A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Sunday, August 9, 2026

Phoenix (Christian Petzold, 2014)

Nina Hoss and Ronald Zehrfeld in Phoenix

Cast: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Nina Kunzendorf, Michael Maertens, Imogen Kogge, Felix Römer. Screenplay: Christian Petzold, Harun Farocki, based on a novel by Hubert Monteilhet. Cinematography: Hans Fromm. Production design: Hans-Dieter Gruber. Film editing: Bettina Böhler. Music: Stefan Will. 

The premise of Christian Petzold's Phoenix is sheer melodrama: A woman, disfigured in the war that separated her from her husband, undergoes plastic surgery that slightly alters her face. She seeks out the husband, but doesn't immediately identify herself as his missing wife. Recognizing the resemblance, the husband decides to have her pretend to be what she really is, his lost wife, in a plan to get hold of her inheritance. In Phoenix the wife, Nelly Lenz (Nina Hoss), was sent to a concentration camp during World War II, possibly having been betrayed as Jewish by her husband, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld). Hoss makes Nelly's decision not to reveal her identity to Johnny and to go along with his scheme plausible, even though she has an alternative: Her friend Lene (Nina Kunzendorf) has arranged for them to emigrate to Palestine. The subtlety and intensity of Hoss's performance and the setting among the ruins of Berlin in the aftermath of the war give the film a historical and psychological substance that outweighs the contrivances of the story. Petzold skillfully builds tension toward the film's remarkable conclusion. Phoenix is a reminder that superb acting, good writing, and solid direction can transform even the most formulaic of plots.  

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