A Woman in Berlin (film)

Plot

In the waning days of World War II, an assortment of women, children and elderly men struggle to survive in Berlin, cast out of their formerly middle-class lives.

The Red Army arrives, defeating the last German defense. Its soldiers rape women of any age as they occupy the city. After being raped by a number of Soviet soldiers, the film's anonymous woman, a German journalist (played by actress Nina Hoss), petitions the battalion's commanding officer for an alliance and protection. After initially rejecting her, the married officer Andrei Rybkin (Eugeny Sidikhin) is gradually seduced by the beautiful but battered German woman. She has a cool, practical approach to her life and has been part of an informal community that developed among survivors in her apartment building.

The officer subsequently protects, feeds and parties with her and her neighbors. Other women in the flats also take particular officers or soldiers for protection against being raped by soldiers at large. Rybkin comes under suspicion and he is reassigned.

Cast

Reception

It received strong reviews for its brutal truthfulness. The Washington Post described it as "A clear-eyed portrait of a highly charged chapter in Germany's history, a history that once again proves rewarding fodder for an alert artistic imagination." The reviewer wrote that after the film portrays the initial rapes and assaults against German women by Soviet soldiers, it takes a "much more somber and morally complex turn." The protagonist and her mostly women neighbors must "navigate a city that's become a physical and psychic no-man's land."

Roger Ebert noted that "Yes, she profits from their liaison, and yes, he eventually takes up her offer. But for each there is the illusion that this is something they choose to do....The woman and man [Andrei] make the best accommodation they can with the reality that confronts them."

The Austin Chronicle praised Hoss "in a supremely complex and modulated performance." It described the film as "that rarest of wartime dramas: an intimate, sorrowful glimpse into the heart and loins of the hellish aftermath of war."