'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria
'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria
'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria
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audiences. This film movement <strong>of</strong> the 1960s is known as the New German Cinema, 10<br />
because it rebelled against the older generation <strong>of</strong> filmmakers, who produced the so-<br />
called “Papas Kino.” New German Cinema produced an abundance <strong>of</strong> filmic adaptations<br />
<strong>of</strong> literary works, a few <strong>of</strong> which took a more serious look at the recent German past.<br />
Three examples <strong>of</strong> this are Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Huillet‟s minimalist film<br />
Nicht versöhnt (Not Reconciled, 1965) adapted from Heinrich Böll‟s novel Billard um<br />
halb zehn (Billiards at Half Past Nine), Alexander Kluge‟s, Abschied von gestern<br />
(Yesterday Girl, 1966) based on his own short story “Anita G.” from the collection<br />
Lebensläufe, and Volker Schlöndorff‟s Der junge Törless (Young Törless, 1966), a<br />
cinematic adaptation <strong>of</strong> Robert Musil‟s 1906 novel, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings<br />
Törless (The Confusions <strong>of</strong> Young Törless). Abschied von gestern has the most relevance<br />
to my contextualization <strong>of</strong> Deutschland, bleiche Mutter as Kluge‟s film depicts a<br />
woman‟s gendered experiences in West German society <strong>of</strong> the 1960s. Therefore, only<br />
Abschied von gestern will be discussed in this thesis.<br />
Abschied von gestern demonstrates the inescapable connection between the past<br />
and the present. The film focuses on the troubled toils <strong>of</strong> Anita G, a young East German<br />
woman <strong>of</strong> Jewish descent who tries but fails to find success in West Germany. In a<br />
disjointed sequence <strong>of</strong> episodes, the viewer sees Anita stumbling through various<br />
ephemeral jobs and short-lived relationships, to end up an unmarried mother in prison.<br />
Like so many refugees from the East, Anita arrives in the Federal Republic expecting to<br />
10 The term “Young German Film” is sometimes used to designate the the avant-garde cinema produced by<br />
a young generation <strong>of</strong> West German filmmakers beginning in 1962 with the signing <strong>of</strong> the Oberhausen<br />
Manifesto (Knight, New German Cinema 13). In the 1970s, the movement was renamed “New German<br />
Cinema” by New York film critics (Flinn 6). Throughout this thesis I will refer to the trend in West<br />
German cinema spanning from approximately the late 1960s to the mid-1980s in which a generation <strong>of</strong><br />
filmmakers born circa the period <strong>of</strong> the Second World War directed a slew <strong>of</strong> critically acclaimed films as<br />
“New German Cinema.”<br />
14