'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

that follows, this being an aerial footage shot from a plane flying over the bombed
buildings of Berlin. This documentary footage shows the viewer a historical reality,
which provides the corrective to the child‟s fantasies and thus distances the viewer from
identifying with the daughter‟s idealized memories. As McCormick explains:
“Flying over the rooftops” […] would have meant flying over miles of bombed
out buildings, many of which had no roofs, as the spectator can ascertain during
this silent sequence of eerie footage showing Berlin in ruins […] The spectator is
not allowed to participate in the joy shared by the mother and daughter – which is
idyllic only in the memory of the child, in any case – without being confronted
with the visual evidence of how ghastly a world it was she remembers so
selectively. (Politics 198-199)
The next scene containing archival footage takes place after a scene showing Lene
and Anna wandering through a snowy rural landscape in an unspecified part of eastern
Germany. A medium shot of early-colour footage shows the burning wreckage of a
crashed airplane and then the camera cuts to an image of Hitler‟s bunker in flames (Kaes
149, Hyams 43). The action is accompanied by an off-screen radio broadcast telling of
Hitler‟s death. The announcer states, “Aus dem Führerhauptquartier wird gemeldet, daβ
unser Führer, Adolf Hitler, heute Nachmittag in seinem Befehlsstand in der Reichkanzlei
bis zum letzten Atemzuge gegen den Bolschewismus kämpfend für Deutschland gefallen
ist” (Sanders-Brahms, Film-Erzählung 92). 48 The camera then cuts to a close-up shot of
Lene‟s face and hand against a backdrop of green leaves. On her finger is perched a
cockchafer, a type of European beetle. Lene sings the “Maikäferlied,” 49 a traditional
German children‟s song similar to “Ladybird, Ladybird”:
48 “From the headquarters of the Führer it has been announced that our Führer, Adolf Hitler, died this
afternoon in his chancellery while fighting to his last breath for Germany against Bolshevism” (Sanders-
Brahms, Film-Erzählung 92).
49 The song has been associated in Germany with mass conflicts since the 17th century. The song was first
sung in the Thirty Years War, when, after 1618, vast regions of Pomerania were pillaged and two-thirds of
the population did not survive the conflict (“Maikäfer, flieg!”).
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