Saturday | October 11, 2003 9:15 pm

Lili Marleen

Screening on Film

Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
With Hanna Schygulla, Giancarlo Giannini, Mel Ferrer.
West Germany, 1980, 35mm, color, 120 min.
German with English subtitles.

Following the success of The Marriage of Maria Braun, Fassbinder created a controversial picture of life in Nazi Germany, focusing on another woman who is both participant in and victim of her times. Schygulla portrays the singer Lale Andersen, whose famous rendition of the song "Lili Marleen" became as popular with the besieged and dying troops of Germany as it did with those on the Soviet side. The story focuses on the unfulfilled love affair between the Nazi darling and a brilliant young Jewish-Swiss composer. This lush and incisive production both critiques and sympathizes with the state of mind of common people who are subject to powerful cultural forces.