Thomas Elsaesser once described Werner Schroeter as
“the German cinema's greatest marginal filmmaker.” (1)
Indeed, beginning his fimmaking career in the 1960s, Schroeter has been
an important and influential proponent of the New German Cinema, although
his personal eccentricities and refusal to use conventional narrative tools
in his films have rendered his work somewhat obscure and less marketable
than some of his more famous contemporaries such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder,
Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog and Volker Schlöndorff. In 1979, Schroeter's
friend and colleague, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, speculated upon the place
Schroeter and his films might some day hold for the history of cinema:
Werner Schroeter will one day have a place in the history of film
that I would describe in literature as somewhere between Novalis,
Lautréamont, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline; he was an 'underground'
director for ten years, and they didn't want to let him slip out of
this role. Werner Schroeter's grand cinematic scheme of the world
was confined, repressed, and at the same time ruthlessly exploited.
His films were given the convenient label of 'underground', which
transforms them in a flash into beautiful but exotic plants that bloomed
so unusually and so far away that basically one couldn't be bothered
with them, and therefore wasn't supposed to bother with them. And
that's precisely as wrong as it is stupid. For Werner Schroeter's
films are not far away; they're beautiful but not exotic. On the contrary.
(2)
Born at the very end of the Second World War in Germany, Werner Schroeter
spent most of his childhood between Bielfield and Heidelberg. His education
was interrupted intermittently by periods of international travel during
which time he occasionally attended German schools in foreign countries,
finally completing his high school education in Heidelberg. One can imagine
that these periods of international travel may have inspired the many foreign
locations he later chose for his films: Naples and Palermo in Italy, Paris,
Nancy and Marseille in France, Mexico, Portugal, Lebanon, The Philippines
and the Mojave desert in the USA. His command of foreign languages—French,
English, Italian—too might well have been made possible less through
his education than by his childhood travels of the world. After leaving
school, Schroeter enrolled at the University of Mannheim to study Psychology,
but completed only three semesters. After abandoning his university studies,
Schroeter worked intermittently as a freelance journalist before enrolling
at the Film and Television School in Munich where he remained for only a
few weeks.
In late 1967, after having begun to make short experimental
8mm films, Schroeter attended the experimental film festival in Knokke,
Belgium where he was able to view a number of films of the New York Underground,
exposing him not only to the numerous aesthetic possibilities of experimental
cinema, but to the possibilities of independent film production, which would
enable him to remain relatively free from the institutional constraints
of the commercial film industry. It was in Knokke that Schroeter also became
acquainted with another German experimental filmmaker, Rosa von Praunheim,
with whom he worked in various capacities on a number of films. Schroeter
and von Praunheim co-directed Grotesk-Burlesk-Pittoresk (1968) and
Schroeter acted in von Praunheim's short film Sisters of the Revolution
(1969). In 1968 Schroeter acquired a 16mm camera with which he made his
first feature-length film Eika Katappa (1969), a film that won him
the Josef von Sternberg prize at the Manheim International Film Festival
and effectively launched his filmmaking career. In the early 1970s, Schroeter
began to pursue his other passions in theatre and opera and has ever since
maintained prolific parallel careers as director of film, theatre and opera.
(3)
Schroeter's films can be divided roughly into three historical phases, which
also coincide roughly with changes in format from 8mm to 16mm and then to
35mm. The first phase comprises the 8mm films all made between 1967-1968.
Schroeter's first 16mm films, Aggressionen, Neurasia, Argila
(all 1968) are clearly an extension of his earlier 8mm experiments and form
something of a transitional phase. Schroeter's concerns and cinematic techniques
during this first phase are largely minimal and experimental. A series of
8mm films dedicated to the opera singer Maria Callas, whom Schroeter greatly
admired since being introduced to her music by his mother as a child, consist
largely of still photographs of the singer. In these films, Schroeter displays
a fascination for Callas' face and her gestures through a rhythmic montage
of still photographic images. At one point in Callas Walking Lucia (1968),
Schroeter rapidly montages a series of photographs of Callas in the role
of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor in order to animate her dramatic
cry. Even in these rather crudely and primitively constructed films, Schroeter
displays a deep interest in opera, performance and gesture, concerns that
he will return to time and again throughout his career.
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Der
Tod der Maria Malibran
|
Schroeter's second phase begins with his first feature
Eika Katappa and includes a number of films made in co-production
with the Second German Television station ZDF. During this phase Schroeter
moves away from the largely experimental techniques employed during the
first phase to produce films with more complex thematic concerns and a more
developed sense of characterisation, although contained within particularly
fragmentary and episodic narrative structures. These films are composed
of disconnected narrative fragments that often have little if any connection
with one another. Sebastian Feldmann describes the structure of Schroeter's
last 16mm film Flocons d'or (1973-76) with the term Erzählflöckchen,
or 'little narrative flakes', a term that aptly described the structure
of most of the films of this period. (4) In these films,
Schroeter often borrows his themes from literature, opera, theatre, legends
and fairytales. They contain recurring scenes of love, death and longing
most well expressed by the German word Sehnsucht, a word that refers
to an intense longing or desire for something or someone that remains unattainable
or intangible. It is this concept that links Schroeter to the traditions
of German Romanticism. It would be a mistake, however, to simply label Schroeter
a 'neo-romantic', for what Schroeter does with this romantic legacy is to
deconstruct it into fragments; he quotes and interprets these fragments
for the late twentieth century. It seems to me that rather than simply returning
nostalgically to the ideas and ideals of a past age, Schroeter captures
and rescues mere fragments of the dreams and hopes of the past as he finds
them in a state of irreparable decay: his work is one of an allegorist.
