I watched A Woman in Berlin last night and almost didn’t make past the first 30 minutes. The German film is a thoroughly unpleasant experience–and it should be. Unpleasant yes. Great? Yes. One of the top movies I have seen in recent months. Dealing with a largely unexplored slice of history . . at least by popular media.
More details in some recent reviews
Baltimore City Paper Movie Review
Based on the anonymous memoir of the same name–first published in English in 1954, and was republished in 2003, when it became a best-seller–it follows one woman’s harrowing survival in Berlin at the close of World War II. ● More from: citypaper.com
Ann Hornaday on ‘A Woman in Berlin’
An unnamed German woman (Nina Hoss) living in a demolished Berlin in 1945 is repeatedly raped and brutalized by the Russian soldiers who invaded and occupied the city in the waning days of World War II. But after its lurid stage has been set, Max Faerberboeck’s adaptation of Anonyma’s diary — controversially published in the ’50s — takes a much more somber and morally complex turn, as the protagonist and her mostly female neighbors proceed to navigate a city that’s become a physical and psychic no-man’s land. ● More from: washingtonpost.com
A Woman in Berlin
Published in 1959, A Woman in Berlin described the Red Army’s war against civilians, especially women, as Soviet troops marched into Berlin at the end of World War II. The author, a journalist known simply as Anonyma, not only observed the debased behavior of the troops, but she also was raped repeatedly by them. Anonyma, like other women in the same situation, decided after repeat violations that the only way she could survive would be to seek the protection of an officer and allow herself to become his slave. ● More from: MCN DVD Reviews
