The second awakening of Christa Klages

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Movie
Original title The second awakening of Christa Klages
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1978
length 93 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Margarethe von Trotta
script Margarethe von Trotta
Luisa Francia
production Gunther Witte
music Klaus Doldinger
camera Franz Rath
cut Annette Dorn
occupation

The Second Awakening of Christa Klages is a German women's film by Margarethe von Trotta from 1978.

action

Educator Christa Klages and her friends Werner and Wolfgang raid a bank, with Christa holding the young bank employee Lena Seidlhofer hostage during the attack. Christa and Werner manage to escape, Wolfgang is arrested. The duo goes to Pastor Hans Grawe, who is known to Wolfgang, in a small town. He gives them shelter for the night. By chance he learns that both of them are on the run. Christa and Werner explain to him that they need the money from the robbery to maintain Christa's children's facility. Grawe should declare it as a donation and transfer it to the facility, but refuses.

Although Werner suggests separating, Christa remains by his side. Together they look for Christa's best friend Ingrid, who lives with a Bundeswehr officer. He is only at home on weekends. Ingrid wants a child, but her husband wants to be promoted first. At night Christa hears Ingrid screaming, which she attributes to their relationship. Ingrid brings the bank robbery to the children's facility for Christa, but the carers refuse the money. For the first time, Christa wonders why she carried out the bank robbery in the first place, especially since she has to live apart from her little daughter Mischa during the escape. Waiting in front of the children's facility, she sees Lena Seidlhofer and learns that she has been looking for her for some time. Before Ingrid, Lena later justified her search by saying that the bank's insurance company only pays the bank once it has identified the perpetrator.

After an attempted car theft, Werner flees from the police and is shot. Christa is shocked. Through the mediation of Hans Grawe and with the help of Ingrid, she flees to Portugal , where she works on a cooperative run by Grawe's brother. She feels at home in Portugal, where she is also visited by Ingrid after several months. Ingrid does the distance to her husband good and her nocturnal screams subside. Both women have to leave the cooperative, however, because rumors of the bank robbery and the unusual relationship between the two women are making the rounds. Christa leaves much of the stolen money in Portugal. In Germany she takes a room and falls into melancholy. She wants to take her own life, but decides to live: She seeks out her daughter Mischa and moves in with her and Ingrid, who has since separated from her husband. The children's facility, which has since had to give way to a sex shop, can also be accommodated in your four walls. One day when the children are too loud, the police appear. The investigators recognize Christa, who is arrested shortly afterwards. When compared with Lena, who was looking for Christa up to then, the bank clerk denies that Christa is the one she was looking for. She looks at her for a long time and Christa can hardly hide her surprise.

production

After Katharina Blum's lost honor , which she directed with Volker Schlöndorff , The Second Life of Christa Klages became Margarethe von Trotta's first independent directorial work. The plot is based freely on the real case of the Munich kindergarten teacher Margit Czenki , who had robbed a bank with three accomplices in 1971. The film was shot from June 27 to August 4, 1977 in Munich and the surrounding area, Kirchheim unter Teck and in Portugal. Gerlind Gies created the costumes, Toni Lüdi designed the film .

The film premiered on February 24, 1978 as part of the International Forum for Young Cinema at the 1978 Berlinale . It was shown in German cinemas on April 14, 1978 and was shown for the first time on German television on October 15, 1980 on ARD.

criticism

For film-dienst , The Second Life of Christa Klages was a “film that was critical of society, cleverly combining action and reflection”. It is a "thought-provoking film about right and wrong, social norms and the debate on emancipation in the 1970s." Die Zeit called the film a "equally effective and ultimately very naive game of robbers and gendarmes" and a "friendly, too friendly left-wing fairy tale that really doesn't hurt anyone ”. What Margarethe von Trotta “captures in German reality between resigned utopia, fear of experience and, above all in her female figures, defiant, longing refusals, has seldom been seen so intelligently, so precisely”, stated Der Spiegel .

Awards

At the 1978 Berlinale, the film won the Interfilm Award - Otto Dibelius Prize (Forum). At the German Film Awards he won the silver film for the best full-length feature film and the gold film for the best performance (Tina Engel).

The Second Awakening of Christa Klages was nominated for a Gold Hugo for Best Feature Film at the 1978 Chicago International Film Festival . The German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) awarded the film the rating “valuable”.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Hans-Christoph Blumenberg: The second awakening of Christa Klages . In: Die Zeit , April 21, 1978.
  2. ↑ suction. Bank lady . In: Der Spiegel , No. 2, 1978, pp. 72-73.
  3. ↑ The second awakening of Christa Klages. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Limmer: Pictures from Reality . In: Der Spiegel , No. 10, 1978, p. 217.
  5. ↑ The second awakening of Christa Klages on fbw-filmbwertung.com