Contrary to the ideals of Romanticism, Schroeter does not maintain a distinction
between high art and popular culture but attempts to break down these distinctions,
to render them superfluous. Thus, in Eika Katappa for example, Schroeter
has an ageing pop singer die as dramatically on the side of a country road
as he would direct a great Diva to perform one of opera's great death scenes
on stage. In another film of this period, Der Tod der Maria Malibran
(1971), Schroeter depicts the death of the nineteenth century mezzo-soprano
Maria Malibran. Regular Schroeter performer and collaborator Magdalena Montezuma
plays Malibran, briefly sketching the singer's death in a few, melodramatic
gestures. However, Schroeter does not concentrate upon every detail of the
death, nor does he attempt to recreate it 'as it really was', rather, he
seems to dehistoricise the event, even changing the location of her death
on stage from Manchester to 'an evening with Robert Schuhmann and Franz
Liszt' in Berlin indicated by an intertitle in the film. For Schroeter,
the historical place of death is not what is important, but rather, through
Malibran he shows us a life that has been exhausted, consumed by its own
intensity as she quite literally 'sings herself to death.' The viewer comes
away with the impression that for Schroeter, Malibran could have died anywhere,
as long as she was on stage when it happened! Malibran prefigures some of
the other highly passionate but ultimately mortal figures who appear in
later films including Der Rosenkönig (1984-6), Malina
(1990) and the various ageing divas who appear in his documentary Poussières
d'amour (1996).
In Der Bomberpilot (1970) Schroeter displays a similar
disrespect for historical 'truth' in his treatment of post Second World
War Germany. In this film he tells the stories of three fictional women
who had performed in Nazi revues during the war. Rather than attempting
an 'authentic' recreation of historical post-war Germany, Schroeter uses
these three figures to provide the viewer with a sense of the disorder,
crisis and repression that beset the German population after the war and
resulted, according to Margarete and Thomas Mitscherlich in a popular forgetfulness
regarding the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. (5)
Schroeter does this by attributing to these women a kind of 'false' memory
regarding the recent past and through the somewhat 'faulty' gestures they
perform while recreating their revue show performance. The viewer is lead
to question how these three somewhat clumsy individuals could possibly have
conformed to the order, discipline and regularity that characterised the
products of the Nazi culture industry, and we are by extension also asked
to question 'official' versions of that history.
Schroeter's films in general, but particularly the films of this pivotal
second phase, present a challenge to the fixed, hierarchical status of art
and culture in Western society; one of his great achievements is to bring
the very notion of such a hierarchy into question. This is not to say that
his attitude toward 'high' art is dismissive, on the contrary. Ulrike Sieglohr
has argued that although “Schroeter challenges certain aspects of canonical
art, he does not reject 'high' art as such. His approach is always ambiguous,
since he celebrates as much as he parodies.” (6) Indeed,
ambiguity is a constant trait of Schroeter's films, which allows for a degree
of openness that tends either to engage or frustrate viewers depending on
their tastes. Schroeter's films, particularly of his second phase, require
us, as viewers, to engage in a complex process of interpretation. In fact,
it is upon this very notion of ambiguity that any interpretation of Schroeter's
work must hinge, for nothing in Schroeter's cinema is simple. His work is
a testament to the very possibility of the coexistence of both celebration
and parody, of both 'high' and 'low.' As in Walter Benjamin's theory of
allegory, in the films of Werner Schroeter everything holds within it the
possibility of referring to something else. Schroeter's films always contain
multiple levels of meaning.
In 1978, Schroeter moved into the realm of the 35mm feature film with Regno
di Napoli. This third phase is comprised of two strands: one being the
fiction films, and the other the collage-like documentaries, or 'essay'
films. With the fiction films of this phase, Schroeter begins to develop
much more complex narrative techniques and strategies and tends to move
away from the largely episodic structures that dominate the second phase.
As a result, distribution of his films becomes much more viable and his
films begin to reach a much wider audience. The first of these, Regno
di Napoli is constructed as a family chronicle and is played out in
and around a poor neighbourhood in the southern Italian city of Naples between
the years of 1943 and 1972. It focuses upon brother and sister Massimo and
Vittoria who, as their names imply (meaning 'the great' and 'victory) become
allegorical but ironic figures in the films. Allegorical because they embody
wider social phenomena such as the conflict between politics and religion
within the confines of the domestic sphere. Ironic because, despite the
resilience these children demonstrate as they pass through life from childhood
to adulthood, they are ultimately unable to rise very far out of the misery
into which they are born in post-war Italy: perhaps a comment on Italy itself.
Massimo and Vittoria become the material and mortal emblems of the eternal
struggle against poverty. By adopting a style clearly influenced by Italian
Neo-Realism, Schroeter cleverly uses these individual stories to parallel
and comment upon wider historical events as they occur in Italy over the
period of the film. Schroeter makes use of a voice-over chronicler, who
comments upon the wider historical context at two-yearly intervals. The
chronicler begins with an authoritative and 'objective' attitude but, perhaps
paralleling the processes of the viewer, gradually becomes involved in this
family's story and moves from recounting mere historical 'facts' to becoming
interested in the many 'wisps of narrative' that make up the history of
any country. For the first time in his filmmaking career, Schroeter adopts
a chronological narrative structure, more easily digestible by a wider audience,
but without ever abandoning his very idiosyncratic artistic vision which
is displaced into the highly stylised and allegorical characterisation of
minor characters such as Pupetta (doll), the particularly witch-like, heavily
made-up factory owner who attempts to drive the young Vittoria into prostitution,
or Palumbo the wealthy lecherous mamma's boy and Christian Democrat who
tries to lure young boys into his parlour with his giant fish tank. Schroeter
won the 1979 German Film Prize for best direction for this remarkable film.
