Hanna Schygulla
June 9–30, 2005

Only two German actresses have captured the sustained imagination and enthusiasm of the American filmgoing audience: Marlene Dietrich, who appeared only once in a German film before developing her career in America, and Hanna Schygulla, who chose to stay in Europe, where her career has flourished for more than three decades. Nurtured by the writer-director Rainer Werner Fassbinder—she appears in eighteen of his films—Schygulla continued, after Fassbinder’s death, to work with such major filmmakers as Marco Ferreri, Jean-Luc Godard, Margarethe von Trotta, and Andrzej Wajda. Schygulla’s performances are so unmannered that she elevates the films in which she stars, no matter how artificial, to the level of truth. This eleven-film retrospective features a special appearance by the great actress on June 9, during which she will perform songs and speak about her remarkable career.

Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film and Media. Special thanks to Juliane Lorenz, Fassbinder Foundation, and Juliane Wanckel, Goethe-Institut, New York; and Bioskop, Munich, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, New York, Goethe-Institut, Berlin, Kino International, New York, and Wellspring Media, New York, for the loan of prints.

Schygulla on Stage. A conversation and musical performance by one of cinema’s great actresses. Music composed by Jean Marie Senia, who will accompany Schygulla on piano. Preceded by the U.S. premiere of Protocoles de rêves (Protocols of Dreams, 2005), directed by Hanna Schygulla and Jacques Séchaud. 45 min. Program 80 min.
Thursday, June 9, 8:00. T1

Eine Liebe in Deutschland (A Love in Germany). 1983. West Germany/France. Directed by Andrzej Wajda. Screenplay by Boleslaw Michalek, Agnieszka Holland, Wajda, based on the novel by Rolf Hochhuth. With Hanna Schygulla, Marie-Christine Barrault, Armin Mueller-Stahl. The story of the ill-fated love between the wife of an absent soldier and a Polish prisoner of war during World War II. Critic Vincent Canby called Schygulla’s performance “triumphant, one that ranks with the best of her work with Fassbinder….” In German, English subtitles. 107 min.
Friday, June 10, 6:00; Wednesday, June 22, 8:30. T1

Die Ehe der Maria Braun (The Marriage of Maria Braun). 1979. West Germany. Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Screenplay by Peter Märthesheimer, Pea Fröhlich, Fassbinder. With Hanna Schygulla, Ivan Desny. In a boisterous film that played commercially for more than a year in New York, Fassbinder imagines Schygulla as Mother Germany, from the end of World War II through the Economic Miracle of the 1950s—resourceful, pragmatic, and a winner even in defeat. In German, English subtitles. 120 min.
Friday, June 10, 8:15; Wednesday, June 15, 6:00. T1

Heller Wahn (Sheer Madness). 1985. West Germany/France. Written and directed by Margarethe von Trotta. With Hanna Schygulla, Angela Winkler, Peter Striebeck. Photographed by Michael Ballhaus in both Provence and Egypt, Sheer Madness is von Trotta’s recounting of a friendship between two women, a professor and her student, that becomes intense and threatening to those around them. In German, English subtitles. 105 min.
Saturday, June 11, 2:00. T1

Die Bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant). 1972. West Germany. Written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With Katrin Schaake, Gisela Fackelday, Hanna Schygulla. Petra, a fashion designer with a masochistic maid, a feisty daughter, and a critical mother, falls in love with Karin—or so she thinks—and makes her a famous model. But Karin has other things in mind, including Petra’s husband. In German, English subtitles. 124 min.
Saturday, June 11, 4:15. T1

Katzelmacher. 1969. Germany. Written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With Hanna Schygulla, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Irm Hermann. Fassbinder's second
feature is set in the Munich suburbs. Jorgos, a Greek guest-worker in Germany, rents a room in Elisabeth's house around which many disaffected young people pass time. They resent Jorgos's foreignness and refer to him as a "katzelmacher" or "cat-screwer." But Jorgos does manage to make a date with a German girl. In German, English subtitles. 88 min.
Saturday, June 11, 6:45. T1

La Nuit de Varennes. 1983. France/Italy. Directed by Ettore Scola. Screenplay by Sergio Amidei, Scola. With Marcello Mastroianni, Hanna Schygulla, Harvey Keitel. On June 20, 1791, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette fled from the Tuilleries to Varennes. According to Scola, their entourage included Casanova, Thomas Paine, and the queen’s indomitable lady-in-waiting, played by Schygulla with an irresistible circumspection. In French, English subtitles. 133 min.
Saturday, June 11, 8:45. T1

Lili Marleen. 1981. West Germany. Written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With Hanna Schygulla, Mel Ferrer, Christine Kaufmann. In Fassbinder’s only film set during the Third Reich, Schygulla, a fine singer, plays an emotional chanteuse who falls in love with her Jewish accompanist and becomes a recording star in Nazi Germany by performing “Lili Marleen,” the song that Goebbels derided and Hitler loved. 120 min.
Sunday, June 12, 2:00; Wednesday, June 22, 6:00. T1

Effi Briest. 1974. West Germany. Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Screenplay by Fassbinder, based on the novel by Theodor Fontane. With Hanna Schygulla, Wolfgang Schenk, Ulli Lommel. With great subtlety Schygulla plays Effi Briest, a figure in German literature comparable to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Effi marries an older baron and moves to a small community where she unwisely allows a young bachelor to court her. In German, English subtitles. 140 min.
Sunday, June 12, 4:30; Wednesday, June 15, 8:15. T1

Storia di Piera (The Story of Piera). 1983. Italy. Directed by Marco Ferreri. Screenplay by Piera Degli Esposti, Dacia Maraini, Ferreri. With Isabelle Huppert, Hanna Schygulla, Marcello Mastroianni. In this romantic, excessive, and eminently compelling film, an exuberant, strange woman seeks carnal adventures with the tacit understanding of her husband, a man with incestuous desires. Schygulla won the Best Actress award at the 1984 Cannes Festival. In Italian, no English subtitles. 106 min.
Monday, June 13, 6:00. T1

Die Fälschung (Circle of Deceit). 1981. France/West Germany. Directed by Volker Schlöndorff. Screenplay by Schlöndorff, Jean-Claude Carrière, Margarethe von Trotta, Kai Hermann. With Bruno Ganz, Hanna Schygulla, Jean Carmet. Schlöndorff shot this film in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war. Fleeing an unhappy marriage, a German journalist has an affair with a former acquaintance, now a widow of some wealth, who, as played by tough-as-nails Schygulla, may be the film’s imperturbable moral center. In German, English subtitles. 108 min.
Sunday, June 26, 5:00. T1

Werckmeister Harmoniak (Werckmeister Harmonies). 2000. Hungary/France/Germany/Italy/Switzerland. Directed by Bela Tarr. Screenplay by Tarr, Laszlo Krasznahorkai. With Lars Rudolph, Peter Fitz, Hanna Schygulla. A traveling circus, whose only attraction is a whale carcass, comes to a small town. Meanwhile, the formidable Aunt Trude works with the police to establish a political party. Rebellion, and perhaps an apocalypse, is in the frigid air. In Hungarian, English subtitles. 145 min.
Thursday, June 30, 6:00. T2

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