'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

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Sanders-Brahms fictional sequence of the birth gives us part of the historical reality of war largely unrecorded by documentarists, but nonetheless an essential part, without which much of what is recorded does not make sense. Why would non-military targets be bombed if there were no civilian population to terrorize in the midst of its daily life – working, eating, cooking, making love, sleeping and giving birth? (Politics 192) Thus, the inclusion of women‟s gendered experiences of war in the public historical record will serve the simultaneous function of enriching the historical record with women‟s personal accounts of war and of illuminating the impact the historical forces have had on individual women‟s lives. Thematically speaking, the birth sequence establishes a paradigm based on gender in which women are symbolically associated with life-giving processes, whereas men act as the bearers of death. Kosta criticizes Sanders-Brahms for creating what she sees as “blatant stylizations of essentialized gender polarities (life and death, woman and man)” and feels that “the birthing scene, intercut with scenes of a bomber, reduces sexual difference to culturally contrived formulas” (150). While I would agree with Kosta that the birth scene establishes a gender-based paradigm where women are depicted as fostering life and men as destroying it, I would argue that this is a rather realistic paradigm for the film‟s historical setting during the Second World War. Allied Bomber pilots would have been male. Moreover, in the political and social context of the “Third Reich” non-Jewish German women were encouraged to become mothers and to provide the regime with as many children as possible. In fact, Hitler awarded the Mutterkreuz or the “mother‟s cross” to women who produced four or more children (Koonz 186). „Giving life‟ was fully supported by the regime and sanctified by the highest authority. Therefore, while gender-based polarities exist in this scene, I feel that they do not 51
essentialize men or women‟s experiences of war in that these experiences are based on a historical and social reality. The second sequence of the film that depicts a woman‟s gendered experience of war is the scene in which Lene is raped by two American soldiers. In the film narrative, the rape sequence takes place during Lene and Anna‟s migration to the East and interrupts Lene‟s narration of the Grimms‟ fairy tale ““Der Räuberbräutigam” (“The Robber Bridegroom”). The scene is preceded by two scenes of early-colour documentary newsreel footage. The first consists of a very lengthy aerial panning shot of bombed out Berlin, which goes on for 1 minute and 5 seconds and which shows the extreme scope of the devastation to the German metropolis. This scene is accompanied by a sombre piano melody dominated by shrill disharmonies. The accompaniment appears to be a funeral march and it underscores the sadness, loss, and otherworldliness of the devastation. The second scene shows an American soldier sitting on the ground playing a legless concert piano. His dissonant plunking captures the attention of a female civilian standing at the far left-hand corner of the screen holding a broom and dustpan. She turns to look at the piano player briefly and, moving from right to left, walks off screen. Two American soldiers walk past the piano player, pause, turn to look at him briefly and smile. Then they lift their heads quickly as if the off-screen woman has caught their attention and they saunter off screen as if wanting to catch up with the woman. The right to left movements of the woman and soldiers create a sense of tension and uneasiness in the Western viewer. This is because right to left movement contradicts the Western eye‟s natural instinct to move over an image from left to right, due in part to the way people are trained to read (Giannetti 33). The image of male members of a conquering army following a 52
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Storytelling and Survival in the
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Supervisory Committee Dr. Helga Tho
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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 and 52: Thus, Sanders-Brahms creates a coun
Page 53 and 54: In the birth sequence, Sanders-Brah
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Page 57: narrator‟s sadness at the destruc
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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
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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
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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
Page 103 and 104: Chapter 4: Three Images of Woman in
Page 105 and 106: Moreover she demonstrates insight a
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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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