The staggered title indicates that the subject matter is more than the affair and kinship between the Greek demi-god and the Amazonian princess, who find no solution to the pressing problem of their love - who is to dominate whom - until Penthesilea and her dog tear the hero into pieces and then ensures her own death by a suicide of the soul. In addition to long passages of the tragedy the less ominous relationship between the director and his dramatist, the actors and their parts and the poetry, its staging and reality is also explored in words. The Kleistian figures are given more and more time off, and allowed to go for a walk in West Berlin. Their director turns himself into their victim by permitting them to appear as his own mental creations - on trains, in bars, in the streets at night or at dawn - until they tease him, take him by surprise and throw him to the ground with a sort of slapstick brutality. For the seperation between the figures and the actors playing them has been virtually suspended.
Elisabeth Trissenaar, Hermann Treusch, Verena Peter, Lieselotte Rau, Nicole Heesters, Ulrich Haß, Jörg Holm, Edith Robbers, Char
Regie
Hans Neuenfels
Drehbuch
Hans Neuenfels
Kamera
Thomas Mauch, Frank Banuscher
Musik
Heiner Goebbels
Szenenbild
Hans Neuenfels, anna Viebrock
ProduzentIn
Regina Ziegler
Genre
Feature Film
Format
35 mm Farbe
Länge
144 min.