'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

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2.2 Birth and Rape: Two Scenes Emphasizing a Woman’s Gendered Experience of War While standard historical accounts of the “Third Reich” and the Second World War have tended to focus on important battles and concepts of victory and defeat, Sanders-Brahms‟ film Deutschland, bleiche Mutter was one of the earliest West German films to recount a woman‟s personal experience of these historical periods. 30 Sanders- Brahms includes in her film several scenes depicting a woman‟s gendered experience of war. Two scenes that are of central importance in representing this individual female experience are the birth scene and the rape scene. In the first sequence, Lene gives birth to her daughter, Anna, during an Allied bombing raid. In the second, Lene is raped by two American service men in an abandoned building while her daughter looks on. A close reading of these scenes will show how Sanders-Brahms uses such cinematic techniques as female voice-over and the insertion of documentary footage into her fictional narrative in order to juxtapose the generally accepted public collective memory of the German war experience with a fictional re-creation of Sanders-Brahms‟ mother‟s personal experiences of this period. Through intertwining the pivotal events of Lene‟s gendered experience of war with the public documentary record of that era, Sanders- Brahms underscores the intrusion of historical forces into Lene‟s life (McCormick, Politics 191). This emphasis stresses the “false dichotomy” of the division between the private and public realms. 31 30 Although Kluge‟s film Abschied von gestern features the experiences of a young East German refugee in the West Germany of the 1960s, the film does not directly depict her experiences of the war or the immediate post-war era, and only refers in passing to her Jewish heritage. 31 Judith Mayne has written, “Feminist theorists have always stressed that the division between the realms of public and private is a false dichotomy. Traditionally and historically, women‟s sphere has been the private, the realm of family, home, and personal relations. And men‟s sphere has been the public sphere of 45
In the birth sequence, Sanders-Brahms intertwines two strands of narrative by cross-cutting moments of Lene‟s personal agony while giving birth to her daughter with documentary footage of Allied planes bombing German cities. The shots depicting Anna‟s birth take place in Lene‟s house. A high-angle, close- up shot of Lene‟s face and upper body shows her lying in bed breathing heavily with labour pains. A midwife sits by Lene‟s bed, encouraging her to breathe deeply. The midwife‟s words are almost completely obscured by the wail of air raid sirens, the deafening rumble of plane engines and anti-aircraft fire, and the whistle of bombs dropping and exploding. The camera angle in this scene appears to be from the perspective of an observer standing on the other side of Lene‟s bed across from the midwife, looking down into Lene‟s face. This point of view evokes empathy for Lene‟s situation as the viewer clearly witnesses the pain she is experiencing. The air raid sirens and the rumble of the bombs emphasize the extremely vulnerable position these two women are in, and evoke feelings of fear and shock in the viewer who is appalled at these dangerous circumstances. The women, however, do not appear to be afraid. They are so focused on the experience of child birth that they do not seem to be conscious of the bombs exploding around them. The camera then cuts to early-colour documentary footage of an Allied bomber pilot in his plane. A close-up eye-level shot shows the back of the pilot‟s head and neck silhouetted against the frame of his plane and a blue sky. His individual features are obscured. This „facelessness‟ suggests that the killing the bomber perpetuates has dehumanized him. He seems to become part of the machine he uses to destroy the lives official work and production” (160). According to this dichotomy, women are “privileged” to inhabit the realm of blissful warmth free from politics (McCormick, “Confronting German History” 188). 46
Page 1 and 2: Storytelling and Survival in the
Page 3 and 4: Supervisory Committee Dr. Helga Tho
Page 5 and 6: 3.1 Intergenerational Dialogue in D
Page 7 and 8: I would like to dedicate this thesi
Page 9 and 10: Sanders-Brahms describes a phenomen
Page 11 and 12: that Sanders-Brahms uses the fairy
Page 13 and 14: early 1980s by a wave of historical
Page 15 and 16: Deutschland, bleiche Mutter. Moreov
Page 17 and 18: audience. One of the most popular g
Page 19 and 20: 1.1 The Oberhausen Manifesto and Ne
Page 21 and 22: audiences. This film movement of th
Page 23 and 24: e beholden to him, for only through
Page 25 and 26: political events that took place in
Page 27 and 28: Verdrängten eigentlich gar nicht g
Page 29 and 30: (Deutschland im Herbst n. pag.). 14
Page 31 and 32: in drei Jahrzehnten Nachkriegsgesch
Page 33 and 34: impact West Germans in such a drama
Page 35 and 36: If German films are to make use of
