MARIANNE AND JULIAN? Movie Review

The German Sisters
Die Bleierne Zeit

Personal and historical politics combine in Margarethe von Trotta's portrait of two German sisters in the 1970s. Juliane (Jutta Lampe) is the editor of a left-wing feminist journal, while Marianne (Barbara Sukowa) is active in a notorious, well-organized gang of deadly terrorists. Juliane's natural tendency toward compassion leads her to want to prevent her sister's apparently inevitable, headlong leap into oblivion; her obsessive attachment to Marianne leads her to do everything she can think of to bring her out of her murderous and suicidal rage. Based on an actual case, Von Trotta's Marianne and Juliane has a fascinating theme, but her connect-the-dots structure drains the juice out of it. The performances, however, are so good as to almost compensate.

NEXT STOP … Sisters, or the Balance of Happiness, A Free Woman, Patty Hearst

1982 106m/C GE Jutta Lampe, Barbara Sukowa, Ruediger Vogler, Doris Schade, Franz Rudnick; D: Margarethe von Trotta; W: Margarethe von Trotta; C: Franz Rath; M: Nicolas Economou. VHS NYF