>Yoshie Furuhashi posted
>
>> New York Times 24 January 2001
>>
> > 'The Legend of Rita': A Young Terrorist Changes Her Identity, Not
>Her Ideals
>>
>> By A. O. SCOTT
>
>A.O. Scott seems to be quite enthusiastic about the film. When the »Stille
>nach dem Schuss« (original title) started last year in Germany the reactions
>from German lefties were not so enthusiastic. Main criticism was that
>Schlöndorff was more concerned with the story of a young woman than making a
>political film.
>
>Jürgen Kiontke called it an 'superficial film, with a vulgar, romantic look
>on a revolt' in the periodically jungle world:
>
>Die »Stille nach dem Schuss« ist ein oberflächlicher Film mit einem
>vulgären, romantischen Blick auf die Revolte: Die Skizzierung der
>Hauptfiguren nimmt die erste Viertelstunde ein und hat große Ähnlichkeit mit
>der MTV-inspirierten Bildsprache von Katja von Garnier (»Bandits«). Die
>Protagonisten benehmen sich denn auch wie eine durchgeknallte Popgruppe,
>nicht wie in irgend einer Weise politisch Handelnde.
>Full text at:
>http://www.nadir.org/nadir/periodika/jungle_world/_2000/38/28a.htm
<snip>
Interesting. I haven't seen _The Legend of Rita_ yet, so I can't comment on whether savage reviews that the film received in Germany are justified (perhaps they are; at the same time, though, something about the spirit of the film -- its evocation of youth radicalism of the past -- may have negatively reflected upon the present sorry state of the German Left, perhaps sorrier than even the messiest part of past radicalism).
The reason why A. O. Scott responded positively to _The Legend of Rita_, I think, is that the American mass media -- the New York Times included -- have developed a feeling of nostalgia for "socialism" or at least _what this word meant to them_: "there once were youths who believed in _ideas_, animated by an irrepressible desire to radically remake the world" -- or so they hint, here and there, and Scott's review is a good example of this structure of feeling. The apparent worldwide triumph of capitalism, after all, is boring for cultural critics -- even _or especially_ bourgeois cultural critics.
Speaking of Volker Schlöndorff, I was just browsing a book titled _Global Television_ (ed., Cynthia Schneider & Brian Willis, NY & Cambridge, MA: The Wedge Press & The MIT Press, 1988) & happened upon Thomas Elsaesser's article "National Cinema and International Television: The Death of New German Cinema" in the book:
***** The kind of protection which the _Autorenfilm_ received during the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s was prescient in two ways: it subsidized a "national" film culture, but it also created institutional structures that may be able to withstand the onslaught of the new media more effectively if a political response can be backed by an economically practicable program concept. Politically, the New German Cinema was the result of lobbyists like Alexander Kluge finding a sympathetic ear among Social Democrat and Liberal parliamentarians, who then included the cinema in their policies of rewarding national prestige projects (along with museums, music festivals, theater events, and international sports). Practically, the New German Cinema was financed by television, via co-productions that could also pass as cinema both in the specialized markets and at national and international festivals....
This dual strategy -- of working with the structures of government and of television -- corresponded to a functional division in the purposes of the _Autorenfilm_, between its creation of a national cinema (which could range from re-presenting and re-writing national history, to the self-representation of special groups, such as women or gay subcultures) and its support of alternative forms of cinema altogether (avant-garde films, nonnarrative films, documentary, opera and music drama, dance theater, or film essays)....
...[With] this concept...[of the "author"], West Germany was, during most of the 1970s, ahead of the rest of Europe in subsidizing film. By the time of the third revision of the Film Subsidy Law in 1974, the German film funding system was quite finely tuned, combining federal and regional funding, automatic subsidy, and project subsidy with Kuratorium, television co-production, and Berlin-Effekt. This complex funding system gave German filmmakers a boost at all levels, and across the whole range of film forms and modes, from the medium-to-big budget prestige film like Fassbinder's _The Marriage of Maria Braun_ or Schlöndorff's _The Tin Drum_, to avant-garde and experimental films by Werner Schroeter, Herbert Achternbusch, Helke Sander, and Ulrike Ottinger.
So, why does it now seem as if the Germans "blew it"? France and Britain have learned from the German experience and are currently more successful in keeping a stake in the national market as well as breaking into the international market. The German cinema, despite its better-than-average chances, however, was unable to build on the real but brief breakthrough afforded by the _Autorenfilm_....
(Elsaesser 125-6) *****
Elsaesser vastly overestimates the health of British & French film markets & cultures, but it is true that the end of the Socialist & Social Democratic era meant the death of the New German Cinema & decline of many national film industries (perhaps with the exception of India's).
Yoshie