Hildegard Knef: "Die Sünderin"

"The Sinner" - a huge scandal in the 50s and 60s - why? Hildegard Knef would have been 100 years old in December!

THE SINNER

DEU 1951. D: Willi Forst. D: Hildegard Knef, Gustav Fröhlich, Änne Bruck. 86 min. FSK: 12

The great scandal film of the early post-war period: Hildegard Knef plays the prostitute Marina, who falls in love with the failed painter Alexander after a difficult youth during the war - with parents who abandon her and a half-brother who rapes her. He has a brain tumor that is causing him to go blind. To pay for the operation, she tries to help him by selling herself again.
Myth has it that Hildegard Knef's seconds of nudity caused the harsh condemnation of the melodrama. In fact, however, both the Catholic and Protestant churches were offended by the depiction of prostitution, "wild marriage" and the euthanasia issue: church representatives resigned from the FSK committee, bishops called for a boycott and there were tumultuous protests against the cinemas showing the film. Hildegard Knef: "Attacked from pulpits and picked apart by priests, pursued by tear gas and stink bombs, accompanied by protest rallies and parades, the film was nevertheless or because of this seen by two million Germans in its first three weeks."

Introduction: Ursula Jander