The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta, 1975)

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta, 1975)

Cast: Angela Winkler, Mario Adorf, Dieter Laser, Jürgen Prochnow, Heinz Bennent, Hannelore Hoger, Rolf Becker, Harald Kuhlmann, Herbert Fux, Regine Lutz. Screenplay: Volker Schlöndorff, Margarethe von Trotta, based on a novel by Heinrich Böll. Cinematography: Jost Vacano. Production design: Ute Burgmann, Günter Naumann. Film editing: Peter Przygodda. Music: Hans Werner Henze.

Coup de Grâce (Volker Schlöndorff, 1976)

Margarethe von Trotta in Coup de Grâce

Erich von Lhomond:  Matthias Habich
Sophie de Reval: Margarethe von Trotta
Conrad de Reval: Rüdiger Kirschstein
Aunt Praskovia: Valeska Gert
Dr. Paul Rugen: Marc Eyraud
Michel: Hannes Kaetner
Grigori Loew: Franz Morak
Franz von Aland: Frederik von Zischy
Volkmar: Mathieu Carrière

Director: Volker Schlöndorff
Screenplay: Geneviève Dormann, Margarethe von Trotta, Jutta Brückner
Based on a novel by Marguerite Yourcenar
Cinematography: Igor Luther
Music: Stanley Myers
Film editing: Jane Seitz

Coup de Grâce is a film as chilly as its setting: a castle in Latvia in the bleak winter of 1919-1920, as the Bolsheviks begin to overwhelm their opponents in the Baltic states, many of whom are Germans determined to defeat the communists. The castle belongs to Conrad de Reval, who has gathered there some of the remnants of his forces, including his friend Erich von Lhomond. It becomes apparent very early, especially from the glances between Conrad and Erich, that they may be more than just friends. It's not so apparent to Conrad's sister, Sophie, who is still living in the castle along with her aged aunt. Sophie makes a play for Conrad, but it's only partially successful. To spite and to tantalize him, she begins to have affairs with some of the other men staying at the castle. Meanwhile, the castle comes under attack from the Bolsheviks, some of whom are also Sophie's friends. Margarethe von Trotta gives a complex portrayal of Sophie, but is somewhat undermined by the intricacies of the relationships among the various characters and the difficulty of sorting out their several backstories. We don't know enough about her, or Erich or Conrad, to get a full sense of why any of them behave as they do, other than the moral fatigue of having fought the war for so long. In the end, the film becomes most memorable for the performance of Valeska Gert, whose grotesque and macabre Aunt Praskovia steals every scene in which she appears. In the 1920s, Gert had been a silent film actress and a cabaret performer -- she would have fit right in with the "divine decadence" of the Kit Kat Kub in Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972). Although Coup de Grâce has a strong final scene, the slackness of the narrative thread in the film deprives it of some of its impact. Still, good performances, an effective recreation of the historical period,  and the impressive black and white cinematography by Igor Luther make it worth seeing.

Filmstruck Criterion Channel

Diplomacy (Volker Schlöndorff, 2014)