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Fassbinder's
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
|
With his next film, Palermo oder Wolfsburg (1980) Schroeter again
returns to southern Italy. This film begins in the town of Palermo, Sicily
where the film's central figure, Nicola, is a young victim of Sicily's high
rate of unemployment. He decides to leave Palermo for Wolfsburg in search
of employment. He joins the many other men from places like Italy, Greece
and Turkey who became Germany's large force of Guestworkers during the 1960s
and 1970s. Along with Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1973)
and Helma Sanders-Brahms' Shirin's Wedding (1976), Schroeter's film
becomes one of a handful of films to broach the subject of the difficulties
foreigners faced in their attempts to integrate into German society without
the support of the family and community structures they had left behind
in their home countries. Like Regno di Napoli, Palermo oder Wolfsburg
follows a chronological structure, but Schroeter's innovation in this
film is to divide the narrative into three distinct sections or acts, each
having their own particular style. These three acts function like three
episodes of a Passion play, a fact that is made more explicit by the images
of a Passion play, which are inserted at various key moments throughout
the film. The first episode takes place in Palermo. Nicola goes to visit
various friends and relatives to tell them of his decision to go to Germany,
and to receive their advice. In doing so he gathers together memories and
impressions that he will take with him to Germany. This episode is shot
and performed in a style reminiscent of Italian neo-realism. After the transitional
interlude of his rail journey, Nicola arrives in Germany. After his arrival
in Wolfsburg and following his initial disorientation, the owner of a Bar,
an Italian woman, helps Nicola to find work and a place to stay. Nicola
soon befriends a young German girl, but she uses him only to get back at
her boyfriend. Hurt and angry at being used, Nicola stabs the boyfriend
and one of his friends to death. This episode is filmed and performed with
the mix of stylised realism and melodrama familiar from such films as Fassbinder's
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. Nicola's trial comprises the entire final
episode of the film, which takes on a highly theatrical and disorienting
character. Nicola looks on silently as the rather bizarre courtroom antics
take place. While witnesses are being questioned, the judges pull faces
and slump on the bench, the mothers of the victims perform strange repetitive
gestures in the gallery, first they fight and then they kiss, while an interpreter
simultaneously and continuously translates the proceedings between German
and Sicilian. Faster montage sequences bring a disarray of memory-images
to bear upon the courtroom sequence in which the defence argues that Germany
and Sicily represent vastly different worlds that cannot be judged upon
the same criteria. The film ends leaving the case unresolved, but leaving
us with an image of an opening window through which to reflect upon the
cultural divides that separate the world at large. Palermo oder Wolfsburg
won the prestigious Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1980,
notably the first Golden Bear ever awarded to a German director.
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Tag
der Idioten
|
With Tag der Idioten (1982), Schroeter perhaps draws upon his brief
studies of psychology. The film centres around a passionate woman, Carole
(played by the well-known French actor Carole Bouquet) who feels alienated
and repressed by the highly institutionalised public and private spheres
of Western society. Unable to extract any kind of emotional response from
her reserved boyfriend, Carole seeks attention by falsely denouncing her
neighbours as terrorists. With this detail Schroeter briefly touches upon
the panic and paranoia that was brought about by the German government crackdown
on terrorism at its height during 1977 and Carole's subsequent institutionalisation
in a mental asylum can be seen as an allegory for a society wishing to suppress
radical activity of any sort. In Tag der Idioten Schroeter returns
to a less linear narrative structure, more reminiscent
of the episodic films of his second phase. He employs numerous hallucinatory
sequences in order to convey the protagonist's state of mind. Furthermore,
much of the film's meaning is delivered through Carole's body, facial expressions
and gestures rather than through dialogue, and the film's montage serves
to create spatial and temporal disorientation. Schroeter again won the German
Film Prize for best direction for this film.
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Der
Rosenkönig
|
Like Tag der Idioten, Der Rosenkönig is another of Schroeter's
fictional films that proceeds by way of a disjunctive array of image and
sound fragments, rather than as a fully-fledged narrative. Karsten Witte
has said of this film: “Instead of a story, there are fragments. Instead
of a narrative, this film is a 'camera-poem' for three bodies, three voices.”
(7) Schroeter creates a constellation of images around
the central figure of Albert (Mostèfa Djadjam), a gardener who is
obsessed with cultivating the perfect rose. But this obsession becomes displaced
when he captures a young man (Antonio Orlando) stealing the devotional offerings
from the small chapel on his property. Albert keeps the man detained in
his barn and comes every day to lovingly feed and tend him, all under the
watchful and disapproving eye of his mother (played by Magdalena Montezuma).
The film overflows with Christian references, and towards the end of the
film the young man, who comes to resemble both Christ and Saint Sebastian,
becomes a potent figure of homoeroticism, as Albert carefully grafts roses
onto his body, sacrificing him through the process of attempting to create
the romantic ideal of the beautiful perfected individual. This is the first
time that Schroeter has dealt at such length with the subject of homosexuality.
This was the last film Schroeter made with his long-time collaborator Magdalena
Montezuma, who died shortly after the film was completed. Her weak and failing
body brings an acute sense of mortality to the film.
To date, Schroeter has written or co-written most of his
feature films. Malina is an exception, being based on the novel by
the feminist Austrian author Ingeborg Bachmann and adapted for the screen
by Elfriede Jelenik. Starring the well-known French actor Isabelle Huppert,
the film centres upon a writer who finds herself unable to adequately express
herself. Schroeter uses powerful imagery of mirrors and fire to convey the
idea of an identity in disarray and crisis and creates a palpable sense
of suffocation through the repetition of scenes involving the protagonist
having to remind herself to breathe. “I must breath, I must breathe”,
she says to herself at various points throughout the film. The novel is
widely considered to be a modern classic of feminist literature. It is not
surprising therefore, that reception of this film among critics was polarised.
Feminists in particular complained that Schroeter had reduced a figure of
feminist emancipation to a mere stereotype of an intellectual woman suffering
a pathological disorder. (8) Much of this criticism fails,
however, to approach the film through its cinematic elements. Through Elfriede
Jelenik's screenplay, Schroeter does not attempt to simply transpose the
words on the page to the screen, but through camera, framing, editing and
performance engages in a cinematic interpretation of the novel. Malina
won the German Film Prize for best film in 1991.
Between 1990 and 2001, Schroeter made no feature films. During this time
he made two documentaries (to be discussed shortly) but dedicated most of
his time to directing theatre and opera. Deux (2001), once again
featuring Isabelle Huppert in the lead role, marks Schroeter's return to
feature filmmaking. The film was premiered at the 2002 Director's fortnight
at the Cannes Film Festival and to date has received some impassioned reviews
in the French press.
