Movielogr

movie poster

View on: IMDb | TMDb

Mother's Mask (1988)

Directed by Christoph Schlingensief

Overview

Mutters Maske aka Mother’s Mask is a free adaptation of the film Opfergang (1944) aka The Great Sacrifice of Veit Harlan. Schlingensief exposes his source material’s dangerous proximity to kitsch and camp by reducing the genre conventions known from Harlan, Sirk, Fassbinder & Co to the level of a daily soap: set within a noble family from the German Ruhr, Schlingensief’s story revolving about Willy von Mühlenbeck’s tragic love to terminally ill neighbor girl Äls (Susanne Bredehöft) and the inheritance intrigues by his evil brother Martin von Mühlenbeck (Helge Schneider) creaks with melodramatic devices and self-conscious dialogues. Rather than being a mere spoof, “Mother’s Mask” is perhaps Schlingensief’s purest black comedy.

Length 85 minutes

Actors

Udo Kier | Uli Hanisch | Helge Schneider | Andreas Kunze | Charlie Weiss | Sergej Gleithmann | Susanne Bredehöft | Mathias Colli | Brigitte Kausch | Karl Friedrich Mews | Anna Fechter | Dieter Lersch | Conny Jurkait | Regina Stiplosak | Anastasia Kudelka | Irmgard Freifau von Berswordt-Wallrabe | Kornelia Fechter | Doris Kreis | Peter Jurkait | Dennis Koehnen