Page 37 and 38: 1.4 Deutschland, bleiche Mutter as
Page 39 and 40: story must be hidden as much as pos
Page 41 and 42: Chapter 2: New Subjectivity and Wes
Page 43 and 44: Reich” opposes fascism, but who e
Page 45 and 46: direct and personal confrontation w
Page 47 and 48: context has only become part of the
Page 49 and 50: perpetrators are defined predominan
Page 51: Thus, Sanders-Brahms creates a coun
Page 55 and 56: ombs fall downward from the upper r
Page 57 and 58: narrator‟s sadness at the destruc
Page 59 and 60: essentialize men or women‟s exper
Page 61 and 62: image visually separates the runnin
Page 63 and 64: emotional connection between mother
Page 65 and 66: endurance and stoic acceptance of b
Page 67 and 68: texture which is both social and hi
Page 69 and 70: ombings terrorized civilian populat
Page 71 and 72: y war. A final interesting point of
Page 73 and 74: Maikäfer flieg. dein Vater ist im
Page 75 and 76: Why does Lene sing the Maikäferlie
Page 77 and 78: Beginning with the so-called recons
Page 79 and 80: elationship. Through its subjective
Page 81 and 82: a series of forty-one volumes publi
Page 83 and 84: 3.1 Intergenerational Dialogue in D
Page 85 and 86: geworden” (Brecht, Werke 253). 55
Page 87 and 88: Eure Unarmung kann ich mir nicht de
Page 89 and 90: 3.2 Retelling a Grimm Tale: Voice a
Page 91 and 92: and springs into the lap of the hid
Page 93 and 94: apes were collectively perceived as
Page 95 and 96: 3.4 “Der Räuberbräutigam,” Po
Page 97 and 98: with its ironic “Arbeit macht fre
Page 99 and 100: Further, the absence or presence at
Page 101 and 102: can imagine the chimney blowing out
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Chapter 4: Three Images of Woman in
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Moreover she demonstrates insight a
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victimization of another through he
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in an effort to help, Lene quickly
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Liebe, Ehe, ein Kind” (Sanders-Br
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knowingly or unknowingly, to make p
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passively complicit in the crimes o
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Contrastingly, in the middle and la
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traditional gender roles and emphas
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The old woman‟s constructive fema
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the severed finger at the tale‟s
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and calm camera movements. In contr
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The dentist and Hans completely ove
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4.4 Summarizing Remarks Sanders-Bra
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Chapter 5: Conclusion Mother’s Vo
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forced back into the oppressive dep
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daughter in what becomes an interge
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authentic documentary footage of th
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evocation of the Holocaust through
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Brahms articulates represents an ac
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H.S.-B.: Well, one answer to this q
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H.S.-B.: There is a very small baby
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only when you forget about scientif
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R.R.: So an example of that would b
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political context of the fictional
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was a wonderful image, like the May
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H.S.-B.: Yes, you‟re right, it‟
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R.R.: Some critics say that she is
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They just appeared during shooting.
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film represent the woman who respon
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R.R.: So, by telling your story, yo
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H.S.-B.: This happened to my mother
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irritated the critics terribly. It
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opening up, but actually, the strug
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---. Brecht on Theater. Ed. and Tra
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Herbst, Philip. Wimmin, Wimps and W
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---. “Gender, Film, and German Hi
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Sander, Helke and Barbara Johr. Eds
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'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

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