In addition to his feature films made during this third phase, Schroeter
has made a number of documentary films. Schroeter constructs these films
not as didactic or expository documentaries, but rather, as somewhat poetic
collages of images and sounds around a particular event or figure. The first
of these is La Répétition générale (1980),
a film originally commissioned by ZDF as a short report on the World Theatre
Festival in Nancy, France. Inspired by a number of the performers at the
festival, the film grew into a beautiful 90-minute essay film. In particular
he focuses upon the work of the German dancer Pina Bausch and her troupe
from the Wuppertal Tanztheater, the Japanese butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno, and
the American performance artist Pat Olesko. From the subject matter, which
consists of a collage of various impressions of the festival such as rehearsals,
performances, interviews, readings, conversations about love, death and
theatre, and poetic interludes, Schroeter develops his very own form of
the documentary film. Such films do not so much attempt to convey information
about a subject, but rather collect together a vast array of fragments around
a particular theme, which are meant to form constellations in the spectator's
mind. Schroeter uses strategies of image-music montage and repetition that
he had developed in his films of the second phase.
All of Schroeter's documentaries take a similar form, which
he has used not only for theatrical subjects, such as Ariane Mnouchkine
and her theatre troupe 'Théâtre du Soleil' in A la recherche
du soleil. Sur Ariane Mnouchkine (1986-87), but also as an effective
form of social and political critique. He achieves this with both Der
lachende Stern (1983) which takes the inaugural Manila International
Film Festival as a starting point for a foray into various layers of the
social and political history of The Philippines, and De l'Argentine
(1983-85) which similarly delves into the layers of Argentinian history,
culture and politics. In the latter film, Schroeter also interleaves various
fictional episodes between the various documentary layers.
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Marianne
Hoppe and Schroeter,
Die Königin
|
Like his earliest 8mm films, which focussed upon images of the opera diva
Maria Callas, with Poussières d'amour Schroeter returns once
again to the cult of the diva, but this time they are living, breathing,
singing and ageing divas. Schroeter takes as his point of departure for
this film a question posed by Roland Barthes in a short essay entitled “The
Romantic Song.” (9) The question asks: how do singers
find emotion in their voices? In order to attempt to answer this question
Schroeter invited some of his most admired opera singers, young and old,
to a ruined 13th century abbey in France to rehearse an aria and to talk
about singing, love and relationships. Schroeter comes closest to answering
his opening question through the bodies of three ageing divas: Martha Mödl,
Rita Gorr, and Anita Cerquetti, the latter of whom gave up singing at the
height of her career. In the film, her entire body seems to listen as she
mimes to some of her most famous recordings, including the “Casta Diva”
aria from Vincenzo Bellini's opera Norma, which continues on the
soundtrack long after her image has faded from the screen at the conclusion
of the film. In his most recent documentary, Die Königin (2000),
about the theatrical life of the veteran German actress Marianne Hoppe,
Schroeter continues his engagement with the ageing performing body.
The films of Werner Schroeter form a vast and diverse body of work through
which he has, fulfilling Fassbinder's 1979 premonition, managed to secure
for himself a certainly eccentric but pivotal place in the history of cinema.
© Michelle Langford, January 2003
Endnotes:
- Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema, New Jersey,
Rutgers University Press, 1989, p. 204
- Rainer Werner Fassbinder, “Chin-up, Handstand,
Salto Mortale—Firm Footing: On the Film Director Werner Schroeter,
Who Achieved What Few Achieve, with Kingdom of Naples” in
Michael Töteberg and Leo A. Lensing (eds.), The Anarchy
of the Imagination: Interviews, Essays, Notes, trans. Krishna Winston,
Baltimore & London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992, p. 101. Fassbinder's
article was first published in Frankfurter Rundschau, 24 February,
1979.
- I shall restrict myself to a discussion of Schroeter's
films. For a more detailed discussion of Schroeter's work in theatre
see Sabina Dhein, Werner Schroeter, Frankfurt am Main, Fischer
Taschenbuch Verlag, 1991.
- Sebastian Feldmann in Jansen & Schütte (eds.),
Werner Schroeter, Munich, Carl Hanser, 1980, p. 168
- Margarete & Thomas Mitscherlich, The Inability
to Mourn: Principles of Collective Behaviour, New York, Grove Press,
1975. Their book was first published in Germany in 1967.
- Ulrike Sieglohr, Imaginary Identities in Werner
Schroeter's Cinema: An Institutional, Theoretical and Cultural Investigation,
unpublished PhD thesis University of East Anglia, September, 1994, p.
275. Emphasis added.
- Karsten Witte, “So viele Lieder”, Die
Zeit, 23 January, 1987, p. 51
- For a summary of the various perspectives see Dorothee
Römhild, “Von kritischer Selbstreflexion zur stereotypen Frauendarstellung:
Ingeborg Bachmanns Roman Malina und seine filmische Rezeption”,
The Germanic Review, vol. LXVIII, n. 4, Fall, 1993. The film
was much more warmly received in France where the novel was less widely
known. See for example: Frederic Strauss, “Scènes de la
passion (Making Malina)”, Cahiers du cinéma,
n. 435, September 1990. This is possibly also due to the presence of
Isabelle Huppert in the leading role.
- Roland Barthes, “The Romantic Song”, Responsibility
of Forms, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1986
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Poussières
d'amour Schroeter (right)
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Filmography
The
filmography contains the following information about the films where known:
Screenplay (S), Cinematography (C), Editor (E), Producer (P), Principle
actors or subjects if a documentary (A), film format and running time.
Verona (1967) C & E: Werner Schroeter, 8mm, B&W, 10 min
Callas Walking Lucia (1968) S, C & E: Werner Schroeter, 8mm,
B&W, 3 min
Callas Text mit Doppelbeleuchtung (1968) C & E: Werner Schroeter,
8mm, B&W, 5 min
Maria Callas Porträt (1968) C & E: Werner Schroeter,
A: photos of Maria Callas, 8mm, colour and B&W, 17 min
Mona Lisa (1968) S, C & E: Werner Schroeter, A: photos of
Maria Callas and a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, 8mm, colour and B&W, 35
min
Maria Callas Singt 1957 Rezitativ und Arie der Elvira aus Ernani 1844
von Guiseppe Verdi (1968) C & E: Werner Schroeter, 8mm, B&W, 15
min
Übungen mit Darstellern (1968) Consists of nine unedited
rolls. Camera is attributed to Schroeter for all rolls except rolls 6 and
3. A: Magdalena Montezuma, Werner Schroeter, Steven Adamczewski, Ica Vilander,
Carla Aulaulu, all 8mm, four rolls are colour, five are B&W, each has a
running time of 3 min.
