‘Coup de Grâce‘ by the German director Volker Schlöndorff owes its title in French to the fact that it adapts for the screen the novel with the same name of the French writer Marguerite Yourcenar. The German title is ‘Der Fangschuß‘. ‘The film was made in 1976 and immediately succeeds in Schlöndorff‘s filmography’ The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum‘. Margarethe von Trotta, the co-director of the previous film, plays in the Coup de Grâce‘ the main role, this being probably the most remarkable role of her acting career, a career that she would have to abandon over a few years, transitioning for good in the film director’s seat, a very successful transition indeed. For Schlöndorff, the film is part of a series that addresses the issue of the roots of political violence. The story takes place in 1919 but the references are obvious to what was to happen in Germany for the next quarter century, perhaps even more evident than in the novel by the French writer, published in 1939, the year of the outbreak of World War II.
The place where the story told in the film takes place is East Prussia, a province near the Baltic Sea that was part of Germany until the First World War. Here the war continued even after the 1918 armistice, with rests of the German army fighting against the Bolshevik expansion with support from the Allies (former enemies). History seemed to have turned against them, but the militaristic fanaticism and the desire to maintain the old order and the privileges of the Prussian nobility urged them to continue fighting. The horror of the trenches and the bombings, the permanent violence and the executions of the prisoners had become part of the daily life. This morbid adventure, one of the local conflicts after World War I, ceased when the local population adopted the nationalist line that would lead to the proclamation of the independence of the Baltic countries. Against this backdrop, a story of not shared love takes place between Countess Sophie de Reval (Margarethe von Trotta) and the Prussian officer Erich von Lhomond (Matthias Habich). The end can only be tragic, but Schlöndorff gives the story a powerful political twist.
The cinematographic means chosen by the director are very interesting. I viewed a pretty poorly preserved copy, but that detail only added authenticity to the viewing experience. Schlöndorff uses black and white film and frames reminiscent of German films from the interwar period. The decadent atmosphere of the manor of the countess where most of the story takes place, however, has a surrealistic tint, accentuated by the presence of the character of Tante Praskovia played by Valeska Gert, a successful actress of that period, present among others on the poster of the first film version of Bertolt Brecht‘s ‘The 3 Penny Opera‘ of 1931. Margarethe von Trotta‘s acting creation is special, she plays a tragic character at the border between passion and reason, between femininity and despair. The atmosphere of “end of empire” is excellent sustained by the sets, both most of the time when the action takes place in the mansion keeping the atmosphere of other times, as well as in the war scenes or the ones filmed in the frozen nature. The narration is not without gaps, the final part of the story seems to be expedited and it is not as psychologically deep and motivated as the previous episodes. But the ending is exceptional, a real ‘coup de grace’. The film ends and a new, dark history page begins.