The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975)

You won't be disappointed!

Such a frustrating disappointment

Load of rubbish!!

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

The film starts out on a ferry carrying a man who's being filmed by another. Katharina meets a man at a Carnival party. The two hit it off and go back to her place. The next morning, the police break down her door. Apparently the man was some kind of criminal. This man gave the police the slip somehow and the police are now accusing of abetting him. It becomes a media frenzy and the media comes down especially hard on her. It's a real circus and Katharina's life is turned upside down as well as that of her dying mother. There's one reporter who was particularly oppressive and, in the final scene, is shot by Katharina.A lot of the specifics aren't particularly clear, but that seems on purpose. It's not clear what sort of criminal Ludwig Götten (Jürgen Prochnow) is except for a widely sought one. It's also not clear if Katharina was lying the entire time and actually helped Ludwig or not. In the end she's very quick to get back with him and call him on the telephone. This seems very contrary to someone ignorant of the man's criminal past. I really like how the police and media are portrayed. I hear a lot of talk about how police are necessary, but they are those who walk around with a gun putting out harsh questions and being general jerks. This film does a good job showing of what they do - how many times the innocent are convicted etc. It's also great that the media is shown how they are. The obvious bias shown by media in their decision to cover certain events over another, and the intrusive and aggressive nature of the tabloids is shown well. Undoubtedly, this isn't a true story, but it is based on the novel by Heinrich Böll who had experience with such things himself. It's easy to forget sometimes that film is a part of life and it's important to show the modern world as it is while still telling a story - which this does. This is a high recommend to any fan of German cinema.

In the early 1970s, West Germany was having quite a problem with what was known as the Baader-Meinhof terrorist gang. Author Heinrich Böll wrote an article criticizing what he saw as the German tabloid Bild-Zeitung's fear-mongering tactics in their reporting of the activities of the Baader-Meinhof gang. Subsequently, Böll was called a terrorist sympathizer, and the police began checking him out as if he were a criminal. This provoked Böll into writing a novel, also called The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, which was to serve as a parable for the consequences of "yellow journalism" and fascist-leaning police actions. The subtitle of the book was the over-ambitious "How violence can arise and what it can lead to".Filmmakers Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta knew and empathized with Böll so they began to put the film into production immediately. I haven't read the novel, so I can't compare the two, but unfortunately the film, at least based on the English language translation, comes nowhere near its goals in terms of political or social commentary.Here's how the story begins per what we actually see on the screen: a man--he turns out to be Ludwig Götten (Jürgen Prochnow)--who is behaving mysteriously/covertly finds his way to a party. At the party, he hooks up with a swinging trio consisting of an apparent Arab and two women. They then head to another party, where Götten runs into Katharina Blum (Angela Winkler). They stare at each other oddly and dance slowly. The Arab heads off to the bathroom, reports to whoever is listening on the other side of his wire that Götten and Blum are together, and we see Götten and Blum subjected to surveillance as they leave together to go to her apartment. In the morning (I'm not sure why they'd wait until morning), police, including armed men in something like riot gear, storm into Blum's apartment, planning on absconding Götten. But Götten is gone. So they take Blum in for questioning. It seems that Götten is a suspected terrorist and they want to know what Blum's relationship is to him. Blum ends up briefly imprisoned.At the same time, a local tabloid paper, simply called "The Paper" in the English-language subtitles, at least, begins printing trumped up stories about Blum, occasionally even completely fabricating quotes from interviewees. As in the novel, the gist of the film is supposed to be that the treatment from the police and the newspaper are "ruining Blum's life".It's certainly true that the police and the journalists shown in the film get a bit out of line. However, their transgressions are relatively minor, especially compared to other filmic depictions of such things. Blum is never strong-armed by the police, for example. Compared to the real world, there are no molestations with broomstick handles here. The journalists do not do anything unusual for tabloid journalists. I can't remember when it started publishing, but The Weekly World News sure fabricates stories a lot stronger than "The Paper" in Katharina Blum does, and it's not as if The National Enquirer, say, hasn't been successfully sued for slander/libel. On the other hand, The National Enquirer hasn't exactly ruined lives, either. That would be quite an exaggeration.It's not clear why Blum answers the police's line of questioning without objecting more vehemently or alternately refraining from talking and incriminating herself. I'm not sure what Germany's laws are, or were, on that. No one tells us that Blum has to respond to the police in the way that she does, and she certainly doesn't try very hard to do otherwise.If we look at things from the police's perspective for a moment, Götten is supposedly a terrorist. While we're not shown anything confirming this, we're not shown anything denying it, either. We don't know what kind of evidence the police have on Götten. And here is a woman who is apparently helping him out. So, obviously, they're going to question her, and police will ask you all kinds of questions that you don't have to answer. As shown in the film, it is suggested that Blum is actually lying about the extent of her interactions with Götten. If she just met him, many plot points make little sense. Further, Schlöndorff and von Trotta suggest in subtle ways that Blum's circle of acquaintances might not just be ideological leftists. Given all of this, the police aren't really shown doing anything out of line except asking questions that Blum wouldn't have had to answer.The Paper gets more out of line, but we're actually only shown a couple incidents where they change words in someone's statement. The idea is that Blum is being tried and convicted in the tabloid. Yet, "tried and convicted in the press" is hyperbole, certainly. Blum remained free. She wasn't proved guilty of anything. The emotional turmoil she experiences (which leads to a much improved climax) seems more a result of her own odd disposition (and the character is quite odd and somewhat volatile in the film) than blamable on stories in the newspaper. The only person who ruins Blum's life is Blum.If you haven't seen the film yet, it might seem odd that I'm hanging on narrow points so much. You're probably saying, "But what about the plot? Isn't this a good, suspenseful film?" The bulk of the film consists of the police questioning Blum and reporters trying to interview her family, friends and associates (although that takes up a lot less time than the police questioning Blum). This is nothing if not a "talking head" film. It succeeds or not largely based on that talking. There are stretches where the talking is engaging, even if it's not making the point that Schlöndorff and von Trotta want to make. It's a good idea, and could have worked with a better script. But there's not much else to praise, including the technical elements, which are just average.

