Film Archive

Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, The (verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum, Die)

Katharina Blum - young, attractive, bright, sensitive - falls in love at a carnival party with a young radical lawbreaker on the run from the police. Her brief association with a hunted man brings her under police surveillance and makes her the cruelly exploited subject of cheap newspaper sensationalism. Paraded across the front pages of a big-city daily newspaper, portrayed as a whore, an atheist, a Communist sympathizer, she becomes the target of anonymous phone calls and letters, sexual advances and threats. Out of an anger so remorseless and a violation of integrity so profound that it overcomes even her will to survive, she shoots the ovending journalist.

Volker Schloendorff was born in Wiesbaden in 1939. He made his debut as a film director in 1965 with Young Toerless. A selection of his films includes: Baal (1970), The Sudden Wealth of the Poor People of Kombach (1971), The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975, co-directed with Margarethe von Trotta), Fangschuss (1976), Germany in Autumn (1976, together with Stefan Aust, Alexander Kluge, et al), Circle of Deceit (1981), Swann in Love (1983), Death of a Salesman (1985), A Gathering of Old Men (1987), The Handmaid's Tale (1990), Voyager (1990), The Ogre (1996), Palmetto (1998), The Legends of Rita (1999), Ein Produzent hat Seele oder er hat keine (documentary, 2001), Ten Minutes Older: The Cello (2002), The Ninth Day (2004), Strike (2006), and Ulzhan (2007). In 1979, his film The Tin Drum was the first film by a German director to be awarded a Golden Palm in Cannes. A year later, it was the first German film to be awarded an OSCAR for Best Foreign Language Film.
 
Margarethe von Trotta ranks among the most important female directors in German cinema since the 1970s, during which time she also made a name for herself as an actress. Today primarily active as a screenwriter and director, her most well-known films include: The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum, 1975, in co-direction with Volker Schloendorff), The Second Awakening of Christa Klages (Das zweite Erwachen der Christa Klages, 1977), Sisters or the Balance of Happiness (Schwestern oder Die Balance des Gluecks, 1979), Marianne and Juliane (Die Bleierne Zeit, 1981), Sheer Madness (Heller Wahn, 1983), Rosa Luxemburg (1985), The African Woman (Die Rueckkehr, 1990), The Long Silence (Il Lungo Silenzio, 1993), The Promise (Das Versprechen, 1994), Rosenstrasse (2003), I Am the Other Woman (Ich bin die Andere, 2006), among others.
 

Genre Drama
Category Feature Film Cinema
Year of Production 1975
Director Volker Schloendorff, Margarethe von Trotta
Screenplay Volker Schloendorff, Margarethe von Trotta
Director of Photography Jost Vacano
Editor Peter Przygodda
Music by Hans Werner Henze
Producers Willi Benninger, Eberhard Junkersdorf
Production Company Bioskop Film/Munich, in co-production with Paramount-Orion Pictures/Munich, WDR/Cologne
Principal Cast Mario Adorf, Heinz Bennent, Dieter Laser, Angela Winkler
Length 106 min, 2,916 m
Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.85
Dubbed Versions Italian
Original Version German
Subtitled Versions English, Spanish
Sound Technology Dolby A
Festival Screenings San Sebastian 2002 (Retrospective), Locarno 2004
With backing from German Federal Film Board (FFA)
German Distributor UIP United International Pictures/Frankfurt

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