Volker Schlöndorff

Degree of Murder

by
Anita Pallenberg

“Starring Anita Pallenberg” and “Music by Brian Jones” are the big sells of Degree of Murder (Mord und Totschlag in the original German), a weird trifle from 1967 seemingly designed to showcase the almost unbearable cuteness of Pallenberg and little more. If you’re steeped in the culture of the times, no further details about these people is necessary, but if not, then Pallenberg was at the time rock chic numero uno – though Marianne Faithfull might have challenged her to the title – being the girlfriend of the founder of the Rolling Stones, Jones. Jones is harder to explain in a nutshell, though Nick Broomfield’s excellent documentary, The Stones and Brian Jones, does … Read more

The Legend of Rita

by
Rita and Tatjana

When Germany reunified after the fall of the Berlin Wall it wasn’t so much a merger as a hostile takeover – the Federal Republic swallowed the German Democratic Republic whole and set about digesting it. One way of doing things had lost and the other had won. You might have expected a certain amount of crowing from the winning side. And there probably was some, but overall the notable thing about post-unification Germany has been the lack of it. Again and again, if it’s made in Germany for German consumption, there’s an eagerness to demonstrate – to insist, almost – that the GDR wasn’t all bad. In fact, the new consensus seems to … Read more

The Tin Drum

by
Oskar bangs his drum

The Tin Drum won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1980, as well as the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1979. Not everyone was enamoured, though. While the Los Angeles Times thought it “a masterwork of cinema” and the New York Times slightly less effusively reported that it “compels attention,” Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times took against it, doling out only two (out of four stars) in a review that expressed bafflement at other critics’ admiration of the film. The years have tended to vindicate Ebert. The movie, like the original Günter Grass book on which it was based, has been steadily rerated downwards over the decades, not least since … Read more