THE LOST HONOUR OF KATHARINA BLUM (VERLORENE EHRE DER KATHARINA BLUM)

Germany, 1974, 106 minutes, Colour.
Angela Winkler, Mario Adorf, Jurgen Prochnow, Heinz Bennent.
Directed by Volker Schlondorff and Margarethe von Trotta.

The Lost Honour of Katerina Blum was very topical in Germany in the 1970s. With the various revolutionary groups, including the Baader Meinhof Gang, as well as the Red Brigade to come in Italy, there was an atmosphere of a war against terrorism in western Europe. This film capitalises on this fear and shows the paranoia especially of the media and their targeting innocent victims. Katerina Blum spends a night with a man and falls in love with him. He is arrested on suspicion of terrorism. Her name is dragged in the mud and she is humiliated as a suspect terrorist.

The film continues to be relevant over the decades, especially at the beginning of the 21st century after September 11, 2001 and the war against terrorism as well as the police powers and the influence of the aggressive media.

The film was co-written and directed by Volker Schlondorff and Margarethe von Trotta, husband and wife at the time. The film is based on a novel by celebrated German author Heinrich Boll. Angela Winkler is very persuasive as Katerina Blum and Mario Adorf, who featured in many films in Germany during this period, is the commissioner. Jurgen Prochnow who was later to move to the United States for a long career is Ludwig, the man who spends the night with Katerina Blum. Heinz Bennent was to appear in Schlondorff’s 1979 Oscar-winning film, The Tin Drum.

Schlondorff has had a long career, not only in his native Germany, but during the 1980s he made a number of films in English including Swann in Love, Death of a Salesman with Dustin Hoffman and John Malkovich, A Gathering of Old Men and The Handmaid’s Tale. In 2004 he released The Ninth Day based on the memoirs of Father Jean Bernard, the secretary-general and then president of OCIC who spent years in Dachau. Margarethe von Trotta has made a number of significant films about women including The Second Awakening of Christina Klage as well as Rosenstrasse in 2003, a memoir of World War Two.

The Lost Honour of Katerina Blum won the OCIC award at San Sebastian. Both Schlondorff and Margarethe von Trotta have won quite a number of awards from the Catholic film organisations.

1. The significance and focus of the title, the theme of honour, the focus on Katharina?

2. How successful was the film, as a social document, presenting modern Germany, people, clashes? social scandal?

3. How interesting the presentation of the world of newspapers, journalists, the police? Worlds in themselves? Influence on others? Victimisers?

4. What did the film have to say about men and women in this kind of world? As victims? Individuals victimised by the group?

5. Themes of' guilt, innocence? The effect of guilt, responsibility?

6. The fact the film was based on a true story? The structure of' the film, names and dates, style? With authenticity, realism?

7. The atmosphere of' realism with locations, colour, music? Cinematic style and editing?

8. The significance of events, pauses, parallel events, and their intersection? What did the film have to say about the meaning of events and people caught up in them?

9. How just was the presentation of the police? The particular types, behaviour, representatives of government? Their job, methods? Power over individuals? The comparison with the world of the Yellow Press? Journalists and their invasion of privacy? Publicising people’s private lives? Journalistic types? .Parallels between the two worlds?

10. How ordinary a person was Katharina? How sympathetic? Her ordinary way of life, her being caught up in events beyond her control? How well did the audience understand her as a person? The effect of the events, the accidents of life, the police, the journalists? Guilt by association? What decisions did she have to make? The consequences of her decisions? Conscience and responsibility? Desperation?

11. The atmosphere of the party, the encounter with Ludwig? Her decision to spend the night with him and the consequent breaking in of the police? The nightmare accounts of the experience that she did not understand?

12. Audience response to the police interrogation? their methods? The police reporter and his methods?

13. The people who were background to Katharina? Their influence on her e.g. her employer, his wife? Her lawyer? Her use of their house to shield Ludwig?

14. The importance of the encounters with her husband, with her mother? These characters in themselves, reaction to Katharina? The effect on her within the atmosphere of the scandal? The newspapers' invasion of the privacy of husband and mother?

15. The public and their abusive letters, the anonymous phone calls? The condemnation of Katharina because of the evidence of the journalists' writings? The lynching mentality?

16. The dramatic build-up to the finale and the setup between Katharina and the journalist? His continual pressurising, his being an unsympathetic character and unscrupulous? How credible was it that Katharina would shoot him? How responsible was she?

17. The final ironies at the funeral, the speeches, the official representatives? The irony of the comments of the freedom of the press? How just were these critiques of the modern world?