THE POLITICAL IS PERSONAL: MARGARETHE VON TROTTA'S MARIANNE AND JULIANE Author(s): ELLEN SEITER Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 37, No. 2, SEXUAL DIFFERENCE (Spring 1985), pp. 41- 46, 39 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the University Film & Video Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20687660 . Accessed: 27/03/2012 16:23 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Illinois Press and University Film & Video Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Film and Video. http://www.jstor.org THE POLITICAL IS PERSONAL: MARGARETHE VON TROTTA'S MARIANNE AND JULIANE ELLEN SEITER "IfMarianne and Juliane were really exemplifies the problems of interpreting what it claims to be itwould not have the New German Cinema outside the gotten any support, distribution or context of German history and culture. exhibition." -Charlotte Frauen und Film' DeLorme, Margarethe von Trotta is one of a handful of women directors making narrative von Trotta's 1981 film Margarethe feature films to gain an international Marianne and Juliane Bleierne (Die Zeit) reputation on the art film circuit; she is raises critical questions about feminist also thewoman director most often iden filmmaking, political narrative film, and tified in theUnited States with theNew the of German films in the interpretation German Cinema.2 While there are many United States. The director has achieved women directors working in Germany considerable critical acclaim and commer whose films are more strongly feminist cial success filmswith making exclusively than von Trotta's, they have failed (with and often female, feminist, protagonists: the possible exceptions ofDaniele Huillet, Die Verlorene Ehre Der Katharina Blum Helke Sander, and Helma Sanders with Volker (co-directed Schlondorff, Brahms) to receive the same recognition in Das Zweite Erwachen Der Christa 1975), theU.S.3 This may be attributed in part to Klages (1977), Schwestern Oder Die von Trotta's collaboration with Volker Balance Des Glucks and most (1979), Schl5ndorff, her association as an actor Heller Wahn recently, (1982). Particularly with the New German Cinema, the noted has been von Trotta's attention to production of her films by Schl6ndorff's intimate between women relationships company, Bioskop-Film. To some extent, and the dimension of these psychological von Trotta's protagonists can be seen as Marianne and Juliane relationships. the female counterparts toWim Wenders' stands as an work especially problematic alienated heroes of the post war genera in this because it is based in on regard part tion; her films, like Schlondorff's, resem the lifeof Gudrun Ensslin, member of the ble a genre familiar toAmerican distribu Baader Meinhof Frak - group (Rote Armee tors, the thriller as Thomas Elsaesser and her tion) explores personal history has argued.4 Von Trotta's films can also be from the of point view of Ensslin's sister, compared to the work of other women Christiane. Set during the 1970's with directors who have had some success on flashbacks to the sisters' childhoods in the the American art film circuit, and whose the film is bound in postwar period, films are distributed in 16mm here. Many German so that it history inextricably of these films have focused, like von Trotta's last three films, on a relationship ELLEN SEITER teaches filmand television between two women, such as Vera at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Her Chytilova's Daisies, Diane Kurys's Entre articles have in Film Reader, appeared Jump Nous, Marta Meszaros's Women and Cut, Tabloid and theJournal of Film and Video. Varda's One The Other In 1983, she received a grant to study at the Agnes Sings Doesn't. Goethe Institute in Bremen, Germany. What distinguishes von Trotta's films from these is the absence of comic @ Copyright 1985by Ellen Seiter relief, nostalgia, heterosexual romance or JOURNALOFFILM AND VIDEO XXXVII (Spring 1985) 41 careerism. Von Trotta is unremittingly have been murdered in prison). As in serious about relationships between Sisters, thedifferences between thewomen women in her films, and the relationships are emphasized. At the beginning of the she portrays tend to be rather tortured. film Juliane is involved in a stable, childless relationship with a man and is In Sisters (Schwestern) and inMarianne deeply committed toworking forwomen's and Juliane, von Trotta examines the rights through journalism and legal relationship between women in the con reform. The film's first dialogue scene - textof the nuclear family the characters consists of a conversation between Juliane - are sisters and aspects of personal life and Marianne's husband, Werner, in which have been studied by feminists: which it is revealed that Marianne