'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

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2.3 The Role of Documentary Footage and Radio in Deutschland, bleiche Mutter While the previous section discusses Sanders-Brahms‟ use of documentary footage in the birth and rape scenes, this section deals with her use of archival footage in other scenes of Deutschland, bleiche Mutter. In several scenes of the film Sanders- Brahms fuses fictional re-enacted moments inspired by her mother‟s and her own personal recollections of war with iconographic images and sounds that have come to represent official discourses on the past (including archival footage of bombed-out cityscapes, recordings of Hitler‟s political speeches, and newsreel shots of the famed Trümmerfrauen or “women of the rubble” starting to rebuild the devastated German cities). By merging fictional (auto)biographical narrative with documentary footage, Sanders-Brahms places „private‟ experience and broader socio-political „events‟ in dialectic relation. This intermingling of re-enacted scenes and archival footage contextualizes both the personal and collective memories. The newsreel images depicting events of national history such as aerial bombing raids and Germany‟s capitulation in 1945 situate the fictional scenes in a historical context. Conversely, the enacted scenes locate the historical/political events in a social context by illustrating how Lene, Anna and other German women and children were affected by and reacted to events such as the bombings. Through blending moments of individual and public memory, Sanders-Brahms emphasizes the interdependence of the public and private realms of experience. As Leonie Naughton explains: Germany Pale Mother's mobilisation of a range of discursive modes serves to elucidate the nexus of the public and the private, of individual recollection and officially instituted histories. […] Moving from the monumental events of national history to the quotidian, the film succeeds in imbuing memory with a 59
texture which is both social and historic. Rather than presenting personal experience and recollections as „private‟ constructions, Germany Pale Mother presents them in correlation to historic context and social imperative. (n. pag.) By blending subjective memories and archival footage of the war in her film, Sanders-Brahms emphasizes the problematic process of historical recovery. She does not treat history as an unquestionable fixed referent, but rather reveals it to be a site of contestation between genders, between generations, and between the victorious Allied Forces and the defeated German population (Naughton n. pag). Let us turn now to an examination of the other sequences of the film that juxtapose fictional scenes and archival footage. After the birth/bombing montage, the next sequence that contains authentic footage shows Lene and her infant daughter taking refuge from a bombing raid in an air raid shelter. In this sequence, Sanders-Brahms uses both newsreel footage and radio broadcasts to refer to the political forces that intrude on Lene‟s private life. The first scene of this sequence shows Lene alone at home, holding Anna in her arms, and sitting in front of a Christmas tree. She listens to the famous radio broadcast of “Stille Nacht” or “Silent Night” on Christmas Eve 1942 sung by German soldiers on the outmost reaches of the expanded German Reich. The broadcast is ironic because, as Hillman suggests, “It‟s rendition […] feigns a sovereignty that the imminent collapse of Stalingrad was to totally negate” (71). Ironically, the line “alles schläft” or “everything sleeps” is interrupted by air raid sirens. Lene is shown placing Anna in a baby carriage, collecting a suitcase, leaving her house, and hastily pushing the carriage past a pile of rubble towards the nearest air raid shelter. Flashes of light illuminate the dark scene. The next shot shows Lene entering the shelter and sitting down among a group of frightened women, children, and elderly men. The shelter radio broadcasts a 60
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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
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I would like to dedicate this thesi
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Sanders-Brahms describes a phenomen
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that Sanders-Brahms uses the fairy
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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
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Page 23 and 24: e beholden to him, for only through
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Page 29 and 30: (Deutschland im Herbst n. pag.). 14
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Page 35 and 36: If German films are to make use of
Page 37 and 38: 1.4 Deutschland, bleiche Mutter as
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Page 41 and 42: Chapter 2: New Subjectivity and Wes
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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
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Page 59 and 60: essentialize men or women‟s exper
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Page 77 and 78: Beginning with the so-called recons
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Page 99 and 100: Further, the absence or presence at
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Page 103 and 104: Chapter 4: Three Images of Woman in
Page 105 and 106: Moreover she demonstrates insight a
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Page 109 and 110: in an effort to help, Lene quickly
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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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