About this Event
Set during the rise of the Nazis in Berlin in the early 1930s, Konrad Wolf’s powerful drama follows a young wife and mother torn between the comforts of her Nazi husband's lifestyle and her conscience.
Berlin, early 1930s. Lissy Schröder, a young woman from a working-class background, marries Fredi Fromeyer, a clerk who promises her a better life, but is loathed by Lissy’s father, a committed socialist and union activist. When Fredi loses his job due to the economic depression and they can no longer afford the rent, his frustration—combined with a chance encounter with an old friend—leads him to join the National Socialist Storm Troopers (SA). As he rises through the ranks, he and Lissy begin to enjoy a comfortable bourgeois lifestyle. Despite criticism from her father and Communist friends, and her own growing unease at the brutality and arrests carried out by the Nazis, Lissy continuous to live her life. It is only when her brother—once a Communist sympathizer—joins the Nazis and is subsequently killed by them that she takes a decision.
Based on the novel Versuchung [Temptation] (1937, Zurich), later republished in 1954 as Lissy oder die Versuchung [Lissy or the Temptation] (East Berlin) by Jewish socialist author Franz Carl Weiskopf (Prague 1900– East Berin 1955), Lissy has been described as Konrad Wolf’s first mature film. It is the first of his works to clearly follow an anti-fascist conversion narrative, centering on a female protagonist who initially appears passive and undecided, but whose underlying moral strength and empathy set her apart from the men around her who are driven by ideology, and the wish for acknowledgement and power.
The film immerses the viewer in a meticulously reconstructed Berlin of the late Weimar Republic, with its diverse social milieus. Formal techniques reminiscent of Weimar-era cinema, such as montage sequences and superimpositions, convey the psychological states of the characters, while melodramatic intensfications heighten the emotional impact of the film—particularly Lissy’s transformation. This development is already foreshadowed in the film’s opening titles, which introduce Lissy as “A Story of the Heart.”
GDR, 1957, 89 min, b&w, German with English subtitles
Directed by Konrad Wolf, script: Konrad Wolf and Alex Wedding, dramaturgy: Hans-Joachim Wallstein, editor: Lena Neumann, camera: Werner Bergmann, set design: Gerhard Helwig, costume design: Elli-Charlotte Löffler, music (score): Joachim Werzlau, special effects: Ernst Kunstmann. With Gerhard Bienert, Horst Drinda, Horst Friedrich, Christa Gottschalk, Hans-Peter Minetti, Kurt Oligmüller, Raimund Schelcher, Sonja Sutter, Else Wolz.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Goethe-Institut London, 50 Princes Gate, London, United Kingdom
GBP 3.00 to GBP 6.00
