Die weiße Rose / The White Rose (1982) – 3/5

A solid history lesson

„Die weiße Rose“ or „The White Rose“ is a West German film from 1982 that runs for over two hours and not for 108 minutes as it is stated on imdb. The production year means that this one will have its 35th anniversary next year, so the time span between this film and now is not too different between the number of years between when the film is set and when it got made, especially if we consider that 1982 was the release year and not the production year. It was the most-seen movie of the year in German back then if I am not mistaken and is among the most known career works by writer and director Michael Verhoeven, whose professional choices may have been way better than the choices in his personal life, and actress Lena Stolze and they continued their successful collaboration a couple years later in the Oscar-nominated „The Nasty Girl“. Both films have to do with Nazi Germany and everybody with a little interest in German history knows that the „Weiße Rose“ was an organization made up by students who offered resistance to Hitler during the years of Nazi Germany. Their weapons were pens. They put anti-Hitler messages for example on walls, but what they are most known for is distributing sheets of paper with anti-Nazi statements. The movie is based on real characters and real events, which is probably the main reason why you may want to see it. Unfortunately, I must say that I have seen other films on the subject and they were a better watch in my opinion. This includes the more recent, fairly famous Julia Jentsch movie and also a pretty unknown 40-year-old film named „Everyone Dies Alone“ starring Hildegard Knef about a different resistance group, who eventually faced the same fate though. But back to this one here: It offers good writing and also some moral questions, for example a professor asking the students if they are doing the right thing or if they should instead maybe try to change Germany after the Nazi reign. I also liked about the film that it worked nicely in terms of depicting how Nazis were so strongly against freedom of opinion. I never had the impression that the group was doing something really bad or dangerous, but their fates in the end teach us differently.

Lead actress Stolze was not great, but okay. She is totally stunning and also had her moments acting-wise, for example when her character finds out that her execution is only hours away. The scenes in the weapons manufacturing company in terms of silent female resistance were among the best the film had to offer. This was Stolze’s breakthrough film and she was in her mid20s here, so slightly older than Sophie Scholl. She also played the exact same character the exact same year in another film, which was directed by Percy Adlon, but is considerably less known than this one here. Would maybe make for a solid double feature. So it was (mostly) this movie we have here that won her the German Film Award back then, even if it is debatable if she is a lead in here. The other key players are male. Hans Scholl is played by Wulf Kessler and it is pretty much the man’s only known film. The second German Film Awards acting nomination for this movie went to Werner Stocker and it is difficult to find out if he won or if another nominee was triumphant. Truly embarrassing, but the German Film Academy is nowadays more interested in using gender-adequate language than in getting their historic facts across. At least, we can still find the information on their website that this film did not win the big award of the night, but a work by Wim Wenders did, even if „The White Rose“ was apparently not far behind. Anyway, what I just mentioned is of course an absolute travesty that still says a lot about the shape the German film landscape is in these days. Accurate documentation plays a less important role than politics and propaganda. Pretty ironic if we look at what this film here is all about. But times back then were at least a bit different and I am sure it would not have taken place like this back in the early 1980s.

Anyway, back to Stocker: He had nice screen presence, but maybe also a bit too much praise if we look at the other award he won. I would not say he stood out from the rest. Stocker sadly died way too early. My favorite male performance here came from Martin Benrath, perhaps the most experienced cast member, played with Marlon Brando in Oscar-nominated films before. Also on board here was the young Ulrich Tukur, the cast member that had the biggest career afterwards. As for the female actors, we can maybe mention Kruse and Reinders, but other than being fairly attractive (though not as much as Stolze) there is not too much to say about their characters. What I did not like was the runtime. Maybe they included too many characters, even if the small ones, like a Nazi neighbor or Nazis at the university auditorium almost stayed in the mind more than some of the bigger characters that all felt a bit interchangeable. As for the running time, I do believe that they definitely included a couple insignificant scenes that do not add too much to the film and therefore I think it should have been 105 minutes long instead, without some of the less relevant stuff. This also includes the scene linked to the war. It plays to such an extent in Germany that we almost forget about the cruelties taking place in the Soviet Union at the same time. Nonetheless, despite the film being a bit too long for its own good, overall, it is an extremely important subject and chapter of German history and I always like it to see stuff like this depicted in film. Scholl is probably still the second-biggest female name linked to the years of Nazi Germany and World War II. Maybe some people even know more about her than about Anne Frank. The good thing about those two is also that they were really almost entirely on the victim side. They were progressive, but not radical. They did not plan any assassination attempts. On a side note, the name of the film and the organization that Scholl was a part felt especially visible when we see Sophie in a white blouse or shirt (for a second even topless) on a few occasions early on especially.

But now back to the kex aspects again: What stayed especially memorable here was what happened in the last hour when it all escalated. The war- and ideology-related conflicts between Sophie and one of the most important men in her life or the scene with the suitcase in the train were not as tense as I thought they could have been, had the potential to be among the film’s most defining sequences, but the action at the university is what surely stayed in my mind. How they distribute the flyers, how they are caught by the caretaker, how they are interrogated, how Hans confessed in an attempt to help the others, how they are taken to court and eventually the execution. Benrath’s character does not get any further screen time after he leaves the group. So as slow as all before that was, towards the end it was all very rushed. The fact that all these happenings were in the last chapter of the film and not in the first probably helped the movie in a way that many viewers perhaps forgot about the very long and unnecessarily slow sequences that also belong to this movie. The ending then was of course very tragic, especially in connection to the previous comments that they really only need to stay alive for a few more weeks or months and there would be nothing they have to fear anymore. The film then ends with a few words written on the screen that are linked to the judicial perspective and what never happened afterwards in terms of the sentences. I guess at the end it also would have made sense to show the ones who lost their lives, but Verhoeven and his co-writer Mario Krebs (what a „coincidence“ he worked lately on a TV show starring Verhoeven’s wife Senta Berger, maybe the most overrated actress in German film/television) decided to take that route already at the beginning and if you know nothing about history, then you may consider it a spoiler, but let’s be honest here and say that almost everybody who decided or decides to watch the film how that there was no happy ending to Sophie Scholl’s and her brother’s mission.

It is also crucial to understand that she was not a founding member of the „White Rose“, but joined them later on and this was true for other females. And their professor whose approach to communism was another interesting inclusion. Well, in general you can say that the more people know about something supposed to stay secret, the more likely it is to be revealed to everybody. Surely also the case here as well, even if the young men who founded the organization originally were not worried because of that, but because of the safety of the females. For good reason as we understand towards the end. This is pretty much it then. I will not end the review as abruptly as the film ends. However, there you can even say that it ends with Sophie being executed and not one of the others, so maybe she was indeed a bit more at the center of the film than the rest. After all, we also do not really see the young males and their resistance before Sophie finds out about them. I think it is a good release. Costumes, set decorations and technical aspects are fine too. The best shot was perhaps when we see the three almost at the very end and they share a final cigarette. The fact that this meeting was not allowed and that at least two people broke the rules and least risked their jobs as a consequence was a nice showing that the lives of the protagonists may be (almost) over, but that there is still humanity left in Germany so close to the end of the war. You fill find other interesting moments in here if you pay close enough attention. Despite some flaws and lengths to the outcome here, this take on Sophie Scholl, which by the way was not Germany’s official Oscar submission back then (surprises me a bit), is certainly worth watching. I give it a thumbs-up.