is feminine identity, identification, ego involved in terrorism, has deserted her formation, competition and jealousy husband and her son, Jan, and that Juliane among women. In the first film the older perceives her as selfish, spiteful and sister,Maria and the younger sister,Anna, irresponsible. Marianne's first scenes in are characterized as disparate in personali the film,meeting her sister clandestinely ty,world view, relationship to others and and storming into her apartment in the to theirwork, yet their relationship is one middle of the night demanding coffee and of intense and destructive interdepen clothing, tend to reinforce this view. dence. Flashbacks and dream sequences Juliane (played by Jutta Lampe, who convey the psychological relationship appeared as Maria in Sisters) is responsi between the sisters. Anna remembers her ble, dedicated, sensitive; Marianne is sister reading a fairy tale to her about hard, cynical, contemptuous of others. In children lost in the forest, and a scene the scenes between the sisters at the prison standing with her sister before a mirror, after Marianne's arrest, they confront one putting on make up and fascinated by their another and their personal and political multiple, doubled reflection.After Anna's differences in exchanges which are alterna suicide, Maria obsessively tries to estab tely tender and violent. When Marianne lish a similar relationship with another dies in prison, Juliane engages in a desper woman. In her dreams she looks into the ate search for evidence to prove that her mirror and sees, not her own reflection, sister's death was a murder, not a suicide, but her sisteras.At the conclusion of the and sacrifices her work and her personal film,Maria gains a painful understanding relationship to do so. Her actions prove to of their relationship and resolves to have no public usefulness, however, and, integrateAnna's attributes into her own rebuked after one attempt to make the personality. information public, she accepts the role of guardian to the now physically and emo InMarianne and Juliane the relationship tionally traumatized Jan. between sisters is more solidly grounded in the nuclear family and social institu Marianne and Juliane resembles Sisters in tions, while von Trotta retains a strong its emphasis on psychology, its sustained emphasis on its psychological dimension. emotional intensity,and its confinement, The story is told from the point of view of in a majority of scenes, to domestic space. Juliane (Christiane Ensslin) and concerns Stylistically the films are realist: eye level her attempts to resolve her troubled camera, moderately long takes, naturalis relationship to her sisterMarianne (Gu tic lighting, location shooting. Von Trot drun Ensslin), to understand her sister's ta's sisters are usually suffering,and we are commitment to violent political action, invited, in several lingering facial close and to come to terms with her death. ups, to scrutinize them. All these char (Gudrun Ensslin was widely believed to acteristics would suggest that the films 42 JOURNALOFFILM AND VIDEO XXXVII (Spring 1985) belong to the domain of the domestic American distribution, with its emphasis melodrama. The characters are angry and instead on the female characters. alienated, however, ill-suited to the kind of sentimental treatment which melo All of the flashback sequences in drama demands. The families are the site Marianne and Juliane derive from of strained and constraining relationships Juliane's point of view, as E. Ann Kaplan and a desperate struggle for identity.Von has demonstrated.6 The firstmeeting of Trotta subjects the family itself to scru the sisters is followed by a flashback to tiny,as well as the individuals within it. It them as small children, watching the skin J L a JuttaLampe as Juliane in von Trotta'sMarianne and Juliane. is this investigation of the past and of the form on their cocoa while their stern relationships which, among other things, looking father recites his morning prayer. gives the films the emotional tenor of the When Juliane attempts to visit Marianne psychological thriller rather than the in prison for the first time, there is a melodrama. InMarianne and Juliane, the flashback to the sisters playing in the yard investigation takes the form of flashback together, racing each other home. Other sequences which occur seven times in the flashbacks present the emotional impact film and cover, with one exception, the of German history on the sisters: at four childhood period from 1945-55. These and five years old, woken in the night and flashbacks situate the relationship taken by theirmother to air raid shelters, between the sisters in history as well as in as teenagers watching scenes of the con the family.