La morte d'Isotta (1968) S, C & E: Werner Schroeter, A: Rita
& Joachim Bauer, Marlene (Knut) Koch, Werner Schroeter, Truùla Bartok,
8mm, colour, 50 min
Himmel Hoch (1968) S, C & E: Werner Schroeter, A: Steven Adamczewski,
Rita & Joachim Bauer, 8mm, B & W, 12 min
Paula— 'je reviens' (1968) S, C & E: Werner Schroeter,
A: Heidi Lorenzo, Suzanne Sheed, Marlene (Knut) Koch, Truùla Bartok,
Werner Schroeter, 8mm, colour, 35 min
Grotesk—Burlesk—Pittoresk (1968) Co-directed with
Rosa von Praunheim, S & C: Werner Schroeter and Rosa von Praunheim, A: Magdalena
Montezuma, Rosa von Praunheim, 8mm, colour & B&W, duration according to
Wim Wenders is 60 min, according to other sources, 40 min
Faces (1968) S: Werner Schroeter, C: Possibly Rosa von Praunheim,
E: Werner Schroeter, A: Heidi Lorenzo, Knut Koch, 8mm, B&W, ca 20 min. This
film is reported to be a study for Aggressionen (1968).
Aggressionen (1968) S, C & E: Werner Schroeter, A: Heidi Lorenzo,
Knut Koch, 16mm, B&W, 22.5 min
Neurasia (1968) S: C & E: Werner Schroeter, A: Carla Aulaulu,
Magdalena Montezuma, Rita Bauer, Steven Adamczewski, 16mm, B&W, 41 min
Virginia's Death (1968) S, C & E: Werner Schroeter, A: Magdalena
Montezuma, Heidi Lorenzo, Carla Aulaulu, Steven Adamczewski, 16mm, B&W,
9 min. Unreleased.
Argila (1968) S, C, E & P: Werner Schroeter, A: Gisela Trowe,
Magdalena Montezuma, Carla Aulaulu, Sigurd Salto, 16mm, made to be shown
as a double projection, one roll each of colour and B&W, 36 min.
Eika Katappa (1969) S, & E: Werner Schroeter, C: Werner Schroeter
and Robert van Ackeren for part eight. P: Werner Schroeter, A: Magdalena
Montezuma, Gisela Trowe, Carla Aulaulu, Rita & Joachim Bauer, Ingo & Sigurd
Salto, Rosa von Praunheim, 16mm, colour and B&W, 144 min
Nicaragua (1969) S: Werner Schroeter. C: Robert van Ackeren,
P: Peter Berling, A: Carla Aulaulu, Magdalena Montezuma, Gavin Campbell,
16mm, B&W, ca. 80 min
Der Bomberpilot (1970) S, C & E: Werner Schroeter. P: Werner
Schroeter, ZDF, A: Magdalena Montezuma, Carla Aulaulu, Mascha Elm, 16mm,
colour, 65 min
Angila (1970) S: Werner Schroeter. C: Jörg Schmidt-Reichwein,
P: Atlantis Film, A: Magdalena Montezuma, Carla Aulaulu, Mascha Elm-Rabben,
16mm, colour. Unreleased.
Salome (1971) S: Werner Schroeter, C: Robert van Ackeren,
E: Ila von Hasperg, P: Ifage, ZDF, A: Mascha Elm Rabben, Magdalena Montezuma,
Ellen Umlauf, Thomas von Keyserling, 16mm, colour, 81 min
Macbeth (1971) S: Werner Schroeter, C: Horst Thürling,
P: Hessischer Rundfunk, A: Annette Tirier, Susi, Stefan von Haugk, Sigurd
Salto, Magdalena Montezuma, video, colour, 60 min
Funkausstellung 1971 - Hitparade (1971) Television programme
which was never broadcast. According to Anne Even of ZDF no copies survive.
Der Tod der Maria Malibran (The Death of Maria Malibran)
(1971) S & C: Werner Schroeter, E: Werner Schroeter and Ila von Hasperg,
P: Werner Schroeter, ZDF, A: Magdalena Montezuma, Christine Kaufmann, Candy
Darling, Manuela Riva, Ingrid Caven, 16mm, colour, 104 min
Willow Springs (1972-73) S: & C: Werner Schroeter, E: Werner
Schroeter and Ila von Hasperg, P: Werner Schroeter, ZDF, A: Magdalena Montezuma,
Christine Kaufmann, Ila von Hasperg, Michael O'Daniels, 16mm, colour, 78
min
Der schwarze Engel (The Black Angel) (1973-74)
S, C & E: Werner Schroeter, P: Werner Schroeter, ZDF, A: Ellen Umlauf, Magdalena
Montezuma,16mm, colour, 71 min
Johannas Traum (1971-75) S, C & E: Werner Schroeter, 16mm,
colour, 30 min. Put together with material from Der Tod der Maria Malibran.
Flocons d'or (Goldflocken, Goldflakes) (1973-76) S:
Werner Schroeter, Carlos Clarens, C: Werner Schroeter, E: Werner Schroeter,
Ila von Hasperg, Cécile Decugis, P: Les Films du Losange, A: Magdalena
Montezuma, Bulle Ogier, Andréa Ferrol, Christine Kaufmann, Ellen
Umlauf, Ila von Hasperg, 16mm, colour, 163 min
Regno di Napoli (Neapolitanischer Geschwister, Kingdom
of Naples) (1978) S: Werner Schroeter, Wolf Wondraschek, C: Thomas
Mauch, E: Werner Schroeter and Ursula West, P: Dieter Geissler, ZDF, P.B.C.
