Through a Daughter's Eyes

Helma Sanders-Brahms' film Germany, Pale Mother (1979) begins with a silent close-up of a swastika, the slightly blurred image of a flag reflected in water. As the camera pulls back and our angle of vision widens, we are able to situate the image and ourselves as viewers in relation to a context: we see a pond, a boathouse with a Nazi flag; two men in a rowboat cut through the water, across the wavering reflection of the swastika. On shore we see a group of SA officers playing with a German shepherd; a young woman walking by is attacked by the dog. The men in the boat watch as she struggles to free herself; we watch her struggle through their eyes. Throughout the entire scene the representational realism of the events is underscored by the exclusive use of diegetic sound: we hear the two men in the boat talking, the SA officers shouting, and the dog barking. Only the woman remains silent. The female voice we hear on the soundtrack is not hers, but the disembodied, extradiegetic voice of the film's narrator (the filmmaker herself), who identifies herself as the (as yet unborn) daughter of the woman we see onscreen. From the very outset, then, woman's presence is marked by her simultaneous absence: voice without body, body without speech. While the presence of the men appears self-evident, as it were (we hear them as they speak, we see them as they act), the presence of woman is marked, different and (in a Brechtian sense) made strange. Either mute or invisible, she appears incomplete and fragmented, split into disembodied voice on the one hand and voiceless body on the other. There is something unsettling, disturbing about this presence-absence that compels our attention far more powerfully than the seemingly natural presence of the men. Within the narrative world of the film itself, the woman's silence also draws attention, making a deep impression on the two men watching her from the boat. She didn't scream, remarks Hans, the man who is soon (although

Art · Daughter · Political science · Cinema and Media Studies · European history and politics · German History and Society · Law

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