Tag: Susanne Lothar

The White Ribbon
(Das Weiße Band)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 13 June 2024
1 Comment on The White Ribbon
(Das Weiße Band)

Director – Michael Haneke – 2009 – Austria, Germany – Cert. 15 – 144m

*****

Reviewed for Third Way magazine to coincide with UK release date 13/11/2009.

Plays in Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, in UK cinemas from Friday, June 6th and on BFI Player from Thursday, September 11th 2025.

Haneke’s first period drama for the big screen is set in 1913-14 in a Northern German Protestant village where strange accidents befall the community. A doctor (Rainer Bock), out riding a regular route, is brought down and injured by a wire between two trees. The wife of a farm labourer is killed when factory floorboards give way beneath her. Children are abducted. A baby’s window is left open in Midwinter. A building burns. But who is – or are – responsible?

The film sets out its cast of characters in terms of the social hierarchy. The landowning classes are represented by the local Baron (Ulrich Tukur), his wife (Ursina Lardi) and their child; the professional classes by a widowed doctor, the midwife (Susanne Lothar) “who has made herself useful to him”, the Baron’s steward (Josef Bierbichler), the village Pastor (Burghart Klaussner) and the local teacher (Christian Friedel) – also as an old man the narrator (Ernst Jacobi) – who is courting the nanny of the Baron’s son; the working classes by numerous agricultural labourers who generally feature less prominently in the story.… Read the rest

Tags 1910s, 1913, 1914, abduction, accidents, agriculture, aired in public, Austria, baby. window left open, baron, black and white, bring down, building burns, Burghart Klaussner, cane, child abuse, children, chils abduction, Christian Friedel, closed door, community, Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, corporal punishment, corruption, crime, cruelty, death, declaration of war, deduction, dirty laundry, doctor, Ernst Jacobi, factory, factory floorboards, facts, fallen world, farm labourer, Germany, half-truths, hearsay, horse and cart, ineffectual, injury, insidious, Josef Bierbichler, killed, kitchen, labourers, landowning class, Leonie Benesch, malevolence, Michael Haneke, midwife, Midwinter, misinterpretation, mortality, motive, nanny, narrator, Northern Germany, organised religion, outsider, pastor, picnic, powerlessness, professional class, Protestant, punishment, pure intentions, puzzle, Rainer Bock, riddle, riding, social class, social hierarchy, steward, Susanne Lothar, teacher, town, tree, Ulrich Tukur, underpinning, Ursina Lardi, village, widowed, wife, wire, working class

Features Live Action Movies

The Piano Teacher
(La Pianiste)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 6 June 2025
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(La Pianiste)
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Director – Michael Haneke – 2001 – Austria, France – Cert. 18 – 131m

*****

A masochistic piano teacher with an abusive mother embarks on an affair with a young male student – the opening film of Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, in UK cinemas from Friday, June 6th and on BFI Player from Thursday, September 11th 2025

Warning: NSFW.

This is at once representative of Haneke’s wider body of work and very different from it.

Representative because he is one of those directors whose personal use of cinematic vocabulary has been so honed over his years of making movies that he is able to clearly and precisely articulate problematic, controversial and taboo ideas and subject matter that few directors would be able to handle without descending into exploitation or commercialism. He is a director steeped in cinema, fascinated by how the process of making a movie constructs the narrative or other viewing and listening experience, and how that is perceived and understood by audiences.

Different because although Haneke generally writes as well and directs his own films, they are mostly original pieces whereas this one is an adaptation of a book, The Piano Teacher / Die Klavierspielerin by Elfriede Jelinek.… Read the rest

Tags absent father, abusive mother, abusive relationship, adaptation, affair, Alfred Hitchcock, Anna Sigalevitch, Annie Giradot, apartment, applications procedure, arousal, auditorium, Austria, bath, bathroom, bedroom door, Benoît Magimel, blood, booth, broken glass, character study, cloakroom, Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, cruelty, cubicle, domestic arrangements, domineering mother, Elfriede Jelinek, extreme, father’s death, flat, France, frustrated, gifted, glass tumbler, handbag, harrowing, home late, human connection, Isabelle Huppert, lacerate, lavatory cubicle, letter, love, masochist, Michael Haneke, mother, mothers and children, mothers and daughters, mummy issues, music, music academy, musical studies, NSFW, overbearing, parents and daughters, perverse, physical encounter, pianist, piano keyboard, possessive, pupil's legs, razor blade, rebellion, recital, rehearsal, relationship, Schubert, Schumann, search handbag, secure the bedroom door, self harm, sex shop, sexual dysfunction, sexuality, split screen, student, Susanne Lothar, taboo, talent, teacher and pupil, teacher and student, The Piano Teacher, unfulfilled, used tissues, Vienna, wardrobe

Features Live Action Movies

Funny Games
(1997)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 20 June 2025
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(1997)
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Director – Michael Haneke – 1997 – Austria – Cert.18 – 103m

*****

Two young men turn up at a family’s holiday home to humiliate and torture them via a series of controlling exchanges (or games) – plays in Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, in UK cinemas from Saturday, June 21st and on BFI Player from Thursday, September 11th 2025

Review originally published in Shivers around the time of the film’s 1997 London Film Festival premiere

With Hollywood currently rediscovering the profitability of slick, fun horror movies in the blockbusting wake of Scream (Wes Craven, 1996), Europe proves itself well capable of delivering work at the other end of the spectrum. Funny Games is the latest brainchild of Austrian-born Michael Haneke (Benny’s Video, 1992).

Like Scream, Funny Games never misses a trick on the technical level. Unlike Scream, its intention is not a non-stop, mass-consumption, vicarious thrill-laden roller coaster ride (which Funny Games certainly isn’t) but a rigorous and unrelenting, one way descent into madness, fear and despair depicting violence, mutilation, torture and – above all – amoral manipulation of one’s fellow human beings – as truly horrific.

To dismiss Funny Games as either moral lecture or morality play would do it great disservice.… Read the rest

Tags action movie, actioner, amoral, Arno Frisch, Austria, blood, chopping vegetables, Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, control, controlling, descent into madness, despair, dog, everyday normality, family, fear, Frank Giering, games, gore, Hide and Seek, holiday home, Hollywood, horrify, horror, horror thrille, human depravity portrayal of violence, humiliate, kitchen, lakeside, manipulation, media, Michael Haneke, mundane activity, mutilation, naturalism, naturalistic observation, nuclear family, parents and children, pleasurable audience consumption, polite, press scan/rewind, psycho, retaliation, rigorous, shotgun, shy, Stefan Clapczynski, Susanne Lothar, taciturn, tell me it's only a movie, thrill, thrillers, Tom And Jerry, tormentors, torture, TV remote, Ulrich Muhe, unrelenting, upsetting, viewer, violence, well-spoken, young men