A: Romeo Giro, Antonio Orlando, Maria Antonietta Riegel, Cristina Donadio,
35mm, colour, 130 min
Palermo oder Wolfsburg (1980) S: Werner Schroeter, Giusseppe
Fava, C: Thomas Mauch, E: Werner Schroeter and Ursula West, P: Thomas Mauch
Film Production, Artico Film, Eric Franck, A: Nicola Zarbo, Otto Sander,
Ida di Benedetto, Magdalena Montezuma, Antonio Orlando, 35mm, colour, 175
min
Weisse Reise (1980) S, C & E: Werner Schroeter, P: Eric Franck,
Werner Schroeter, A: Harald Vogl, Jim Auwae, Margareth Clémenti,
16mm, colour, 52 min
La Répétition générale (Die Generalprobe,
Dress Rehearsal) (1980) S: Werner Schroeter, Colette Godard,
C: Franz Weich, E: Catherine Brasier and Jean-Marc Martinez, P: Laura-Film,
Thomas Schüli, Munich, ZDF, A: Mostéfa Djadjam, Pina Bausch,
Pat Olesko, Reinhild Hofmann, Kazuo Ohno, Sankai Juku et.al., 16mm, colour,
90 min
Das Libeskonzil (The Council of Love) (1981) S: Dietrich
Kuhlbrodt, Roberto Lerici, Horst Alexander, based on a play by Oskar Panizza,
C: Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein, E: Catherine Brasier and Olivier Morel, P:
Saskia Filmproduktion, Trio Film, A: Antonio Salines, Magdalena Montezuma,
et.al., 35mm, colour, 96 min
Tag der Idioten (Day of the Idiots) (1982) S: Werner
Schroeter, Dana Horakova, C: Ivan Slapeta, E: Catherine Brasier and Moune
Barius, P: Oko-Film, Karel Dirka, BR., A: Carole Bouquet, Ida di Benedetto,
Ingrid Caven, Christine Kaufmann, Magdalena Montezuma, 35mm, colour, 107
min
Der lachende Stern (The Smiling Star) (1983) S: Werner
Schroeter, C: Werner Schroeter, E: Werner Schroeter and Christel Orthmann,
P: Peter Kern. 16mm, colour, 110 min
De l'Argentine (Zum Beispiel Argentina , For Example
Argentina) (1983-85) S: Werner Schroeter, C: Werner Schroeter
and Carlos Bernardo Wajsman, E: Catherine Brasier and Claudio Martinez,
P: Out One FR3/Ministère de la culture, 16mm, colour, 92 min
A la recherche du soleil. Sur Ariane Mnouchkine (In search
of the sun. About Ariane Mnouchkine (1986-87)
Der Rosenkönig (The Rose King) (1984-86) S: Werner
Schroeter, C: Elfi Mikesch, E: Juliane Lorenz, P: Paolo Branco, Udo Heiland
Filmproduktion, A: Magdalena Montezuma, Antonio Orlando, Mostéfa
Djadjam, 35mm, colour, 100 min
Malina (1990) S: Elfriede Jelinek, C: Elfi Mikesch, E: Juliane
Lorenz, P: Thomas & Peter Kuchenreuther, Kuchenreuther Film-Produktion,
A: Isabelle Huppert, Can Togay, Mathieu Carriere, 35mm, colour, 120 min
Poussières d'amour (Abfallprodukte der Liebe,
Love's Debris) (1996) S: Werner Schroeter/Claire Alby, C: Elfi Mikesch,
E: Juliane Lorenz, P: Christoph Meyer-Weil, Schlemmer Film, A: Anita Cerquetti,
Martha Mödl, Rita Gorr, Carole Bouquet, Isabelle Huppert et.al., 35mm,
colour, 120 min
Die Königin: Marianne Hoppe (The Queen) (2000)
S: Werner Schroeter/ Monika Klepper, Filmproduktion Bremen, C: Thomas Pleinert/Alexandra
Kordes, E: Flo Köhler, P: Elke Peters, MIRA, A: Marianne Hoppe, 35mm,
colour & B&W, 101 min
Deux (Two) (2002) S: Werner Schroeter/Cédric
Anger, C: Elfi Mikesch, E: Julianne Lorenz, P: Paulo Branco, Gemini/Road
Movies/France 2, A: Isabelle Huppert, Bulle Ogier, Manuel Blanc, Arielle
Dombasle, Annika Kuhl, Robinson Stévenin, Phillippe Reuter, Pascal
Bongard, Jean-Francois Stévenin, 35mm, colour, 121 min
Select
Bibliography
Books:
Gérard Courant, (ed.), Werner Schroeter, Paris, Goethe-Institut,
Cinémathèque Française, 1982
Sabine Dhein, Werner Schroeter, Frankfurt am Main, Fischer Taschenbuch
Verlag, 1991
Peter W. Jansen & Wolfram Schütte (eds.), Werner Schroeter,
Munich, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1980
Michelle Langford, Allegorical Images: Tableau, Time and Gesture in
the Cinema of Werner Schroeter, unpublished PhD thesis, University
of Sydney, August, 2000
Eva M. J. Schmid & Frank Scurla (eds.), Werner Schroeter, Filme 1968-1970,
Recklinghausen, 1971
Ulrike Sieglohr, Imaginary Identities in Werner Schroeter's Cinema:
An Institutional, Theoretical and Cultural Investigation, unpublished
PhD thesis, University of East Anglia, September, 1994
Journal Articles, Book Chapters and Interviews:
Joris Bayne, “Werner Schroeter: Le Pilleur d'epaves”, ecran,
23 March, 1974
Jan Berg, “Realität und Pathos: Palermo oder Wolfsburg
von Werner Schroeter”, Filmkritik, n. 1, 1980
Eric Bonse & Wolf Kühr, “Anarchische Modelle”, Interview
with W. Schroeter, Die Woche, 9 June, 1994
Barbara Bronnen and Corinna Brocher, Die Filmemacher. Zur neuen deutschen
Produktion nach Oberhausen, Munich, C. Bertelsmann 1973
Peter Buchka, “Der Kampf der Armen: Werner Schroeters neuer Film
Neapolitanische Geschwister”, Süddeutsche Zeitung,
8 June, 1978
Peter Buchka, “Die Schönheit des Todes”, Süddeutscher
Zeitung, 27 February, 1987
Christina Bylow, “Außerhalb der Rolle spricht sie nicht. Werner
Schroeter dreht mit Marianne Hoppe in Babelsberg”, Berliner Zeitung,
26 July, 1999
Alain Carbonnier & Noël Simsolo, “Rencontre avec Werner Schroeter”,
Cinéma, n. 303, March 1984
Timothy Corrigan, “Schroeter's Willow Springs and the Excesses
of History”, New German Film: The Displaced Image, revised
edition, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994
Timothy Corrigan, “Werner Schroeter's Operatic Cinema”, Discourse,
n. 3, Spring 1981
Timothy Corrigan, “On the Edge of History: The Radiant Spectacle
of Werner Schroeter”, Film Quarterly, n. 37, Summer 1984
Gérard Courant, “Le Regne de Naples: De la mort et
du désir”, Cinema, n. 253 (January, 1980).
