This page is to obtain ONLINE access to the Sands Films Cinema Club presentation of ROSA LUXEMBURG on Tuesday 29th March
To attend in person, please CLICK HERE
Die Geduld der Rosa Luxemburg
Margarethe von Trotta (1985)
The co-founder (with Karl Liebknecht) of the movement that two years hence, in 1918, evolved into the German Communist Party, Rosa Luxemburg was murdered en route to prison in 1919. Jewish, Russian Polish, and middle-class by birth, and German by marriage, Rosa was a Marxist journalist and lawyer committed to worker activism and worker rights, believing that socialism required democracy. In turn, Lenin and Stalin repudiated her no less than the German establishment did, and part of the legacy of her death was the weakening of her Party, thus facilitating the rise in Germany of Adolf Hitler, whose National Socialism courted the economically disaffected, many of whom might otherwise have gravitated toward her message and cause.
Margarethe von Trotta’s film about Rosa’s political struggles is sober, restrained, and cumulatively very powerful. It also adheres to a conventional form, eschewing the addition of cinematic controversy to its already incendiary subject matter. The film begins in 1916, in Wronke Prison, and flashes back to 1900, with socialists anticipating a century of achievement to follow a previous century of hope. It essays in spirited, if not quite probing, detail Rosa’s intense involvement in socialist causes. It shows Rosa as being, as she puts it, hard on herself and others.
The film is particularly adept in portraying the volatile relationship between Rosa and her longtime lover, Leo Jogiches, who arranged for the publication of her collected works before also being murdered in 1919. It shows Rosa’s disdaining martyrdom because she found it sentimental and bourgeois. It makes perfect sense out of Rosa’s opposition to World War I yet ceaseless advocacy of mass labor strikes and proletarian violence inside and outside Russia.
Von Trotta’s chief asset is her star. Barbara Sukowa’s Rosa Luxemburg is among cinema’s most intelligent and passionate performances.
Dennis Grunes
This page is to obtain ONLINE access to the Sands Films Cinema Club presentation of ROSA LUXEMBURG on Tuesday 29th March
To attend in person, please CLICK HERE
Die Geduld der Rosa Luxemburg
Margarethe von Trotta (1985)
The co-founder (with Karl Liebknecht) of the movement that two years hence, in 1918, evolved into the German Communist Party, Rosa Luxemburg was murdered en route to prison in 1919. Jewish, Russian Polish, and middle-class by birth, and German by marriage, Rosa was a Marxist journalist and lawyer committed to worker activism and worker rights, believing that socialism required democracy. In turn, Lenin and Stalin repudiated her no less than the German establishment did, and part of the legacy of her death was the weakening of her Party, thus facilitating the rise in Germany of Adolf Hitler, whose National Socialism courted the economically disaffected, many of whom might otherwise have gravitated toward her message and cause.
Margarethe von Trotta’s film about Rosa’s political struggles is sober, restrained, and cumulatively very powerful. It also adheres to a conventional form, eschewing the addition of cinematic controversy to its already incendiary subject matter. The film begins in 1916, in Wronke Prison, and flashes back to 1900, with socialists anticipating a century of achievement to follow a previous century of hope. It essays in spirited, if not quite probing, detail Rosa’s intense involvement in socialist causes. It shows Rosa as being, as she puts it, hard on herself and others.
The film is particularly adept in portraying the volatile relationship between Rosa and her longtime lover, Leo Jogiches, who arranged for the publication of her collected works before also being murdered in 1919. It shows Rosa’s disdaining martyrdom because she found it sentimental and bourgeois. It makes perfect sense out of Rosa’s opposition to World War I yet ceaseless advocacy of mass labor strikes and proletarian violence inside and outside Russia.
Von Trotta’s chief asset is her star. Barbara Sukowa’s Rosa Luxemburg is among cinema’s most intelligent and passionate performances.
Dennis Grunes