The enormity of some crimes against humanity so swamps the imagination that it's often more effective to try to comprehend their analogs: crimes against art. The viciousness of ISIS, for example, made itself manifest in the threat to the archaeological treasures of Palmyra. The Taliban received perhaps as much international condemnation for its destruction of the Buddhist statues of Bamiyan as for any of its murderous repression of human beings. And Hitler's threat to destroy the city of Paris rather than let it fall into the hands of the liberating Allies stands as a kind of symbol of the deep-rooted evil that manifested itself in the Holocaust. It inspired the 1966 film Is Paris Burning? (René Clement), which had an all-star international cast, but Volker Schlöndorff's Diplomacy tells the same story more compactly and effectively. It also does it without relying on star-power: Few Americans will be familiar with the work of the two French actors, André Dussollier and Niels Arestrup, who face off in the film. Arestrup plays General von Choltitz, the commander of German troops in Paris who was tasked with carrying out Hitler's orders to obliterate such monuments as Notre Dame, the Louvre, and the Eiffel Tower, and to blow up the bridges on the Seine, damming the river and flooding the crowded low-lying areas of the city. The film opens with Choltitz and his officers reviewing the plans for the city's destruction in his suite at the Hotel Meurice. After the officers leave, there is a blackout caused by the shelling of the power plants by the approaching Allies, and when the lights come up again, Choltitz discovers that he is not alone: The Swedish diplomat Raoul Nordling (Dussollier) has somehow appeared in his room. Nordling, it turns out, has used a secret passage into the hotel that was built for Napoleon III to make clandestine visits to his mistress. He has also witnessed the plans for the obliteration of a city he loves, and has come to persuade Choltitz to defy the Führer. The touch of melodrama in this "theatrical" entrance betrays Diplomacy's origins in a play by Cyril Gely, who collaborated with Schlöndorff on the screenplay. What ensues is a dialogue-heavy debate, somewhat "opened up" with scenes of German soldiers preparing the explosives and battling with the French resistance. The end is, of course, a foregone conclusion: We know Paris survives. But Schlöndorff and his two lead actors manage to create suspense through the give-and-take of their debate, during which we learn that Choltitz's family is under threat of death if he refuses Hitler's orders. Diplomacy suffers only a little from its touches of staginess, thanks to intelligent dialogue and performances.

Swann in Love (Volker Schlöndorff, 1984)

I certainly don't think that Proust's In Search of Lost Time couldn't, or shouldn't, be adapted to another medium: a well-produced miniseries might well do the trick. But for all the talent involved in this adaptation of the "Swann in Love" section of Swann's Way, the return on investment is slight: an opulent trifle, a pretty picture of the Belle Époque. The most significant contributions to the film are made by its production designer, Jacques Saulnier, and its cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, who keep the eye ravished even while the mind feels hunger pangs. There are some remarkable performances that make you feel that at least Proust has been read, including Fanny Ardant's Duchesse de Guermantes, Marie-Christine Barrault's wonderfully alive and vulgar Mme. Verdurin, and especially Alain Delon's Baron de Charlus. Yes, Proust's Charlus is fat where Delon is lean, but Delon's dissipated beauty -- he's like the picture of Dorian Gray when it had just begun to reflect its subject's debauchery -- and his sly appreciation of the Guermantes footmen give us something of the essential Charlus. I have a sense that Swann should be a good deal less handsome than Jeremy Irons and that Odette was not quite as sex-kittenish as Ornella Muti, but they move through their roles well even if their voices have been dubbed by French actors. (The dubbing is most noticeable in Irons's case, since his purring lisp has become so familiar over the years.) The screenplay, by Peter Brook, Jean-Claude Carrière, Marie-Hélène Estienne, and Schlöndorff, plucks scenes from here and there in the Search, not confined to the titular section, but fails to put it all together in a satisfying whole. If ever a case could be made for a voice-over narrator, reflecting Proust's own Narrator, I would think it would be here.

The Tin Drum (Volker Schlöndorff, 1979)

I've never read Günter Grass's novel, in part because satiric grotesquerie isn't to my taste. (I'm one of the few people I know who hated A Confederacy of Dunces.)  But I gave the film version a second look (I watched it once while writing my Oscar book) because it came around on TCM and I thought maybe my indifference to it on the first viewing might have changed. It did, after all, win not only the Cannes Palme d'Or but also the foreign film Oscar. It's still true that 11-year-old David Bennent gives an astonishing performance as Oskar, who has consciously chosen to remain a 3-year-old for the rest of his life. I still find some of the scenes in which Oskar makes love to Maria (Katharina Thalbach) are queasy-making, with Bennent and 24-year-old Thalbach going through the required, if discreetly filmed, motions. And I still find the acting in the film overstated and the thematic coherence of the story wobbly. This time I was able to appreciate some of the comic sequences more fully, such as the one in which Oskar sabotages a Nazi rally by playing a waltz rhythm on his drum, confusing the brass band and making the participants dance with one another. But as a fable about German history, which Grass's novel is said to be, the movie lacks focus.