Gérard Courant, “Propos rompus par Werner Schroeter”,
Cahiers du Cinéma, n. 307, January 1980
Gérard Courant, “Flocons d'or: Un ouragan d'emotions”,
Cinema, n. 258, 1980
Gérard Courant, “Entretien avec exilé de l'interieur
qu'est devenu Werner Schroeter”, Cinéma, n. 267, March
1981
Serge Daney, “Schroeter et Naples”, Cahiers du cinéma,
n. 307, January 1980
Bernard J. Dotzler, “Kein letztes Wort zu Medea: Exzess und Kalkul,
Mythos und Technik”, Lili: Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft
und Linguistik, vol.19, n. 76, 1989
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, “Chin-up, Handstand, Salto Mortale—Firm
Footing: On the Film Director Werner Schroeter, Who Achieved What Few
Achieve, with Kingdom of Naples” in Michael Töteberg
and Leo A. Lensing (eds.), The Anarchy of the Imagination: Interviews,
Essays, Notes, trans. Krishna Winston, Baltimore & London, Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1992. Originally published in Frankfurter Rundschau,
24 February, 1979.
Sebastian Feldmann, “Die Sünden wider das Fleisch. Anmerkungen
zu Werner Schroeter”, Film-Korrespondenz, n. 12, December
1973, & n. 1 January 1974
Sebastian Feldmann, “Die Rosen und die Schlumpis”, Rheinische
Post, 12 November, 1986
Sebastian Feldmann, “Von Rosen durchbohrt”, Rheinische Post,
8 April, 1987
Sebastian Feldmann, “Eine Collage aus Poesie und Politik”, 3
July, 1987
Michel Foucault, “Sade, ein Sergeant des Sex: Interview mit Gérard
Dupont” in Von der Freundschaft: Michel Foucault in Gespräch,
trans. Marianne Karbe & Walter Seitter, Berlin, Merve Verlag, 1985
Michel Foucault, “Conversation avec Werner Schroeter”, in Daniel
Defert & François Ewald (eds.), Michel Foucault: Dits et écrits
1954-1988, vol. IV, Paris: Gallimard, 1994
Colette Godard, “Super-star underground de Werner Schroeter”,
Le Monde, 24 January 1974
Friede Grafe, “Schauplatz für Sprache: Neurasia”, Filmkritik,
n. 3, 1970
Jacques Grant & Jean-Yves Dubath, “Entretien avec Werner Schroeter”,
Cinématographe, n. 55, March 1980
Alan Greenberg, “Notes on Some European Directors”, American
Film, vol. 3, n. 1, October 1977
Ulrich Gregor, “Für Neapel”, Die Zeit, n. 24, 1978
Kai Hoffmann, “Kaleidoskop: Werner Schroeters Zum Beispiel Argentinien”,
Frankfurter Rundschau, 8 July, 1986
Gary Indiana, “Indiana in Berlin at the Film Festspiel '81”,
Artforum, n. 19, Summer 1981
Gary Indiana, “Scattered Pictures: The Movies of Werner Schroeter”,
Artforum, n. 20, March 1982
Peter Jansen, “Neapolitanische Geschwister”, Kirche
und Film, n. 2, February, 1979
Urs Jeny, “Für einen grausamen Gott: Der Bomberpilot und Salome
von Werner Schroeter”, Filmkritik, n. 177, September 1971
Urs Jeny, “Lästerliche Mysterien”, Der Spiegel,
n. 14, (1982)
Roland Keller, “Freiheit, die ich meine: Werner Schroeter korregiert
Klischees und zerschlägt Feindbilder”, Kino, n. 4, 1980
Raimund B. Kern, “Neapolitanische Geschwister”, Filmdienst,
n. 8, 18 April, 1979
Paul B. Kleiser, “Willow Springs Gespräch mit Magdalena
Montezuma und Werner Schroeter”, Filmkritik, n. 9, September
1973
Werner Kleiß, “Gespräch mit Rosa von Praunheim und Werner
Schroeter”, Film, n. 11, November 1969
Silvia Kolbowski, “Out of Cold Blood—New Argentine Films”,
Afterimage, vol. 14, Summer 1986
Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, “Werner Schroeter” in Hans Michael Bock
(ed.), CineGraph: Lexikon zum deutschsprachigen Film, Munich, edition
text + kritik, 1984
Yann Lardeau, “Werner Schroeter cinéaste de la passion”,
Cahiers du cinéma, n. 333, March 1982
Emanuel Levy, “Love's Debris”, Variety, November
11-17, 1996
Nicos Ligouris, “Körper/Schrift/Übertretung: Über
die Fazination des Grenzlosen bei W. Schroeter”, Synchronos Kinimatographos,
n. 5, March/April, 1975
Joël Magny, “Le Chant des Disparus”, (review of De l'Argentine),
Cahiers du cinéma, n. 388, October 1986
Alfred Nemeczezk, “Geniestüke eines Pechvogels”, Stern,
n. 12, 13 March 1980
Thomas Neuhauser, “Glanz des Theaters. Auf der Suche nach der
Sonne”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 15 January, 1987
Karena Niehoff, “Unnötige Aufregung: Werner Schroeters Panizza-Verfilmung
Libeskonzil”, Der Tagesspiegel, 12 March, 1982
Karena Niehoff, “Die zerstörte Puppe: zu Werner Schroeters Film
Tag der Idioten”, Der Tagesspiegel, 27 March, 1982
Denis Offroy, “Carmelo Bene, Werner Schroeter, Hans Syberberg”,
Cinématographe, n. 7, April/May 1974
Enno Patalas, “Jenseits des Jungen Deutschen Films”, Filmkritik,
n. 11 November 1969
Hans Günter Pflaum, “Geheimnisse des Feuers. Werner Schroeters
kongeniale Bachmann-Verfilmung Malina”, Süddeutsche
Zeitung, n. 14, 17 January, 1991
Ekkehard Pluta, “Das denaturierte Gesamtkunstwerk. Der Filmmacher
Werner Schroeter”, Medium, n. 10, October 1974
Rosa von Praunheim, “Mit herzlichen Gruß an Champagner Schroeter”,
Filmkritik, vol. 23 n. 1, 1979
Dorothee Römhild, “Von kritischer Selbstreflexion zur stereotypen
Frauendarstellung: Ingeborg Bachmans Roman Malina und seine filmische
Rezeption”, The Germanic Review, v LXVIII, n. 4, Fall 1993
Ruth Rybarski, “Bürgerlicher Schund”, Profil, n.
