AMD 6 - Andrew McBride

For this AMD, I decided to watch the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1972 film Die Bitteren Traenen der Petra von Kant (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068278/). It tells the story of the successful fashion designer Petra von Kant as she falls madly in love with a model named Karin. When Karin uses her and then leaves her, Petra becomes increasingly distraught until the audience witnesses her nervous breakdown. Other characters include her silent and long-suffering assistant Marlene, ihre Mutter, ihre Tochter, und ihre Freundin Sidonie. The entire film takes place in a series of 5 scenes that all take place in Petra's bedroom. Overall, I thought that it was a fantastic film that did a wonderful job of delving deeply into the complicated inner workings of the intimate relationships between people and how those can change dramatically over a relatively short period of time.

Though I watched the film with English subtitles, the German was not too difficult to understand. The actors spoke clearly and enunciated well. Also, they used a lot of vocabulary that we have learned so far in class, so I kept noticing a wide variety of words that I've already heard and committed to memory. Overall, I would definitely recommend this film to beginning German students, as the film is quite good and the German is clearly spoken and not too difficult to understand.