Cinema
Yesterday Girl
Abschied von gestern
Alexander Kluge · 1966
Synopsis
Anita G., born in 1937 in Leipzig to Jewish parents and raised in East Germany, crosses to the West. She becomes a nurse, commits a theft, receives a suspended sentence, then escapes her supervisor and moves to another city. A sales representative for a record company, she becomes her boss's mistress, and he later denounces her in order to keep his wife; working as a chambermaid, she loses her job, accused of a theft; the university refuses to enrol her. She then becomes the mistress of a senior civil servant, Pichota.
Context
The story of Anita G., drawn from a real court case of 1959, already figured in the author's first book, published in 1962; he made it his first feature film, with his sister Alexandra in the lead role. Shot from December 1965 to February 1966, the film is broken up by intertitles and commentary spoken by Kluge himself, and its scenes, detached from one another, do not follow the order of a narrative. It was first shown on 5 September 1966 at the Venice Film Festival.
Who it is for
A black and white film of about an hour and a half, in the manner of an essay rather than a continuous narrative.
Prizes and reception
Silver Lion at the Venice festival in 1966; the film also received four German film prizes.