27, 2 July, 1990
Ruth Rybarski, “Die Dinge, die man von ihr weiß”, Profil,
n. 2, 7 January, 1991
Martin Schaub, “Bilderarbeit”, Cinema, n.3, 1976
Eva M.J. Schmid, “Werner Schroeter oder Die heiligsten Güter”,
Kirche und Film, n. 7, July 1972
Eckhart Schmidt, “Sehnsucht, das sagt sich so leicht, und das lebt
sich so schwer”, (interview with W. Schroeter), Süddeutsche
Zeitung, n.177, 3/4 August 1974
Werner Schroeter, “Die Matrosen dieser Welt”, Filmkritik,
vol. 6, n. 186, 1972
Werner Schroeter, “Eine Tante wie eine Arie. Werner Schroeter über
von Praunheim: Sex und Karriere”, Der Spiegel, 15 November,
1976
Werner Schroeter, “Der Herztod der Primadonna”, Der Spiegel,
n. 40, 1977
Werner Schroeter, “Showdown in Manila”, Tip, n. 14, 1983
Werner Schroeter, “Supplement: Contribution to the 400th issue”,
Cahiers du cinéma, n. 400, Special edition edited by Wim
Wenders, October 1987
Wolfram Schütte, “Als der Fremde blicke ich auf dieses Land:
Werner Schroeter und sein Film Palermo oder Wolfsburg”, Frankfurter
Rundschau, n. 70, 22 March, 1980
Wolfram Schütte, “Ich glaube nicht an die Virtuosität,
sondern an die Intensität in der Kunst”, Frankfurter Rundschau
(Easter 1982).
Wolfram Schütte, “Kopfsymphonie über Wahnsinn”, Frankfurter
Rundschau, 8 April, 1982
Wolfram Schütte (ed.), “Werner Schroeter”, Munich, Goethe
Institut, 1988
Frank Scurla, “Werner Schroeter—ein umstrittener Regisseur”,
Jugend Film Fernsehen, n. 4, 1971
Frank Scurla, “Filmanalysen: Eika Katappa”, Jungend
Film Fernsehen, n. 5-6, 1971
Ulrike Sieglohr, “Excess and Yearning: The Operatic in Werner Schroeter's
Cinema” in Jeremy Tambling (ed.), A Night in at the Opera: Media
Representations of Opera, London, John Libbey & The Arts Council of
England, 1994
Frederic Strauss, “Scènes de la passion (Making Malina)”,
Cahiers du cinéma, n. 435, September 1990
Gaston Talon, “Dossier auteur. Werner Schroeter”, Cinéma,
n. 185, March 1974
Thomas Thieringer, “Liebe und Krieg”, Kirche und Rundfunk,
n. 99, 17 December, 1980
Felix Tretter, “Tag der Idioten-psychiatrische Patienten als
Metapher”, Deutsches Ärsteblatt-Ärztliche Mitteilungen,
vol.79, n. 27, 9 July, 1982
Holger Twele, “Tag der Idioten”, Filmbeobachter,
n. 6, 1982
Franz Ulrich, “Palermo oder Wolfsburg”, Zoom,
n. 19, 1980
Reinhard Weingierek, “Ballade von der entrükten Herrin”,
Die Welt, 21 February, 2000
Wim Wenders, “Filme von Werner Schroeter”, Filmkritik,
n. 5, May 1969
Wilfried Wiegand, “Sinnlose Rituale”, Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, 22 November 1969
Wilfried Wiegand, “Werner Schroeters Fernsehfilm Neapolitanische
Geschwister”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 10 June,
1978
Wilfried Wiegand, “Werner Schroeter”, Frankfurter Allgemeine
Magazin, n. 142, 19 November, 1982
Karsten Witte, “Zum Andenken eines Engels Über Palermo oder
Wolfsburg”, Die Zeit, n. 13, 12 March, 1980
K.W. (Karsten Witte?), “Auf der Suche nach der Sonne. Werner
Schroeter beobachtet Ariane Mnouchkine und ihr Theatre”, Frankfurter
Rundschau, 13 January, 1987
K.W. (Karsten Witte?), “So viele Lieder”, Die Zeit, 23
January, 1987
K.W. (Karsten Witte?), “Versteckte Zeichen und Signale: Werner Schroeter's
Filme”, Frankfurter Rundschau, 5 January, 1991
Cordula Zytur, “Die Monroe selbdritt: Werner Schroeter Willow
Springs, Kamerafilm,” FUNK-Korrespondenz, n. 15, 11 April,
1973
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