Director's Portrait:
Margarethe von Trotta - Between the Private and the Political
Margarethe von Trotta
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Margarethe von Trotta was born in Berlin in 1942, the daughter of a Baltic Russian emigrant, Elisabeth von Trotta, and the German painter Alfred Roloff. She lived in Berlin for only a few years, completing her school graduation in Dusseldorf and finally moving to Paris in 1960. There she graduated from her own school of vision - in the Cinémathèque Française and in the streets of Paris, where the filmmakers of the Nouvelle Vague were shooting in every nook and cranny. A private school of acting in Munich was followed by theatre performances and work for over 30 cinema and television films, including three works by both Fassbinder and Achternbusch. This was one of von Trotta's many facets. When she met her future husband Volker Schlöndorff, she began to work as a co-author (Der plötzliche Reichtum der armen Leute von Kombach, 1970; Strohfeuer, 1972), as a director's assistant (Die Moral der Ruth Halbfass, 1971) and finally as a co-director The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum, 1975). The determination to direct films on her own at some later date, which developed and matured over the years, finally came to fruition in 1977. And in the first film which she directed alone, The Second Awakening of Christa Klages (Das zweite Erwachen der Christa Klages), the basic foundation for all her future work is already laid; the complete, fertile ground for von Trotta's work. After what was perhaps the most private of all her films, Sisters, or The Balance of Happiness (Schwestern oder die Balance des Glücks, 1979), she made her international breakthrough with the vivid portrait of Ensslin, The German Sisters (Die bleierne Zeit, 1981). This was followed by Friends and Husbands (Heller Wahn, 1983), Rosa Luxembourg (1986) and three works made in Italy. She opened the Berlinale in 1995 with the dramatic German-German love story, Das Versprechen, and between 1997 and 2000 Margarethe von Trotta made four television films, the last of which was the tetralogy Jahrestage (ARD).
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"First I had to create my own prison before I was able to comprehend what had happened to me." Margarethe von Trotta's first piece of independent direction, The Second Awakening of Christa Klages (Das zweite Erwachen der Christa Klages), begins with this sentence, which ultimately contains the entire programme of her films. All her works describe different attempts to escape from the prisons of life; they are about wanting to break out, about fighting one's way to freedom, escaping from a state of standstill.
It is not by chance that she names Bergman, Hitchcock and the French directors of the 60s as the most important, lasting influences on her work. Breaking through narrowing limitations, both socially imposed regulations and barriers within a person's soul - this is the subject matter of stories by this valiant and committed author filmmaker. The private and the political; the shaping of the individual by social connotations, the shaping of roles, in particular those of women, within our modern socialisation. And the shedding of this role by means of so-called "feminist", or rather: of emancipatory or even of completely individual female thought and feelings. These are subjects in Margarethe von Trotta's work. Over the years - her time as a réalisateur, as an auteur encompasses the years 1977 to 2000 -, from one film to the next, and these are now 14 in number, the subjects become more refined; more precise and subtle in their outlines, more mature and complex in their themes.
It would be wrong to categorise Margarethe von Trotta, who certainly played a pioneer role in the public process of women's emancipation during the 70s, as a feminist, woman filmmaker, at the same time viewing her films - in which she often portrays politically motivated women - as purely political works. "For me the universal and the individual have always been very close together. At that time the women's movement helped me to realise that I was not alone." Her so-called political films, that is The German Sisters (Die bleierne Zeit), Rosa Luxemburg, Zeit des Zorns and The Promise (Das Versprechen), concern private and political aspects to an equal extent, so that personal story and history become one, impossible to separate. And even in her more private, personal stories, that is Sisters, or The Balance of Happiness (Schwestern oder die Balance des Glücks), Friends and Husbands (Heller Wahn), Fearing and Loving (Fürchten und Lieben) and L'Africana (Die Rückkehr), the overriding social motif is also an essential note; the fact of social integration into a whole. Margarethe von Trotta, the former actress, a maker of author films for almost the past twenty-five years; after leaving Munich she lived in Rome from 1987 to 1994, and since then her permanent address has been in Paris. A wanderer between worlds in Schubert's sense, one of the homeless: "As a stranger I came to you, as a stranger I leave". This notion runs through her life like a leitmotif. For her television films - Winterkind, Dunkle Tage, Jahrestage - she came to Germany and filmed here. But she is still - and this she shares with names like Wenders, Herzog, Fassbinder and Schlöndorff - regarded more highly abroad than in her home country.
"I am not alone in this. Hanna Schygulla lives in Paris today. Romy Schneider came here, too. There is something about the Germans. There is a history to it all, you just have to put up with it." There are von Trotta retrospectives in Cuba and San Francisco, in Peru and Uruguay, in Hungary and in Portugal. It is only in Germany that the first complete retrospective has yet to take place.
Abroad - particularly at A-festivals like Cannes and Venice - she is internationally acclaimed, receives awards (Golden Lion for The German Sisters) and positive criticism. Particularly in Italy and France, if you mention her name, the response is an admiring "La Trotta". At the same time, she is probably the only woman in her profession to enjoy this lasting reputation.
The film journalist Thilo Wydra has recently published the book "Margarethe von Trotta - Filmen, um zu überleben" (Filming to Survive) (Henschel Verlag, Berlin 2000, 288 pages, 48,- DM)