Lili Marleen (1981)

Note des utilisateurs:

7.3/10   

Réalisateur:

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Writers:

Lale Andersen (novel)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder (additional dialogue)

Release Date:

14 janvier 1981 (West Germany)

Genre:

Drame | Music | Romance | War

Plot:

In Switzerland German singer 'Willie' falls in love with Jewish composer 'Robert' who offers resistance to the Nazis by helping refugees...

Plot Keywords:

Nazi | Song | Radio | Soldier | Germany

Avis des utilisateurs:

The Chiasm of Offender and Victim

Ensemble

Hanna Schygulla	...	Willie
Giancarlo Giannini	...	Robert
Mel Ferrer	...	David Mendelsson
Karl-Heinz von Hassel	...	Henkel (as Karl Heinz von Hassel)
Erik Schumann	...	von Strehlow
Hark Bohm	...	Taschner
Gottfried John	...	Aaron
Karin Baal	...	Anna Lederer
Christine Kaufmann	...	Miriam
Udo Kier	...	Drewitz
Roger Fritz	...	Kauffmann
Rainer Will	...	Bernt
Raúl Gimenez	...	Blonsky (as Raul Giminez)
Adrian Hoven	...	Ginsberg
Willy Harlander	...	Prosel

Autre(s) titre(s):

Lili Marleen (France) [fr]

Durée:

120 min | Brazil:111 min

Pays:

West Germany

Langue:

Anglais | Allemand

Couleur:

Couleur

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Son:

Mono

Classification:

Iceland:16 | Netherlands:12 | Australia:M | Finland:K-16 | Singapore:R(A) | Sweden:15 | UK:15 | USA:R | West Germany:12

Emplacements De Pelliculage:

Bavaria Filmstudios, Geiselgasteig, Grünwald, Bavaria, Germany

Company:

Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR)

Anecdotes:

Shot in English for American distribution; later dubbed in German

Goofs:

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): The German officer, Kaufmann, who arrests Robert on the train wears the uniform of an SS-Gruppenfuhrer (General) - it is highly unlikely that an SS General of such rank would be checking identity papers at random on a train.

Movie Connections:

Remake of Lilli Marlene (1950)

The Chiasm of Offender and Victim

Many critics have felt offended that R.W. Fassbinder has portrayed both protagonist Wilkie and the Nazis in this movie in a human-like manner. Connoisseurs of other Fassbinder films, however, will realize that "Lili Marleen" (1981) belongs to Fassbinder's "women movies" like "The Marriage of Maria Braun" (1979) and "Lola" (1981). Fassbinder was convinced that "stories can be told much better with women than with men", because, according to Fassbinder, while men usually fulfill their determined roles in society, "women are capable of thinking in a dialectic manner". Dialectics, however, means that there is not only a thesis and its antithesis like usually in our black-and-white world, but a synthesis where the oppositions coincide. Moreover, dialectic means that because of the third instance of synthesis the absolute opposition of the difference between thesis and antithesis is abolished. Concretely speaking: Starting from a dialect point of view and portraying the fascist state, the underground fighters must necessarily use the basic means like the rulers do, and between offenders and victims there is thus a chiastic relation, so that every offender is also victim and every victim is also offender. Fassbinder has illustrated this abstract scheme, that transcends classical logic, in his play "The City, the Garbage and the Death" (1975) which was filmed by Daniel Schmid under the title "Shadow of Angels" (1976).

Therefore, approaching an a priori controversial topic like Nazi Germany, in a dialectic manner, the depiction of this time in the form of a movie gets even more controversial, especially for people who cannot or do not want to see that our recognition of the world is by far not exhausted with a primitive light-switch schema, but needs the third instance of synthesis as controlling instance of its opposite members thesis and antithesis. The mutual relationship between offenders and victims has to scrutinized, since it is simply not true that the offenders are the bad ones and the victims the good ones. In a synthetic viewpoint, the bad ones participate on the goodness as the good ones participate on the badness. They are mutually related. In a world-view based on classical logic, a relation between good and bad cannot even been established, and in an ethics based on this insufficient system of logic, the bad conscience of the survivors of Nazi Germany, feeling (illogically enough) responsible for the deeds of their ancestors, exclude the possibility of a relationship between the two extremes and thus a synthesis in the form a new evaluation based on this relationship as well. From Fassbinder's dialectic viewpoint, it follows that neither Lili Marleen nor Lola nor Maria Braun can be condemned for their "misuse" of the ruling system for their private purposes, because they don't misuse them, they just use them. In the opposite, since victims must repeat the actions of the offenders as the offenders must repeat the actions of the victims, because "good" and "bad" are no longer simple mirror images of one another like in two-valued logic, their strategies are legitimated by the chiastic structure of a logic that describes our world, that is not black and white at all, much better than a black-and-white logic.