Tag Archives: Hanna Schygulla

Heller Wahn / Sheer Madness (1983) Margarethe von Trotta, Hanna Schygulla, Angela Winkler, Peter Striebeck, Drama

Heller Wahn (Margarethe von Trotta, 1983)
Olga and Ruth become friends. Olga is independent, separated from her husband, living with an immigrant pianist, and teaching feminist literature. Ruth is withdrawn, a painter, possibly mentally ill. Ruth dreams in black and white, sometimes of her suicide. Olga lectures on a 19th-century writer, von Günderrode, a suicide after the breakup of her intense friendship with Bettina Brentano. Ruth’s husband Franz encourages the women’s friendship, then, as Olga draws Ruth out and the friendship deepens, he becomes jealous. After the women travel to Egypt, Franz has a tirade. Ruth seems crushed between her husband and her friend, and how she responds is the film’s climax.
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Die Niklashauser Fart / The Niklashausen Journey (1970) Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Michael Fengler

Die Niklashauser Fart (1970)
Can a small group of people start a proletarian revolution, asks the “Black Monk” in a leather jacket. The medieval shepherd, Hans Boehm, claims to have been called by the Virgin Mary to create a revolt against the church and the landowners. The “Black Monk” suggests that he would have more success if he dressed up Johanna and had her appear as the Virgin Mary.
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