemen. Her detached reaction can be likened to the passivity of the Other
bride in the fairy tale. As Morewedge suggests, “Lene models the fate of the coerced
mutilated Other bride as American soldiers rape her” (235). Though Lene does try to run
away from her attackers, she responds to their violation of her with passivity and
stoicism. Her dispassionate reiteration of the saying: “To the victor belong the spoils”
could suggest that she has internalized the patriarchal myth that the chaos of war give
men licence to rape enemy women (Smith 242). However, Sanders-Brahms may also be
employing Lene‟s reaction as an ironic commentary on the expectations of post-war
German society that German woman were supposed to respond to wartime rapes by
keeping their trauma private and by simply “getting over” them.
Upon my initial viewing of the film, I felt that Lene‟s tacit and resigned
acceptance of her rape prevented her from taking any sort of action to bring her
aggressors to justice. While the miller‟s daughter actively protests the murder of the
Other bride by speaking out publicly against the robbers and thus bringing them to justice
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