Excellent film, well-worth searching out. According to the director's feature on the DVD,Boll wrote the novel after being smeared by a journalist who claimed Boll was a spiritual father to the terrorists, when in fact Boll was only trying to establish a dialogue with them.Excellennt acting throughout, with Jurgen Prochnow (Das Boot, English Patient) as the terrorist Ludgwig. And a true sign of a great film, it doesn't feel dated at all (other than the clothing- dig those crazy bell-bottoms!).I think some commentators are over-stating the obvious as far as civil liberties and left-wing/right-wing agendas. Governments always over-react that way. Our own Prime Minister Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act in the 1970s when the FLQ in Quebec kidnapped and killed a British diplomat. And Katherina herself is not totally without guilt, as she does aid and abet Ludwig. Also there is a scene with her in detention where she pulls a hankerchef out of her purse and what look like raw diamonds fall out onto her lap.I think the worst slime in the film is the print journalist, and the way the police collaborate with him, allowing him to get the "inside" first.The impressive funeral, complete with boy's choir, sponsored by the journal owner-manager, and his "spin" on freedom of the press show the propaganda war at work. Those in attendance include her "mystery lover", whose main concern is obviously protecting his reputation, understandably perhaps after seeing up close how the press destroyed Katherina's life.A great score by the German modernist composer Hans Werner Henze adds to the surreal Carnival atmosphere and environment.

"The Lost Honor of..." not only tells an interesting story with powerful writing, acting and cinematography, but is also a must see for those disturbed by the powerauthoritarian governments (communist, fascist, and everything in between) possess to exploit individual human rights. I wish we could view this film as a well made relic of the past, but unfortunately its subject matter is as relevent today as it was in 1970's West Germany. As in Katarina's world, terrorism is again the favored epithet of the day as the U.S.'s social and political climate moves away from a conversation between differing individual view points and towards an 'on message' insistence on absolute conformity.Katarina is a young maid with little money, who sleeps with a man she barely knows, a man who is under surveillance as a suspected terrorist. Because she was seen with the supposed terrorist, her life is torn apart by police interrogators and a press that only reports "facts" which support its particular ideology, even if the details must be fabricated. Although those who know Katarina tell the press and police of a bright, sweet, and quiet girl, her reputation is run through the gutter by the men who translate her private life to the public world. Eventually, Katarina takes on the attributes of a stereotypical terrorist because the state has given her no choice but to become radicalized. Simply because Katarina will not give up her dignity and privacy, she becomes an enemy of the state.For Katarina, her private life becomes glaringly public, and the public judges her based on both the fabricated evidence presented by her accusers (both press and government) as well as their own assumptions about how a woman should behave. In the society that surrounds Katarina, the state functions through conformity, and those who do not conform instantly become the enemy. As a woman, Katarina bears the brunt of this brutality, as her sexuality becomes both exploited and demonized. The young maid becomes a media fixation, a beautiful sexual terrorist.Although much of this might sound familiar, the film relates these political and social paradoxes on an individual, personal level. As in Katarina's case, sensational news stories rarely investigate the cogs which make them front page headlines-they only reinforce easy reactions of judgemental outrage. "The Lost Honor of ..." shines a bright light on the lives that are trampled beneath the broad strokes of an unyielding and inhuman militarized state and the press and public which supports it.