The case of Lena Christ

In April 1920, the Bavarian writer Lena Christ put an end to her own life in the Munich Waldfriedhof. The film tells the story of the tragic life of this unhappy woman.

"The troubled life and romantic death of the waitress, nun and writer who was illegitimate, mistreated by her own mother, and married twice"- is the film's subtitle. It tells the story of Lena Christ's life based on her autobiographical novel "Erinnerungen einer Überflüssigen" (Memories of a Redundant Person) and the book written by her husband, Peter Benedix "Der Weg der Lena Christ" (The Life of Lena Christ).

The title role is played by Heidi Stroh, her mother by Edith Volkmann and her husband by Eberhard Peiker. "The film translates Lena Christ's plain and simple autobiography partly into a kind of Mannerist artificiality, partly into a ‘Chamber of Horrors' of inhuman suffering. In spite of these alienation effects, it remains a harrowing account of a victim of zeitgeist and prejudice" (International Film Lexicon). Hans W. Geißendörfer comments: "My film is neither a sentimental work nor a dialect piece. What I am interested in is the authoritarian structure of the environment that shaped this particular fate".

Geißendörfer's spectacular debut film "Der Fall Lena Christ" (The Case of Lena Christ) was made in 1968/69 as an in-house production of the Bavarian television company. The subsequent masterpieces of the then 27-year-old - the idiosyncratic vampire film  "Jonathan" (1969), which was awarded a silver at the German Film Awards, his version of Friedrich-Schiller's "Carlos",  which  he turned into a Western drama, the impressive film version of Ludwig-Anzengruber's "Der Sternsteinhof" (The Sternstein Manor), winner of many awards, and the psychological thriller "Die gläserne Zelle" "(The Glass Cell) (1977), based on the novel of the same title by Patricia Highsmith, which was nominated for the Oscar for foreign films - were also co-productions with Bavaria Television.

Source: Films in Bavarian Television

Cast: Eberhard Peikert, Paul Stieber-Walter, Sophie Strelow, Heidi Stroh, Edith Volkmann

Drama | Germany 1970 | app. 90 minutes | Director: Hans W. Geißendörfer | Script: Peter Bendix, Hans W. Geißendörfer